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🚴🧩 Cycles, Clues & Making: A Bike Treasure Hunt for Bike Week

We love making games. Some of our members love cycling. So naturally, we asked: why not combine the two?

As part of Bike Week, we’re running a Bike Treasure Hunt — a relaxed, playful evening where you’ll cycle a short route and solve puzzles along the way.

🗓️ When

Friday 15th May, 19:00
Duration: 2 hours

🎟️ Grab your free ticket here:
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/cycles-clues-making-a-bike-treasure-hunt-for-bike-week-tickets-1987656652554?aff=oddtdtcreator

🗺️ What to expect

This is a ~5km looped cycle starting and ending at TOG, taking in the canal, a local park, and nearby roads. The route is designed to be accessible and low-pressure, using canal paths, park spaces, and quiet streets.

Along the way, you’ll encounter four checkpoints, each with a small challenge:

  • puzzles to solve
  • things to spot
  • simple hands-on making

Complete them all and make your way back to TOG for some food and a chance to chat, compare notes, and see how everyone got on.

đź‘Ą Who is it for?

  • Individuals or teams (if you’re on a team, just have everyone grab a ticket)
  • Families welcome (children should be accompanied)
  • Beginners welcome

You’ll need a bike to take part, and you’ll be cycling on open roads as part of the route.

đźš´ Bike Week

This event is part of Bike Week Dublin and is supported by Dublin City Council.

If this sounds like your kind of thing, there’s plenty more happening across the city — have a look at the full Bike Week programme:
https://www.dublincity.ie/Bike-Week-2026

đź’¬ Final note

This is a bit of an experiment — a mix of cycling, games, and making. It’s meant to be fun, social, and a little bit different.

Come along, bring a bike, and see how you get on.

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Repair Club: Lamps Edition – Shedding a Little Light on Lamp Repair

We are trying something a little different at TOG with a new event format we are calling Repair Club.

Inspired by the work of Circular Square in Clonmel, this is a bit different from our usual Repair Café model. Instead of bringing along broken items for fixing, Repair Club is more like a focused class or workshop where we take one repair topic and explore it in more detail.

For our first session, we are starting with lamps.

We will be looking at common faults, how to test them safely, and some of the repairs you can carry out once you know what has gone wrong. That includes more than just the electrical side of things. We will also look at glueing, rewiring, testing, and the kind of practical fixes that often come up when bringing an old lamp back into use.

This event will be half class, half discussion, and half people standing around a lamp saying, “go on, try that there.” The idea is to share skills, compare notes, and build confidence around fixing things.

This is also a bit of an experiment for us. We want to see how this format works and whether it might become something we can repeat with other topics in future. There is no shortage of everyday objects that deserve their own repair night.

The event is taking place as part of Dublin Climate Action Week, which makes it a great fit. Repair is one of the simplest ways to reduce waste, keep useful things in use for longer, and help more people feel confident about understanding and maintaining the objects around them.

This session will be led by Jeffrey Roe, an engineer, maker, and long-time TOG member who has spent years running workshops, Repair Cafés, and hands-on events that help people build practical skills.

Event Details

Date: Thursday, 14 May
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Location: TOG Hackerspace
Cost: €5 via Eventbrite, with the fee going as a donation to TOG

https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/repair-club-lamps-edition-shedding-a-little-light-on-lamp-repair-tickets-1987020952157?aff=oddtdtcreator

If you are curious about repair, want to learn a bit more about fault-finding, or just fancy trying something new, this should be a good way to spend an evening at the space.

And if this goes well, we would love to run more Repair Clubs in future. If there is a repair topic you would like to see covered, or if you would like to lead one yourself, please let us know. There is always something worth taking apart, figuring out, and bringing back to life.

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Fixing an Electric Shaver and some Battery Investigations

shaver repair

Nothing terribly complicated here. Just replacing the batteries inside a Phillips electric shaver. The batteries had gradually been deteriorating. Not even giving enough time to have a shave! Time for some replacements.

