The Dublin Hackerspace
More 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.
In
recent weeks, a few of our board game fan
a
tics have met on Friday evenings in Tog. We have played some games, we laughed & decided to utilize laser cutter to make extra sturdy Acrylic tokens for a game called Androind: Netrunner. A good bit of graphical artwork was already online (thx for a great design) and after some manipulation it was ready to be cut. Other designs had to be done from scratch. So far we have designed & prototype cut all the regular size tokens. There is a plan to cut large size Credits Sets as well.
Android: Netrunner is an asymmetrical Living Card Game for two players. Set in the cyberpunk future of Android and Infiltration, the game pits a megacorporation and its massive resources against the subversive talents of lone runners.
Corporations seek to score agendas by advancing them. Doing so takes time and credits. To buy the time and earn the credits they need, they must secure their servers and data forts with “ice”. These security programs come in different varieties, from simple barriers, to code gates and aggressive sentries. They serve as the corporation’s virtual eyes, ears, and machine guns on the sprawling information superhighways of the network.
In turn, run
ners need to spend their time and credits acquiring a sufficient wealth of resources, purchasing the necessary hardware, and developing suitably powerful ice-breaker programs to hack past corpo
rate security measures. Their jobs are always a little desperate, driven by tight timelines, and shrouded in mystery. When a runner jacks-in and starts a run at a corporate server, he risks having his best programs trashed or being caught by a trace program and left vulnerable to corporate countermeasures. It’s not uncommon for an unprepared runner to fail to bypass a nasty sentry and suffer massive brain damage as a result. Even if a runner gets through a data fort’s defenses, there’s no telling what it holds. Sometimes, the runner finds something of value. Sometimes, the best he can do is work to trash whatever the corporation was developing.
The first player to seven points wins the game, but likely not before he suffers some brain damage or bad publicity!
More about the game: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/android-netrunner-the-ca
rd-game/
Would you like to try to laser cut your own designs? Come along to our ongoing (every second Monday) CAD workshop in Tog. Looking forward to see you here – 6th of July 2015.
Dublin Maker is a one-day, hands-on, family-friendly, free, outdoor celebration of making on the Physics Lawn at Trinity College Dublin from 10am to 6pm on 25th of July. We are very proud to be a supporting group again this year . Dublin Maker takes the form of a ‘show and tell’ experience where makers demonstrate what they are making, and share what they are learning.
Makers range from tech enthusiasts to crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, artists, science clubs, students, authors, and commercial exhibitors. They are of all ages and backgrounds, coming from all over Ireland and beyond. Dublin Maker will feature over forty groups of makers from across the country. Check out the full list of makers.
Our Members will be showcasing some old and new projects;
Our pizza oven was built as a bit of a hack over Christmas and New Year. After 5 months of operation, a bit of maintenance and a few minor mods were in order. A better flue, some re-jigging of insulation and foil and some re-pointing of bricks were done.
On Saturday 20th June, we fired it up for our regular open social event. It all worked as good as usual and everyone got fed! We had plenty of first time visitors to TOG too, who got the grand tour of the space. They’ve been keeping in touch with us on meetup and twitter. Pics of the maintenance here.
Hey all, just a quick post to let you know about our regular Open Social tomorrow June 20th. The open social is a great way to see the space, hang out, and meet other members & visitors. If you’ve never been to the social, you’ll find it a great alternative Saturday evening in town. If you have some project or idea in mind, its a great opportunity to talk to other makers, hackers and do’ers. Or you can simply just hang out and chat 🙂
Hopefully, there’ll be all the usual madness of an open social. Weather permitting, there’ll be pizza. There may also be beer samples, courtesy of Capital Brewers at TOG. You might even get to pick some locks if our friendly lock pickers will show you some tricks. The space stays open until the last member is left…. usually the small hours of Sunday morning. The open social is free to attend. Our doors will be open from 7pm.
ETI Electronics, February 1978, IB Metal detector Mk2. This is the first in a series of ‘vintage’ electronics projects that we hope to build at TOG. We have the original magazine, so why not get building. There are some amazing projects in the electronics magazines from the 70’s and 80’s.
Update…. The build is in progress. Pics here.
We hope to be doing the PCB assembly for this project on 6th July, as this date is the 6th anniversary of TOG’s first electronics night. In the run up to 6th July, we’ll be preparing and gathering all the parts. As well as everything we need to do the electronics build, we have our workshop to do all the mechanical assembly and search head too.
We’re talking pure analog electronics here….. there won’t be an Arduino or line of code in sight 🙂 Although this project was first published in 1978, all of the components are still readily available. Come in if you’d like to see the build. Visitors are welcome and there’s no charge to attend. Even if you don’t know much about these kind of projects, you can still learn a lot by keeping in touch with the build. Should be great fun.