E-Bike Battery Surgery

battery deadOne of our long term visitors is an e-biker. One of his batteries was on the blink. There was no output on the normal output connectors, but there appeared to be an output via the charge port. We suspected that the balance circuit was shot, but when we opened the battery case, it looked like one of the cells was physically damaged. Lots of pics here.

We ordered a replacement cell. When we removed the bad cell, we noticed some others damaged. It looks like we need 4 replacement cells in all. We plan to cannibalise these from an old spare battery. We tested the remaining cells and they seem able to take a charge and deliver reasonable current. A 2 Ohm power resistor came in handy. Check back with us to see how the rest of the repair went.

TOG Brewday (Saturday 26th March 10.00am)

TOG members and Capital Brewers will brew in the new TOG HQ this coming Saturday. Hearty brews are on the menu, in both brewing with guidance and instructions from the experts, and tasting craft beer made earlier!

A very rough time-line of a brew day is as follows:

  • 10am – 12pm: Heating water, water treatment and mashing grain
  • 12pm – 2pm: Boiling & beer tasting from previous brews and visitors beers
  • 2pm – 4pm: Cooling and clean up

Every brew day is slightly different with a mix of brewers, recipes and techniques. This weekend Fergal will be brewing a session IPA, similar to the “Via Maris” beer from Galway bay brewery.

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Brewing equipment in TOG

Over the past few months we have been building up the core set of brewing equipment in TOG to reach our goal of getting a full set of brewing equipment in TOG. This would allow TOG members to brew themselves at the space and make your own beer, cider or wine whenever you like! All you need are the ingredients. This event that usually happens every second month so if you can’t make this brew day there will always be another opportunity.

Its always a fun and engaging day, the cost is free (donations are welcome) so come along, ask questions and even help with the brewing!

Capital brewers discussion is here, and pictures of our previous brew days can be found here.

Video from one of the brewdays last year in the old TOG space:

Edit, here are a few photos from the day:

Visitor Register

We have now moved into a new home and with this we have had to change our insurance to cover everyone that enters the space, we need all non members to register at the door. Thanks for helping up.

Togvisitor

Social Meetup Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who showed up to our meetup last night. We had a great mix of members and visitors…… great to see everybody. Things are moving along with our new space. We ordered our members individual keys this week. We have a number of other administrative tasks on the go which are progressing well. The builders are making great progress in the space too. Our neighbour upstairs is getting ready to move in.

We might do another social next week, so keep in touch with us here and on our other channels….

http://www.meetup.com/Tog-Dublin-Hackerspace/

https://twitter.com/TOG_Dublin

https://www.facebook.com/togdublin

https://lists.tog.ie/mailman/listinfo/tog

The Sofa and the Sledgehammer

sofaWhen we did the big move from Chancery Lane, it was a good chance to do a bit of a clear out. Certain things got earmarked for the skip. There was a question mark over Tog’s old sofa. It was a faithful old thing. So what if it was a bit rickety, with a few screws here, and a bit of board there to keep it together.  Many a weary traveller was glad of it when they came to the space. So should we take it with us to TOG 3.0 or not?

This indecision was not helped by the fact that we were donated a swanky black leather sofa recently. Anyway the moving truck came and went, and the sofa was still there so it looks like the decision had been made. Into the skip with it! Now a sofa is a big old thing and would take up a lot of room in the skip. Enter sledgehammer. One of our members was a feeling a bit stressed lately, and he reckoned that a bit of sledgehammer therapy would do him good. Suffice to say it was Member 1, Sofa 0. It wasn’t pretty. You can see here.

The Sorting

sortingWhen you move house, you get to move all of your stuff too. TOG is no different. You find things that you had long forgotten about. There’s been some pleasant surprises already. Like finding a tenner in an old pair of jeans that have been through the wash.

We moved all of our stuff en-masse to our new space at 22 Blackpitts. We just dropped the stuff anywhere. Now the fun starts. We have to sort through it all, and arrange it into some kind of order. No doubt we’ll do a bit of pruning and tidying as we go. We’re closed while we sort through everything and do some tidying, but we’ll be reopening again very soon. Keep in touch with us to see what we find.