We bemoan the fact that so many things are un-repairable nowadays. There was a time when repair services and shops for many household things were common. There are still actually repair centres for shavers however, where you can get a battery and heads replaced. TOG itself is no stranger to the Repair Cafe movement. We just had a big one this month, and our next one is in June. We repair things for free…. to keep things in-use for longer and to reduce waste.

Surprisingly, the batteries inside the shaver are just AAA nickel metal hydride cells. Albeit ones with solder tags for soldering to the circuit board inside. Replacing the batteries and putting it on-charge, we’re now back in action.  The circuit board inside seems remarkably complicated, but we didn’t delve into why.

circuit board

In replacing the batteries however, we came across something interesting. We found a brand-new, old-stock battery. Manufactured in 2021 and still sealed in it’s original packaging. So we were wondering would it be entirely dead, or would there be any life left in it after over 4 years unopened.

discharged battery

On opening the package, we found the battery sitting at 0.4 volts….. completely discharged! Not sure what lying discharged for so long has done to the battery chemistry, but we wouldn’t use it in anything important, even if it does take a charge. We’re going to put it on the Imax charger and measure how much capacity it still has.

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Bringing a Cracked Flymo Back to Life

With summer on the way, you might be thinking about cutting the grass again and dragging the lawnmower back out of the shed.

This Flymo Easi Glide 330 came into TOG on a Tuesday night with a fairly serious problem. The outer case was badly cracked. It was manufactured back in February 2014, so it has clearly done a good bit of work over the years, but this kind of damage could easily make you think it was ready for the bin.

But what do you do with a crack like that?

Glue was never going to be enough here. The plastic casing takes a lot of stress and vibration in normal use, so this needed something stronger. Out came the plastic welder, with our member Ambrose taking on the repair.

A tool like this works by heating the plastic and embedding metal staples or pins across the crack. These act like reinforcement inside the case, giving the repair strength and helping bridge the gap where the plastic had split. As you can see from the photos, this one needed quite a few of them.

The nice thing about this repair is that Ambrose was able to do all the work from the inside. That means the outside still looks great, while the inside now has the strength it needs to keep going.

It is a lovely example of the kind of repair that becomes very straightforward when you have the right tool and the right knowledge. That is one of the great things about a hackerspace like TOG. We have a wide range of shared tools, but just as importantly, we have people around who know what tool to reach for and are happy to help figure things out.

This was all done on a normal Tuesday open night at TOG. If you have a project of your own, something that needs fixing, or you are just curious to see what goes on in the space, Tuesday night is a great time to drop in.

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TouchDesigner Meetup Dublin @ TOG HACKERSPACE

We are hosting an open TouchDesigner meetup with demos, hands-on learning, and space to share work with others using the software. This is part of a series of monthly events in collaboration with @noid_lab typically on the last Wednesday each month in the space, so this month it’s 29th April, 7-10pm.

Tickets are free – but registration via Eventbrite is required to secure your place.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/touchdesigner-meetup-dublin-tickets-1987679859968

Workshops:

In this session we will be hosting two workshops. The first will be run by Pauric Freeman, the class will offer a deep dive into instancing in TouchDesigner, breaking down the core principles behind this technique and demonstrating how it can be used to create complex visuals. The session will also explore the integration of MediaPipe, showing how real-time gesture tracking can be used to control instanced systems.

Following this, Cailean will be working with.. nodes! but not in the traditional TouchDesigner sense. This small workshop will explore how the behaviour of nodes can be controlled through the Network Editor using Python scripts.

Format:

The session will run for around three hours in a relaxed, hands-on setting. With multiple rooms available at TOG Hackerspace, we can host beginner and advanced activities simultaneously, ensuring everyone gets the most out of the evening. The event will focus on learning, with a combination of scheduled short and long presentations/demonstrations. The last hour will take a more flattened and open approach, allowing the space for people to chat, share, learn, and explore TouchDesigner. Expect an informal, community-driven environment where the format adapts to participants. So if you would like to bring your laptop and learn the basics, share your projects, or connect with other using the software, this meetup offers a welcoming and supportive space to do so.

