Pretty and Bright – DIY Christmas Ornaments


This workshop is for the creative ones among you!
The use of scissors, glue and a soldering iron should not scare you, and the eagerness to try new things should be your second nature.
We will be working with paper, glitter pens, LED lights, resistors, wires and plastic spheres.

The fun will last the whole afternoon, and 15€ will cover all your material costs.

Building it!

During this day-long workshop, you will be walked through the process of designing an interactive electronic device: from an initial idea right through to the working device.

We will start off with a presentation covering the whole design process. Next we will demonstrate the necessary steps and tools in more detail. And last but not least you will assemble the finished device.
The device we will be building will be a Mini Mood Light. Consisting of two multicoloured LED’s, a small micro controller and a number of buttons which will allow the user to selected a suitable colour which reflects their mood. We’ll be demonstrating each of the steps including schematic capture, PCB layout, PCB fabrication and programming the micro controller.

You should have a basic understanding of electronics and the C programming language. The workshop is targeted at makers and amateur inventors who want to use open source tools to create open hardware devices.

The workshop will be run three times over the period of Science Week and Innovation Dublin Festival. Each workshop will run from 11:00 through to approximately 17:00, with a break for lunch. Food will not be provided, but we have a full kitchen and there are shops/takeaways nearby.

The cost of the workshop will be 40€ waged, 30€ unwaged and 20€ tog members.

The numbers are going to be limited to eight adult/older teen participants per workshop, but we also hope to video stream and record some of the last workshop.

The joys of 3D printing


This lecture on “3D printing” will outline the various 3D printing techniques in general and the printing with printers such as the Open Source MakerBot in particular.

No experience needed.

Linux for everybody!


This demonstration will allow you to take a first or closer look at the operating system Linux. There is a flavour for everybody, and we invite you to try them all!

We will show you how to use your basic day-to-day programs to surf the net or watch a movie. We will show you how to find the right program and install it. And most importantly: how to get Linux onto your computer.

Secure yourself online


The Internet has become the way in which we naturally communicate in our daily lives. Accessing the Internet in work, on the move and at home is becoming the norm and most people don’t realize the many ways that we are becoming vulnerable with each click of a mouse.
We will be going through the common mistakes made when protecting personal data from outsiders, and showing some safety measures that anyone can take to protect their data online.

There will be a presentation on the topic followed by discussion.
No experience needed.

Free Firewalling – All it costs is patience

There are many open source choices for a firewall these days and Packet Filter is one of the more common ones. This talk will go through the setup and structure of a Packet Filter firewall and a walk through of a complete Packet Filter firewall rule set.

Networking knowledge would be handy, as well as some Linux/UNIX experience since we will be using the command line.