This week we’re sending a team from TOG Hackerspace to Cuenca, Spain, for the VULCA Seminar, running from 9 to 13 November. It’s the first time the seminar has been held in Spain, and this year we’ll be getting together with makers from across Europe at the Museo de las Ciencias de Castilla-La Mancha, with the support of FabLab Cuenca. There’ll be workshops, time to work on joint projects, and a public Repair Café to round off the week.
How TOG got involved
We applied to join VULCA in December 2025 and became a makerspace member in January. We already knew some of the people in the network from visiting their spaces and running workshops together. Joining gave us a way to build on those friendships and open up more opportunities for TOG members to visit other spaces, share what we do in Dublin and bring a few ideas home to Kylemore Road.
What a maker exchange looks like
We’ve been sending TOG members on maker mobility trips. In practice, that can mean spending a few days in another makerspace, running a workshop with the local team and seeing how they do things. In Zagreb, Jeffrey ran an Arduino Cloud workshop at Radiona on a trip made possible through VULCA. This May, an invitation from FabLab Chemnitz led to a workshop where people built their own polarised-light viewers, followed by visits to makerspaces in Dresden. One of the ideas Jeffrey brought back was how public libraries can give people access to tools and space for hands-on learning.
Cuenca is a familiar name for us through repair, too. FabLab Cuenca was one of the partners in the WeRepair project that brought Jeffrey to Buinho in Portugal in 2022, where the residency finished with the first Repair Café in the village of Messejana. We’re looking forward to seeing how the Cuenca team runs theirs.
Our own Jeffrey Roe has two sessions on the programme. One looks at how makerspaces can use mesh networks for sensors, community messaging and backup communications. The other, Designing Workshops People Can Actually Finish, is about the practical side of running a workshop, from making do when there aren’t enough tools to giving people room to work at their own pace.
We’re looking forward to catching up with people we’ve worked with before, meeting a few more and seeing what we might make, fix or teach together next.
Let’s be honest, in these days of fractured social media, it’s hard to beat email. So as well as posting to socials, we’ll be adding a craft mailing list for all your crafting needs. Get reminders about craft night and hear about upcoming classes or workshops with a crafting angle.
If you’d don’t have a google account, you can ask to join the list sending an email to craft+subscribe(at)lists.tog.ie ( with an @). You’ll get an email asking you to confirm your subscription request but you do not need a google account if you reply to the email instead of clicking the button.
You’ll need to wait for a moderator to approve your request (might a day or two depending).
There’s still the broadcasts list for general Tog topics and you can also email to subscribe with the same format broadcasts+subscribe (at) lists.tog.ie (for those without google accounts) and then replying to the email.
Join us at TOG Hackerspace for a weekend of amateur radio, hands-on workshops, old technology and a bit of messing.
On Saturday, we’ll be building satellite ground stations, trying packet radio, making callsign patches and putting soldering skills to the test. There will be live demonstrations and afternoon talks, followed by our October Open Social and pizza night.
Sunday starts with radio in the park, before we return to TOG for an afternoon of vintage radios, retro computers, consoles and restoration projects.
Radio amateurs, shortwave listeners, makers and curious newcomers are all welcome. You don’t need a radio licence to attend.
Book your place
There are three separate Eventbrite listings, so you can book the parts of the weekend you’d like to attend:
From 12:00 | Live radio demos and callsign patches
Drop in from noon to explore the equipment, meet the operators and try some making.
Pump-up mast with Ben Field, EI9IUB
Ben will demonstrate his trailer-mounted mast, built around an ex-MOD Sankey trailer and a Clark SCAM 12 mast. The setup normally carries a hexbeam antenna and rotator, with a dipole for the lower bands.
Come and see how it works and chat about setting up a portable radio station.
Packet radio with Victor, EI5IYB
Earlier this year, TOG joined the packet radio network. Vic will give practical demonstrations of connecting to and using it, and introduce the applications built on top of the network.
Discover how computers communicate over radio, with uses including messaging, group chat and news and weather services. Thanks to the Online Amateur Radio Community (OARC) for supporting this part of the programme.
Make your own callsign patch with Tree
Tree will be on hand throughout the day to demonstrate TOG’s new industrial embroidery machine and help visitors make their own callsign patches.
Learn how the machine works and see your callsign turned into a patch. Thanks to the Irish Radio Transmitters Society for part-funding the consumables through its Promoting Amateur Radio Fund. Donations towards material costs are welcome.
13:00 and 14:00 | Advanced soldering workshops
Already know how to solder and want a new challenge? We have a range of kits for you to try, with instructors on hand to help you get started and work through the tricky bits.
These informal workshops start at 13:00 and 14:00. Kits cost €10–€20, depending on which you choose, and soldering irons are provided.
Afternoon | Radio talks
Three talks will bring us together for a closer look at different sides of radio in collaboration with Engineers Ireland Electronic and Computing Division . The programme includes
15:00 | Radio skills, skills for life – Vic, EI5IYB
Amateur Radio is a technical hobby but not only. It is a hobby of many hobbies, from mechanical engineering and communication skills to project management. In this talk, Vic will explore the skills that are gained in the ham radio hobby and how they transfer into your personal and professional life.
16:00 | Radiosondes: Radio and Weather Balloons – Met Éireann
An introduction to radiosondes, the instruments carried by weather balloons, and how radio is used to send atmospheric measurements back to the ground.
