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Chaos Communication Camp – Irish Embassy

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The Chaos Communication Camp is an international, five-day open-air event for hackers and associated life-forms. It provides a relaxed atmosphere for free exchange of technical, social, and political ideas. The Camp has everything you need: power, internet, food and fun. Bring your tent and participate!

13. – 17. August 2015, Ziegeleipark Mildenberg, Zehdenick, Germany, Earth, Milky Way

The Irish hacker & maker communities that are travelling to CCC Camp invites you all to join us in forming an “Irish Embassy” This will be our village presence at the camp. We’ll be show casing any participant projects and coming up with new collaborative initiatives as the camp progresses. Become one of the Irish inhabitants or at least drop by and say Conas ata tú? We look forward to seeing all our friends and making new ones.

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Playing with the IMAX charger

chargerGot an IMAX B6 mini charger to play with. Pics here. This charger will charge and discharge lots of different battery chemistries. We recently acquired some 6-volt lead acid sealed lead acid batteries….believed to be from a UPS.

Two of them powered our buzzer game during the recent Dublin Maker. We’re using the discharge function to test their capacity. It will be interesting to see what capacity they have left.

Drop in if you’d like to try the charger or some other electronics.

 

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Vintage Electronics 2

bikeFollowing the build of our 1978 Metal Detector, next up in our Vintage Electronics series will be a Digital Bicycle Speedometer.  In the March 1977 issue of Popular Electronics, they published an article for a digital speedometer complete with red LED displays. This will be a build from the original magazine which we have in TOG.

 
You can get an LCD digital bike speedometer nowadays for as little as 5 euro. These multi function devices can do much more than speed. Back in 1977 however, this thing must have been space age…..  red LED displays and all!

We think it will look suitably retro on a modern carbon fibre road bike 🙂 We will be building the speedometer over the next few weeks. Come in and join in the build, or keep in touch with the build online.

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Dublin Maker Wind-down BBQ & en-Pizza-ing

Dublin Maker logo Can’t you feel the excitement in the air?! Dublin Maker is on this Saturday! From bitter experience we know that all the Makers will be at Panic Stations this entire week. And as we here at TOG are a caring bunch, we’ll be holding our traditional post-Dublin-Maker BBQ (now with added pizza!) on Sunday, 26th July, from 2pm-5pm.

It will be a chance for the Makers to unwind in an understanding and supportive environment. But it’s not just an event for official Dublin Makers! Now is a great opportunity to finally take a look around TOG, or to get to know our members better. It’s a chance for anyone, and everyone, to chill out with some interesting people, who do interesting things, while filling their bellies. So come one, come all, satisfy your curiosity, and your appetites!

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July Open Social

party2It’s the middle of the month, it’s Saturday and its 7PM. That can only mean one thing. It’s TOG Open Social again. This Open Social will see us just one week away from Dublin Maker. You’ll get to see a sneak preview of some of the things that we’ll be bringing to our stand.

Apart from that, it will be the usual relaxed hang out. It’s a great way to see the space and to meet other members & visitors. If you’ve never been to the social, you’ll find it a great alternative Saturday evening in town.

 

Hopefully there’ll be pizza, music and much more. The space stays open until the last member is left……usually the small hours of Sunday morning. The open social is free to attend for members and visitors alike. Our doors will be open from 7pm.

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It’s Alive!

scopeMore progress with our vintage metal detector today. Fired up the oscillator section of the PCB and its working away at 126kHz…. very close to design frequency.

 

We’re going to continue to work on it, with the intention of having it ready for Dublin Maker in less than 2 weeks time. Pics of the ongoing build here.