Author: tdr

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Tog Hackerspace at PyCon Ireland 2025

We’re delighted to share that Tog Hackerspace will have a community table at PyCon Ireland 2025, taking place in UCD O’Reilly Hall, Dublin, on November 15th–16th, 2025.

PyCon Ireland is sponsoring a number of Community Tables this year for local tech groups, and we’re chuffed to be one of them. You’ll find us alongside:

  1. Python Ireland
  2. Coding Grace / PyLadies Dublin / The Python Software Foundation
  3. Tog Hackerspace 🛠️
  4. The Celbridge team (Chris Gregan)

Drop by our table to:

  • Find out what actually happens in a hackerspace
  • Chat about electronics, hardware hacking, 3D printing, IoT, amateur radio, and Repair Cafés
  • Learn how to get involved with Tog, whether as a member or a casual visitor

Tog members on stage

As well as minding the table, some of our members will be speaking at the conference:

  • Jeffrey Roe – “Stopping Time with Python: Building an Interactive Art Installation”
  • Peter Nolan – “Flattening the Curve: How Ireland Modelled COVID”

Check out the full schedule and all the details on the PyCon Ireland 2025 website.

If you’re heading to PyCon, be sure to swing by the Tog table and say hello – we’d love to chat about your projects and how a hackerspace might fit into them. 🐍✨

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TOG on RTÉ Radio 1 from the Tullamore Repair Café

Delighted to share that our Tullamore Repair Café was featured on RTÉ Radio 1’s CountryWide. The 5-minute clip captures the buzz on the day with voices from across our fixer crew and visitors.
👉 Listen back on RTÉ Radio 1: “A visit to the repair café in Tullamore”

For context on the event, see our original post:
👉 Tullamore Repair Café – Event Details

And check out the photos from the day:
👉 Tullamore Repair Café – Gallery

Big thanks to everyone who came along and to our partners in Offaly for the support. Onwards with more repair!

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High-voltage Vector Display ⚡️🧪

At last night’s Electronics Night in Tog Hackerspace, one of our members brought in a brilliant build: an old oscilloscope CRT tube running at ~750 V (stepped up from 12 V) with a custom deflection circuit.
An ESP32 drives the X/Y plates with ~200 V deflection signals, running a tweaked open-source vector clock. They even used AI to analyse photos of the circuit and suggest fixes—super handy for fast iterations.

What’s next?

  • Build a wooden/perspex case
  • Add a weather display mode 🌦️
  • More vector art experiments

Huge thanks to everyone who dropped by to brainstorm and test. If you’ve a half-finished idea, odd component, or smoky breadboard—bring it along!

📍 Electronics Night: every second Monday, 7pm at Tog Hackerspace
📸 Photos in the comments.

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Build Your Own Air Quality Sensor – Science Week Workshop

Friday, November 14th, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Tog Hackerspace, Dublin 8
No experience needed — Ages 18+

Air pollution affects many people’s daily lives, not just those living near industrial centres. In Ireland, most official air quality monitoring is carried out using a limited number of government sensors spread across the country. As a result, we often rely on modelling to estimate current pollution levels. This can miss out on local or seasonal sources such as coal fires during winter or short-term event-based pollution.

In this hands-on Science Week workshop, we’ll explore how to measure local air pollution and take part in a global citizen science movement. You’ll build your own particulate matter (PM2.5) sensor system using a simple kit of off-the-shelf components. The device uses consumer-grade hardware to give a reasonable indication of local air quality — not as precise as professional lab equipment, but accurate enough to spot trends and patterns in your community.

The workshop introduces participants to IoT (Internet of Things) devices, data collection, and environmental monitoring. You’ll learn how to assemble the hardware, connect it to the network, and share your data online through the Sensor.Community platform — an open global network of more than 13,000 citizen-built sensors contributing over 10 million data entries worldwide.

By the end of the evening, you’ll have built your own working air quality sensor and joined a growing international community helping to better understand our environment through open data.

Come along, learn something new, and make a real contribution to citizen science this Science Week!

🎟 Tickets available via Eventbrite – €70 per person
This covers the cost of materials and includes a donation to Tog Hackerspace.

https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/build-your-own-air-quality-sensor-science-week-workshop-tickets-1811695402719?aff=oddtdtcreator

This is one of many events happening during Science Week.

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October Repair Cafe

Bring your broken tech and trinkets to get them fixed by the skilled volunteers at Tog Hackerspace!

On October 18, 2025 (International Day of Repair), between 2 and 6 pm, TOG Hackerspace will host a repair cafe!

At this event, the skilled volunteers at TOG will share their expertise and passion for repair, helping you fix your broken items and breathe new life into them. Whether it’s a malfunctioning gadget, a piece of clothing in need of mending, or a household item that’s seen better days, bring it along and let the TOG team work their magic.

What can you bring in?

  • Clothes and accessories
  • Toys
  • Small electrical appliances and electronics
  • Small furniture

…. And many other things!

Safety testing (PAT) for electrical devices will be available.

Continue reading “October Repair Cafe”