Squishy Circuits Workshop

Tog will be hosting a Squishy Circuits workshop on Saturday 2nd of July, taught by Tríona O’Connell.

Squishy circuits are a great way to demonstrate electrical circuits to kids (and adults!).  It consists of a conductive dough and an insulating dough that are used in the building of circuits, along with batteries and more usual electrical components like motors and LEDs.

During the workshop, we will make some batches of both types of dough, and afterwards we’ll see some useful demos you can use to teach with it, and also have some hands-on fun building circuits.

Making the dough will involve lots of flour, so don’t wear your favourite black outfit, but apart from that there shouldn’t be too much of a mess.  There’ll be demonstrations of how you can use the dough to investigate resistance in a circuit.

And the fun part, building sculptures that incorporate electrics, or building giant squishy circuit boards.  You can bring your imagination and build whatever you fancy.  Tríona will be on hand to offer help or suggestions as needed.

Snail with LEDs made of conductive dough

This workshop is free to attend although registration is required, as space is limited. It will last about 2 hours, starting at 2:00pm. You can use the form below to register.

— The workshop is full! You can still sign up to be added to the waiting list, we’ll notify you if a space frees up (this also lets us know if there is interest in organising another similar event) —

What to bring? Bring a 9V battery. Optionally, if you’re already familiar with Arduinos you can bring your own (this is optional and there’ll be plenty to do without one!).

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2011-05-05 Electronics Bootcamp

We’re running our first electronics bootcamp. This event will take place over
5 weeks on Thursday evenings at TOG, from 19:00 to 21:30. First session
on Thursday 5th May.

This is a practical / hands-on introduction to electronics. Its suitable for
beginners, as no previous knowledge is required. If you’re curious about
electronics and don’t know where to start…. this is for you. No
soldering required, as we do everything on prototyping breadboards.
We’ll be building and testing circuits right from the first night. We’ll
be covering DC, AC, analog and digital electronics.

Over the 5 weeks, you’ll have a chance to play with multimeters,
oscilloscopes, signal generators and other electronic test equipment.
There’ll be lots of circuits to build and test along the way.

Cost is 50 euro for non-members. That’s just 10 euro per night. We have
a special rate of 40 euro for the unwaged.

If you’re interested, you can sign up below and you can pay on the first
night. There are 6 places available.

Course is now full, we will run it again in the future.

Dexy Documentation Hack Day

Tog will be hosting a Dexy Documentation Hack Day, led by the Dexy creator Ana Nelson. If you are interested in learning Dexy, while also contributing to an open source project, and having a fun day out with fellow geeks, then here is your chance!

The workshop will be held on Saturday, 26 March 2011 in Tog, from 10am till 5pm. This will be a hands-on hack day where we will be writing real documentation, so it’s a great chance to learn-by-doing. It’s absolutely free and will be lots of fun!

You don’t have to be an expert programmer, but you should be comfortable with the command line and have some programming experience. The signup form is over there: http://www.eventbrite.com/s/3wxR and also contains a bit more information. If you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments or get in touch with Ana.

Engineers Week 2011

We’re participating in Engineers Week again this year (14th-20th February) with our regular activities and some special events.

Monday, 14th of February, 19:00- 22:00 – Electronics and Micro controller Group Night – 555 Timer Intro
Tuesday, 15th of February, 19:30- 21:30 – Arduino 101 – Learn to Blink
Wednesday, 16th of February, 19:00- 22:00 – Computing/Networking/Programming Group Night – OS Install Demo
Thursday, 17th of February, 19:00- 22:00 – Geodesic domes and IPv6 – Open Social Night
Saturday, 19th February 2011, 10:30-14:00 – Soldering Workshop Sold Out
Sunday, 20th February 2011, 11:00-17:00 – LED Dot Matrix Display Workshop

The weekend of the 19th and 20th is also a Synchronous Hackathon weekend running each day from 11:00 to late. So we’ll be participating in the Global Hackerspace Challenge which will be announced within a week. Update: The challenge involves submiting an entry to the 555 Contest. We’re hoping for have a small 555 night on the Monday to introduce people to the wonders of 555 timer IC.

All the weekday events and hackathon are free, the workshops have a cost and the challenge might have a small materials cost/donation. All the events are targeted at adults and mature older teens.

Workshop mentioned in the Irish Times

It’s always nice to get retweeted on Twitter, we get a strange thrill from seeing the stats from the website, and we absolutely love chatting to people in IRC. But nothing really beats getting mentioned in the national press.

A couple of days ago we were mentioned in an article by John Holden, of the Irish Times, as part of his review of events on offer for Science Week. You can read it here. It was our Building It event that caught his attention. A day-long workshop taking you right through from designing, to building an electronic device. The workshop will run twice, Saturday 13th, and Sunday 21st. See the event listing for more details and to sign up! (Also, check out the other events being run as part of Science Week and Innovation Dublin.)