Bring your broken tech and trinkets to get them fixed by the skilled volunteers at TOG Hackerspace – with a bit of help from our friends at Dublin Maker!
On Sunday, 18 January 2026, between 12 pm and 4 pm, TOG Hackerspace will host the first Repair Cafe of the new year in our own space. At this event, volunteers 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 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.
Over the last month in Tog Hackerspace, we’ve been in full festive production mode. Between design chats, test cuts, cutting sessions, and the inevitable packing table chaos, we’ve put together around 80 Christmas decorations and cards, and got them into the post as a small thank you to friends and supporters of the space.
A big thanks to Ambrose for this year’s design. It looks great, it cuts beautifully, and it gave us the perfect excuse to properly put our new laser cutter through its paces. Huge credit as well to Jeffrey for putting in serious hours on the cutting and keeping the run moving.
First big run on the new laser cutter
This was the first proper big production run on our new VEVOR 100W CO2 Laser Engraver, and it has worked brilliantly. Clean cuts, consistent results, and a far smoother process than you might expect for a first large batch. For a community workshop tool, reliability matters, and this one has already earned its keep.
Upcycled acrylic, from old shelves to Christmas decorations
One of our favourite parts of this year’s batch is the material story. The acrylic we used is upcycled. It came from a donation of bookshelves that had lived in the space for years. They did their job, but we don’t have a use for them anymore, so instead of sending the material off to waste, we turned it into something small, useful, and festive.
We also took a hint from the internet along the way. After listening to feedback, we’ve been filling up the sheets of material with more little extras to reduce waste. Of course, it’s ducks 🦆
A proper team effort
This run was a whole team effort across the month. From early design chats, to setup and test cuts, to sorting, packing, and getting everything ready for the post, loads of people chipped in. If you helped at any point, thank you. These batches only happen because the community shows up.
We have a shiny new addition to our amateur radio setup at Tog Hackerspace.
A huge thanks to Niall Donohue EI6HIB, from our friends in South Dublin Radio Club, for the generous donation of a cobweb antenna. In true Tog fashion, it has already been renamed the “TogWeb”.
Over the next few weeks we will be installing the TogWeb at the space and getting it tuned up for our HF station. The cobweb design gives us multi-band HF coverage in a compact footprint, which suits our city location nicely.
Once it is up in the air, it will:
Improve our HF receive and transmit performance
Give us more reliable contacts across Europe and beyond
Make it easier to demo HF to visitors during open nights and events
If you are interested in amateur radio, HF operation, or you are curious what all the wires and boxes are about, drop by the space on one of our open evenings. We are always happy to show people the station and talk radio.
We hope to log many more QSOs under our club callsign EI0TOG using the TogWeb. With a bit of luck, you might even end up in the log yourself.
Dublin Maker is hosting a festive gift exchange for makers of all kinds! Building on the success of the 2023 Maker Secret Santa, we are bringing it back for 2025!
We loved taking part in the last Secret Santa. You can read about it here.
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.
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.
