TOG August Open Social

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

It’s still summer….. well Irish summer anyway! Being a Saturday and close to the middle of the month means that it’s our regular Open Social evening again. This month’s social takes place on Saturday 19th August from 7PM. We’re in the middle of a monster cleanup and building works, so its a good time to drop in and check on the progress.

If you’ve never been to our Social, you’ll find it a great alternative Saturday evening in town. Come in and look around. If you’ve never been in before, we’ll give you the grand tour of the space. Talk to members and visitors about projects or things you’d like to do. If you like what you see, ask about joining as a full member. Hopefully there’ll be caint, ceol agus craic as usual. The space stays open until the last member is left……usually the small hours of Sunday morning.

Our Open Socials are always free to attend for both members and visitors alike. No need to book…. just turn up. You can drop in for 10 minutes, or stay the whole night. We have parking available. Bring beer, food, gadgets! Our doors are open from 7PM. Hope to see you there.

https://www.meetup.com/Tog-Dublin-Hackerspace
https://lists.tog.ie/mailman/listinfo/tog
https://twitter.com/TOG_Dublin
https://www.facebook.com/togdublin

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The Creative Museum Project

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

The Creative Museum is a three-year project funded by Erasmus+. It ran from 2014 and comes to a close this month. It aimed to explore and inform the connections between our cultural organisations and their communities by capitalising on the emergence of new and democratising digital technologies.

We have had the great pleasure of taking part in their events over the past three years. It was great to find museum community so open and willing to meet the makers on their terms especially the Chester Beatty Library staff.  Events have ranged from talks, workshops and conferences.  It has not been just a one way street, we have had museum staff come to Science Hack Day Dublin and jump right in.  Tog has hosted events for the project such as Projection Mapping and we even had out members visit other project partners for workshops. 

The Creative Museum project has proceeded a number of great tool kits and we are incredibly proud to see some of our events be the inspiration for a number of them. You can view them all on their website. http://creative-museum.net/toolkits/ 

 

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Electronic Breadboard Workshop

Saturday, August 12, 2017

During our regular Electronics, Microcontroller and IOT Evening, which takes place every 2 weeks on Monday evenings, we will be running an Electronic Breadboard workshop. This is a paid workshop and the cost of this workshop is 25 Euro.

During the workshop, you’ll get about 1.5 hours instruction, plus a kit of parts including the breadboard itself, components and a small digital multimeter. You get to keep the kit including the breadboard and multimeter. You can then use the kit as a starting point for further experimentation and prototyping.

All proceeds from the workshop go to support TOG. The workshop will take about 1.5 hours and will start about 19:30. There will be a maximum of 4 places available. You can pay in cash on the night. Try to have change!  We are not taking reservations for this workshop…..just turn up on the night. The first 4 people to arrive get a place (maximum 4 places). If you miss out on a place this Monday, you are welcome to stay the evening for our regular Electronics, Microcontroller and IOT Evening, which is free.

A breadboard is a way of building and testing circuits quickly, without having to solder. You can move the components around, make additions, take the circuit apart and re-use the components. This workshop is suitable for beginners. This isn’t an electronics theory class as such, but rather a class about how to use a breadboard, how to start prototyping and how to turn a circuit diagram into a breadboard circuit. We have picked 4 circuits to build from very simple to circuits using IC’s. You don’t have to have any particular electronic skills or experience, but you should probably have some interest or curiosity about electronics and want some help to get started.

 

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More Appliance Repairs

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

We are no stranger to appliance repairs at TOG. In the past we have taken part in Repair Cafe’s, and we’ve looked at things brought to us by members and visitors. This time it was a Beko DW600 dishwasher that kept burning out its water heater relay every few months. The heater should only be on when heating the water but it seemed to be on all the time, and the machine could be heard gurgling and hissing when filling. On investigation, the Omron G5 relay that powers the water heater had failed with visible burning on the case. The relay failed in the ON state.

This is a very cheap part…. less than 1 Euro. After replacing it several times a few months apart, a bigger and better relay was found after a rummage through our electronics room. A Crydom D2450 solid state relay rated at 45 Amps and zero-crossing switching no less! This should have no trouble handling the approx 7.5A that the heater draws.

What was causing the original relay to fail is not certain. It doesn’t have much air circulation where it is mounted, and the the location of the control PCB itself is very close to the hot inner door of the dishwasher. So time will tell if the new relay can handle the job.

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Italian Astronaut to launch into space this week, then talk to Irish students from the space station

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

TOG members have been busy helping to organise a school contact using Amateur Radio between two schools and the International Space Station as it passes over Ireland.

The event is organised as part of ARISS, which is a working group that helps schedule live link ups using Amateur Radio Equipment on board the ISS.

While demand is high, and the waiting list long, TOG has been working for more than three years to get a date.
We have a possible date now of October 2017, and we are working on getting the radio equipment ready to bring to the schools so we can make the link up happen.

These events use radio to allow a live link up between six and twelve minutes long as the orbiting space station passes over Ireland.
The ISS is in low earth orbit which means its relative position over the ground constantly changes and it orbits the earth every 94 minutes.
It travels at 27,600 kilometres per hour about 400km above the ground in a micro gravity environment.

The ARISS group organises live link ups squeezed in between the astronauts very busy schedules, between scientific experiments.
The events give the students the opportunity to ask questions to Astronauts currently on board the ISS, and enable the astronauts to take a few minutes from the daily tasks of completing check lists, and running experiments.

We expect the Astronaut that will be available to speak to the students in October 2017 will be Paulo Nespoli.
This Italian born astronaut has been to space twice before. He is due to launch again for Space on July 28th 2017 and all going well, will be scheduled to speak with Irish students in October.

We will have more information closer to the event, but if you want to watch Paulo launch in his rocket follow this link:
https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#public
Coverage starts 15:45 Irish Time/14:45GMT/10:45 Eastern Time on July 28th 2017
Launch Scheduled 16:41 Irish Time/15:41GMT/11:41 Eastern Time on July 28th 2017
ISS Expedition 52-53/Soyuz MS-05 Launch Coverage includes video B-roll of the crew’s launch day pre-launch activities at 11 a.m. ET;

You make like to view the inside of the space station as available on street view.

https://www.google.com/streetview/#international-space-station/

The Amateur Radio equipment is located in the Columbus Module, while there is more equipment in the service module.

This event is in conjunction with ARISS, European Space Agency, South Dublin Radio Club, Cork Radio Club and many other volunteers and partners included below

 

http://www.ariss-eu.org/

http://www.irts.ie
http://www.southdublinradioclub.ie
http://www.geocities.ws/ei5crc/menu.htm

http://cork.etb.ie/
http://www.sfi.ie/
http://esero.ie/
https://www.bco.ie/
http://nationalspacecentre.eu/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Nespoli
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-05

http://www.esa.int/ESA

https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/home/index.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station

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Another Successful Dublin Maker

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Well we survived another Dublin Maker. It was a great day. Once again our stand, props and gadgets were mobbed. Our time machine told so many futures, that we ran out of paper. We ran out of straws for our skull radio and had to get more at lunchtime. Our duck shoot game was in action all day. If you’d like to know more about us or to visit, get in touch with us using the contact form above.

https://www.meetup.com/Tog-Dublin-Hackerspace/
 https://twitter.com/TOG_Dublin
https://www.facebook.com/togdublin

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