Author: tdr

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Inspirefest 2015 – Family Fringe

Inspirefest is a two day technology conference taking place on 18th-19th of June in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. The conference has a strong focus on STEM and diversity. To go along with the conference, there is a host of fringe events taking place in Merrion Square. We are proud to be taking part in the Family Fringe event on 20th of June.

We have joined forces with Intel and Girls Hack Ireland to create Stop the Lights workshop. The workshop will give insights into the basics of using the Intel Galileo, an Arduino-compatible designed right here in Ireland. Participant’s will get their hands on LED’s, buttons and buzzers, to create a traffic light animation.

The workshop is open to all aged between 15 and 17 and is most suitable for participants who have some prior coding experience. Participants are not required to bring their own laptop or materials

  • Date: Saturday June 20th
  • Time: 10am
  • Location: Merrion Square, Dublin 2
  • Duration: 3 hours
  • Places available: 20.
  • Tickets: Free, but prebook.

Apart from our workshop we are also teaming up with Dublin Maker to give people a little taster session ahead of their July event. Dublin Maker is a family friendly showcase of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the maker movement. The taster session will also feature the Year of Light makers. 

We will be showing off projects created by our members. They will include the Egg Bot – draw your own images onto eggs, Skull Radio – listen to music without using your ears, Buzzer Game – classic game of keeping a steady hand and Constellation Quilt – stars, electronics both met on a quilt. 

The UN has declared 2015 the International Year of Light to highlight the central role of light has in the modern world from science and technology to nature and culture. The Year of Light makers will demonstrate how light is used in our everyday lives though lots of hands on experiments from making UV bracelets, lenses out of Jelly and LED badges. There will also be some optical illusions to show the different ways in which light works.

 

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Project: Skull Radio Box

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This blog post is written by our member Jeffrey Roe about his Skull Radio Box Project.

The Skull Radio Box came out of the frustration demonstrating the bone conduction kits at the Big Day Out. The kits are great for workshops but in a show and tell type of stand they just are not user friendly. They need an audio source hooked into them and just not appealing to members of the public to bite on a metal rod with lots of wires hanging out of it.

 

 

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I first found out about bone conduction from David McKeown at Artek Circle (Photographed right) and tried it out with a spoon in my mouth.  Months later, I then worked with Sinead Mc Donald to create the Guzman Box. Internally, it used a Kitronik amplifier kit to create the bone conduction effect. During its stay in the Lexicon Library for Soundings, the TBA820M IC burned out twice. The main cause was due to heat. The IC had no heatsync and would burn if left on for too long.  Jump forward a few months, I used bone conduction again during Spectral Forms a week long residence in the Science Gallery. We looked for a fun way to play back the audio of people’s brain waves, that we were capturing with an EEG unit. We again faced problems with the kits being too quiet for the loud gallery setting. Finally, we used them as a demo at the Big Day Out, people loved the demo but not the look of the device. All these led to creating a stand alone, demo dubbed the Skull Radio Box.

 

The Build

IMG_20150404_191128.jpgIMG-20150405-WA0008.jpegThe case was the first part of the project.  I started out with Maker case website to create the general box. I then moved into Inkscape to do all the other parts of the design. After a few prototypes in cardboard, I was ready to cut out the final box in  5mm plywood. As the project came out of the laser cutter it looked perfect but when putting together the box with the finger joints, it was clear it did not fit together. Two hours later, using a file,  sand paper and just a little hot glue, the box was all together.

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Dublin Maker – Open Call

Logo Dublin MakerDublin Maker is Ireland’s biggest maker community showcase event. It gives a real opportunity for makers to excite and enthuse the general public about
the great making communities and their projects. This year, Dublin Maker takes place on the physics lawn, Trinity College Dublin on July 25th. They welcome all sorts of submissions in all shapes and sizes. It is a free to attend, community driven event. Apply here to submit your project.

If you missed last year or just want to be reminder about how much fun it was, check out the video below

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LoveLockNoMore Calling Cards

CBv2DISW0AAyv-JOur Locking picking group are always busy saving the Ha’penny Bridge one lock at a time. By teaming up with DCC Beta, they are not only been helping to save the bridge but also to reduce the cost of removing the locks. One of the problems our LoveLockNoMore team face, is when people return to find their lock  gone. They are left in a state wondering will their love disappear just like their lock.

We have come with the solution of leaving a calling card any time we remove locks. We hope people will find our twitter account and get in touch if they would like their lock back.

As we are a maker space too, we decided to make the calling cards ourselves. After a quick prototype drawn in Inkscape, we went to our Lasersaur to make it. Some photos of the build.