17:00 | Making Room for the Whimsical in Amateur Radio – Jeffrey Roe, EI7IRB
From Toilets on the Air to sending cat pictures with EI0MEOW, amateur radio has plenty of room for a bit of messing. Jeffrey explores playful projects, lightbulb antennas and Halloween Morse events, asking how we can encourage unusual ideas in our clubs.
A talk about curiosity, experimentation and enjoying radio simply because it makes us smile.
Stay around after the talks for TOG’s October Open Social. We’ll fire up the pizza oven, meet members and visitors, show off projects and keep the radio, electronics and making chats going into the evening.
Come and see a portable amateur radio station in action. We’ll get on the air, including calling into the South Dublin Radio Club Sunday net and listening to and checking in after the IRTS Sunday News on 2 metres.
It’s a chance to see how a station can be taken out into a park and put on the air, or to join other operators for a morning of portable radio.
14:00–18:00 | Retro Radio & Computing Day
Sunday afternoon is for old radios, glowing screens and technology that still has plenty of stories to tell.
Our Retro Day returns with a special focus on vintage radio and communications equipment, alongside retro computers, consoles, games, test equipment and unusual electronics.
Members, radio clubs, collectors and visitors are invited to bring equipment to demonstrate and restoration projects to talk about. Working machines and projects still in progress are both welcome.
Have something to show? Email info@tog.ie with what you’d like to bring, how much table space you need and any power or display requirements.
Come along to exhibit, try some old technology or simply have a look and a chat. Please ask the owner before operating any equipment.
All activities take place at TOG Hackerspace, Unit 1B Motor City, Kylemore Road, Dublin 12, D12 CF6V, apart from Sunday morning’s POTA session at Lansdowne Valley Park.
TOG is a short walk from the Kylemore stop on the Luas Red Line. See our location page for directions. For access questions or other event enquiries, email info@tog.ie.
Radio Day and Retro Day have free entry. Advanced soldering kits cost €10–€20, and donations towards callsign patch materials are welcome. Check the separate satellite workshop listing for its ticket details.
We’re delighted to congratulate TOG member Jeffrey Roe, who has co-authored a chapter with Jack R. Lehane in Care, Health and Housing: Crisis, Experiences and Answers.
Edited by Lidia Katia C. Manzo and published by Policy Press on 28 September 2026, the book explores the connections between housing conditions, health and care. TOG’s citizen science workshops are part of that story.
Jeffrey and Jack’s contribution is Chapter 8, “Grassroots citizen science and indoor air quality networks: tools for understanding inadequate social housing conditions.” It looks at how affordable sensors and community involvement can help people understand conditions in their homes and gather evidence to support calls for improvements.
For Jeffrey, it all started with a citizen science workshop. Sharing the practical work we were doing led to conversations about housing and health, an invitation to contribute, and eventually this collaboration.
If you have taken part in one of our air quality workshops, some of the chapter will feel familiar. It describes people coming together to assemble their own sensors, learn how they work and share environmental data. There are also photographs from TOG workshops, showing participants building enclosures and putting their devices together.
The chapter connects that hands-on learning with a wider question: how can communities use the knowledge and tools they build together to improve the places where they live?
It’s lovely to see work that starts around our workshop tables become part of a book. Congratulations to Jeffrey and Jack, thank you to Lidia for bringing the publication together, and thanks to all the volunteers and participants who make these workshops possible.
If you’ve been in the space recently, you might have see our newest toy tool, a 12 colour, industrial, embroidery machine! Many of our members are very excited about it, so we started showing members how to use it and will be opening it up to a wider audience in the coming weeks with workshops on how to design for embroidery machines.
The machine is a secondhand ZSK Sprint 5, made in Germany in 2012. It’s passed through a few hands before coming to us, but it’s in great condition, and we’re going to get many years of use out of it yet! It’s able to embroider areas up to 30 by 30 cm and can automatically change colours and cut the threads. We also have a cap attachment for it, but let’s start with flatter surfaces first.
As it’s a 90 kg beast, one of our members built a table to handle the weight. We’ve put the machine in the small room with the laser cutter as it’s quite noisy, but it tends to move a lot, so we couldn’t put it upstairs by the 3D printers or they’d be very sad.
Of course, as a hackerspace, we’re not out buying the manufacturer’s closed software but we are delighted to be able to use a variety of open source software with it. The machine takes .dst files, which are an industry standard supported by many open source tools. The main workhorse software is Inkscape with the plugin Ink/Stitch. It has a bit of a learning curve, but it’s extremely flexible. There’s also the option to use PEmbroider with Processing, and we can’t forget TurtleStitch for those interested in machine embroidery as an educational tool as well as for art. Expect some design workshops to pop up over the coming months!
If you simply want to gaze at its majesty, drop in on any of our open evenings. On craft night, you’re most likely to find the machine embroidery nerds, so pack a craft project and stick around after getting to know our newest toy and its biggest fans.
Read all about our member Jeffrey‘s trip to The Circular Square.
On Saturday 5 September I put my bicycle on an Irish Rail train in Dublin and headed south to Clonmel. With the bike safely in its rack and the panniers packed, it was a pleasantly straightforward start to a three-day trip running through to Monday 7 September.
The main reason for travelling was a weekend of repair and Linux workshops at The Circular Square. Around that, I had plans for some cycling, portable amateur radio and a little monument photography. It sounds like several different weekends packed into one, but they fitted together rather well.