The event is also a great opportunity to meet other creative technologists and artists, and to continue building the growing TouchDesigner community in Ireland.

Contact us at noidlab.collective@gmail.com to share ideas for future sessions or to express interest in presenting your work.

A special thanks to TOG for allowing us to use the space for these events, and Derivative for supporting the project. The meetups are hosted each month by a group of artists and creative technologists:

https://www.tog.ie

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TOG at HamCon Belgium 2026

TOG is heading to Belgium next month for HamCon Belgium 2026, a day packed with talks, workshops, demos, and plenty of radio chat.

Our own Jeffrey Roe EI7IRB will be part of the programme with two sessions on the day. He’ll be running a Satellite Ground Station Workshop, showing people how to build and get started with a TinyGS setup, and later giving a DMR Workshop for anyone curious about digital radio and how to get on the air.

It looks like a great event, with talks and activities covering everything from TETRA and DAPNET to meteor science, antennas, PCB design, and more. If you’re into amateur radio, digital modes, satellites, or radio tech in general, there’s loads to dig into.

If you’re thinking of making the trip, have a look at the full programme and event details here: https://hamcon.be/

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Toilets on the Air at 39C3 (TOTA)

You might have heard of Parks on the Air (POTA), Summits on the Air, or maybe even Bunkers on the Air. Radio amateurs love combining the hobby with an excuse to go and visit somewhere.

But what about Toilets on the Air?

Yes. Toilets.

Let me set the scene

Picture this: around 16,000 people in Hamburg, Germany, all packed into a massive conference centre for the 39th Chaos Communication Congress (39C3), a four-day hacker conference running 27–30 December 2025.

It’s the middle of winter. The venue is huge. There’s reinforced concrete everywhere. You can be walking for ages just trying to get from one hall to another… and if you have a handheld radio in your pocket, you’ll start wondering how well anything is going to get through all that building.

Which brings us to…

TOTA — Toilets on the Air

TOTA is a small (and slightly ridiculous) activity that’s been running at 39C3 for a few years now. The idea is simple: it’s a gentle “contest” / training exercise to help new radio amateurs (and anyone curious) learn basic operating. https://totawatch.de/

And don’t worry, you’re not asked to make contacts from inside the toilet itself. The rules are pretty clear: stand a few metres from the door, don’t block anyone, and always respect privacy.

It’s meant to be good fun, not weird.

Modes

  • FM: 430.200 MHz
  • SSTV: 430.200 MHz
  • CW: 432.032 MHz
  • DMR: Brandmeister TG26223

Activators, Hunters, and T2T

Like the other “on the air” things, you’ve got:

  • Activator — the person at the reference (in this case, a toilet location) who calls CQ.
  • Hunter / Chaser — the person answering.

And then there’s Toilet-to-Toilet (T2T), when two activators manage to work on each other while both are at their own reference locations. Ridiculous, maybe.

My bit of TOTA (DL/EI7IRB)

I was busy giving three workshops during the first few days of the congress, so I only got in on the action on the last day.

I took on the role of a hunter, answering plenty of calls as I wandered around the conference with my Quansheng.

But only making voice contacts… where’s the fun in that?

Of course, there was SSTV.

So there I was, operating as DL/EI7IRB, with a handheld radio and a smartphone held up to the speaker, trying to decode images from the tones. It’s a very “CCC” way of doing it with minimal setup, lots of messing, and it somehow kind of works.

There’s a Mastodon bot collecting the SSTV images people received during the event. If you want to go down the rabbit hole and see loads of them, here’s the link:

https://social.darc.de/@tota

Closing Thoughts

I was nowhere near the top of the leaderboard, but I had a great time. TOTA isn’t really about big numbers or fancy stations. It’s about getting people comfortable on the air, having a laugh, and learning a few things without anyone taking it too seriously. Maybe you will see TOTA at the next conference you go to. 

For more photos from 38c3 check out our gallery https://www.tog.ie/gallery/nggallery/album/39c3