Category: News

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Heading to Belfast: Tog Visits Farset Labs and Reuse & Repair Week

We’re packing up and heading north on May 30th for the next part of our All Island Maker Mobility project.

This time, a big group from Tog will be travelling to Farset Labs in Belfast for a full day of making, sharing, and community connection. We’re really looking forward to the visit and to spending more time with our friends in Farset as this project gets underway.

Our hosts will be giving us a tour of the space, along with an overview of how they run Farset Labs and how their community works day to day. It will be a great chance to learn from each other, swap ideas, and see how another makerspace tackles the joys and challenges of running a shared creative space. We’ll also be sitting down together for a community dinner, which should be a lovely way to keep the conversations going.

To round out the visit, there’ll also be a Clay Printing Workshop, adding a hands-on creative element to the day. Between the tour, the chat, the workshop, and the food, it promises to be a packed and enjoyable visit.

To make the most of our trip to Belfast, we’ll also be taking part in Reuse & Repair Week. As part of that, some of us will be rolling up our sleeves and helping out at a Pop Up Repair Cafe in Belfast Grand Central Station. The event is a chance for people to bring along broken items and get help fixing them, while also meeting local repairers and learning a bit more about repair culture in action.

We’re really looking forward to meeting the Belfast repair community, lending a hand, and being part of such a positive public event. Repair Cafés are always a great way to connect with people, share practical skills, and keep useful items in use for longer, so it feels like a very natural fit for Tog.

If you’re curious about the Repair Café side of the trip, you can find out more about the Pop Up Repair Cafe Belfast Grand Central Station here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pop-up-repair-cafe-belfast-grand-central-station-tickets-1988476991209?aff=oddtdtcreator

You can also read more about Reuse & Repair Week here:
https://crni.ie/news/reuse-and-repair-week-saturday-30-may-to-saturday-6-june-2026/

This visit is part of our All Island Maker Mobility project, which is helping build stronger links between maker communities across the island through shared visits, workshops, and public activities.

This project is made possible with support from the Shared Island Civic Society Fund through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. We’re very grateful for that support, which is helping Tog Hackerspace and Farset Labs build stronger links through making, shared learning, repair, and community collaboration across the island.

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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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All Island Maker Mobility: Connecting Communities Through Making

We’ve some lovely news to share at Tog. We’ve been awarded funding under the Shared Island Civic Society Fund for a new cross-border project called All Island Maker Mobility, with the tagline Connecting Communities Through Making.

We’re really delighted to be teaming up with Farset Labs in Belfast for this project. Farset are a volunteer-run hackerspace and maker community, and like Tog, they are all about people coming together to learn, build, experiment, repair, and share skills. It feels like a very natural partnership, and we’re excited to see where it leads.

Over the next year, we’ll be working together on a mix of activities to bring our communities closer together. That includes site visits between Dublin and Belfast, a Maker-in-Residence exchange between both spaces, and the development of a shared STEM outreach resource that we can each bring to events and use in our own public activities. We’ll also be taking the project out into the world through events such as Dublin Maker, ShipItCon, and the Northern Ireland Developer Conference (NIDC), helping more people discover what makerspaces are all about and why they matter.

The first part of the project is happening on April 11th, when members of Farset Labs will come to visit Tog. They’ll be joining us for our Repair Café, where there’ll be plenty of fixing, tinkering, problem-solving, and tea. Afterwards, they’ll stay on for our monthly Open Social Night, which should make for a great evening of chat, ideas, and getting to know each other a bit better.

For us, this project is about much more than just a few visits. It’s about building lasting connections between communities North and South, sharing skills openly, and showing how making can bring people together. Makerspaces can be places of learning, creativity, repair, and belonging, and we’re really happy to have the chance to grow that through this project.

We’re looking forward to welcoming our friends from Belfast into the space and sharing more updates as the project develops.

This project is made possible with support from the Shared Island Civic Society Fund through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. We’re very grateful for that support, which is helping Tog Hackerspace and Farset Labs build stronger links through making, shared learning, and community collaboration across the island.

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TOG Hackerspace at Dublin Comic Con Spring 2026

We had a brilliant weekend at Dublin Comic Con Spring 2026, with TOG Hackerspace back on the floor meeting loads of curious visitors, makers, sci-fi fans, and people discovering us for the first time.

Our stand was packed with a mix of what makes TOG great: games, radio gear, 3D prints, and homemade sci-fi props. It gave us a great chance to show off the kinds of projects our members get up to and to chat with people about making, hacking, building, fixing, and learning new skills together.

One of the best parts of the weekend was getting to talk to everyone who stopped by the stand. Some people already knew TOG, while others were hearing about the space for the first time. We had loads of great conversations about electronics, creative projects, fabrication, radio, cosplay props, and all the different things that can happen when you get a community of curious people together in one space.

Events like Comic Con are always great fun for us. They are a chance to share a bit of the spirit of TOG out in the wild and hopefully inspire a few more people to come along to one of our open nights, workshops, or events.

Thanks to everyone who dropped by to say hello over the weekend. We had a great time, and we’re already looking forward to the next one.

You can see more photos from the weekend here:
https://www.tog.ie/gallery/nggallery/album/dublin-comic-con-spring-26

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DMR Demonstration Evening

If you’ve been DMR-curious for a while (or you’ve a radio sitting there with a half-finished codeplug), this is a great chance to see a full setup done properly, step-by-step.

On Tuesday, 24th March 2026, South Dublin Radio Club, in collaboration with TOG Hackerspace, will host a DMR Demonstration Evening at the club in Rathfarnham.

What’s happening on the night

Jeffrey Roe (EI7IRB) will give a practical demonstration covering:

  • Setting up a DMR hotspot
  • Creating and programming a codeplug
  • Tips and lessons learned during setup (the bits that aren’t obvious until you’ve tried it)

This session will suit:

  • Anyone new to DMR who wants the “what talks to what?” overview
  • Anyone with an existing setup who wants to tidy it up, improve it, or avoid common pitfalls

Want to contribute?

Members who’d like to give a short demo or presentation on other parts of DMR are very welcome to get involved — different radios, different workflows, different approaches all help.

Event details

  • Date: Tuesday, 24th March 2026
  • Free: No Booking Required,
  • Time: 19:30 – 21:30
  • Venue: South Dublin Radio Club, Ballyroan Community Centre, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14

We’re looking forward to a good evening of radio chat, practical demos, and plenty of Q&A. See you there!

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TOG Hackerspace at the Phoenix ARC “Coolmine” Radio Rally 2026

Last year we packed up a few projects, a pile of flyers, and the usual “sure we’ll only be there an hour” optimism… and had a brilliant day out at the Phoenix Amateur Radio Club annual rally in Coolmine.

Good news: it’s on again this year, and we’ll be back along representing TOG — EI0TOG — for a chat, a catch-up, and a bit of radio craic.

Radio rallies are for everyone

If you’ve never been to a radio rally, don’t let the name put you off. They’re not just for licensed amateurs or hardcore collectors — they’re for anyone who likes electronics, making, fixing, DIY, audio gear, test equipment, and learning how things work.

You’ll see traders with radios and antennas, boxes of components, the “maybe I’ll need that someday” adapters, and plenty of people happy to help you figure out what you’re looking at (or what you accidentally bought!).

The details

Date: Sunday 15th February 2026
Event: 2026 Phoenix Amateur Radio Club “Coolmine” Rally
Venue: Coolmine Community School, Dublin, D15 FW97
Doors open: 10:00

Say hello to TOG (EI0TOG)

Drop over and say hi at the TOG table. Whether you’re curious about getting started in radio, want to know what a hackerspace is like, or you’re deep into a project and looking for a nudge in the right direction — we’re always up for a chat.

And if you’re already on the air, give us a wave — it’s always great to meet radio friends in person as well as over the bands.

Photos from last year

Want a taste of what the Coolmine Rally is like? Here’s our gallery from last year’s visit — stalls, treasures, and the general rally buzz:

https://www.tog.ie/gallery/nggallery/all/phoenix-amateur-radio-club-annual-radio-rally-2025