Makita DC1411 Charger / Battery Recharge Problem + Fix
Heads up -- if you have a Makita DC1411 charger for Makita power tools, they might be prone to cold solder joints. Had two NiCad batteries that appeared to be dead. The charger would appear to charge them (LED goes red for a few hours, then switches to green). The batteries would not work.
Bought a generic NiMiHi replacement battery. It came charged, and worked until it was dead. But it wouldn't charge. The charger looked like it was doing it's duties. After some head scratching I took apart the DC1411 charger and noticed the board had a number of areas that looked like the soldering was touched up at the factory. In addition to this, the legs of a transistor (that is on a heatsink) had a broken solder joint. Re-flowed it and the charger is as good as new. Turns out the original batteries still charge! The heatsink apparently gets hot so the bad solder joint is probably due to thermal changes.
MADExpo and Art|Everywhere Closing Ceremonies (July 1st and 2nd)
This 4th of July weekend has started off with a few happenings. The Lab went to Hampton for the Mid-Atlantic Developers Expo (MADExpo) on Thursday and Friday to show off a few projects. Saturday was the closing of the Art|Everywhere event that has been running on Granby Street the last few months
Ethan at the 757Labs booth at MADExpo.
Ethan is discussing 757Labs to attendees at Mid-Atlantic Developers Expo in the Hampton Roads Convention Center. Slide-show of the Lab and past projects, LED Cube on display, development progress of the Laser Pong, and Space Balloon box. MADExpo was a great convention for a first run and we currently plan to return next year.
Mike and the Drum Circle at Art|Everywhere closing.
Mike runs the Drum Circle on display at the Art|Everywhere closing event off Granby Street in Downtown Norfolk. Kids were scrambling at the chance to bang on the drums and have a good time while enjoying the weather. Some buttons on the drums gave the player a toggling ability to change instruments and octaves, adding to the chaos and entertainment of those who stopped by.
Laser Pong on display at the Art|Everywhere closing.
The Laser Pong game was set up next to the TCC building and had a handful of the young and old stop by and play some Pong, 757Labs style. There are still bugs to be worked out, but it added to the quirkiness of the game and was entertaining to many. The hope is to re-platform the game to remove the Linux system reliance out, leaving only Arduinos. Expect an interesting twist to the game in the future!
Weekend Recap (June 24-26), MADexpo
Over the weekend there was a good amount of activity at the lab.
From what I remember:
Fri : Ken stopped by and demoed his bar code scanner, which is capable of scanning the Virginia drivers licenses. My social security number is embedded on the back of my license, who would have known.
Other: Vex continued work on his custom tube guitar amplifier. It's looking sweet.
Steve helped with the assembly of the base frame for the new CNC router. Yes, we've been down this road before. This is going to be the one though! Not too big, not too small Just right. And made of aluminum extrusions and such.
Some new donations and new faces around the lab! Thanks to Mark G we might be on our way to getting the middle projection screen in use. A project to motorize it is on the mind. Also Justin gave us use of his Roku box, which is going to be integrated with the AMX automation system. The open development platform of this device is interesting.
Monday brought forth another busy night. Between Android developers meeting, ROV interest (and talk of 3d printing propellers), laser scanning an object using the MakerBot laser scanning software, there was no time to slow down!
Thursday and Friday we will have a table at the MADexpo in Hampton.
Saturday we will be at Art|Everywhere with the Rock Band Drum Circle and Laser Pong projects.
CNC:
Vex's Guitar Amp Custom Speaker Cab:
Roku driving projector on middle screen (stability undetermined):
Note: Ethan did a bunch of research into some of the dead flat panel TVs at the lab and posted some stuff on the wiki. More information forthcoming, but problems have definitely been identified.
MakerFaire NC
Makerfaire NC was a blast! 757Labs manned a table near some other great groups including other hackerspaces, the wonderful Techshop RDU, Shopbot and others. In one year it's amazing how much the event has grown and how the attendance was solid ALL day. There never was a break. Our RockBand Drum Circle was on beta test display, as was Kyle's LED cube and the Hackerspaces in Space space balloon bits. All in all a great time. Thanks to Makerfaire NC for having us and Hines Design Labs for spreading the word to us! Thanks to all the lab members that helped out!
David, Jack and I (Ethan) also visited Techshop RDU on Friday evening. A 20,000 square foot space with every tool and resource you can think of! I knew of Techshop but had no idea how stacked it was with equipment and resources.
We met some Hampton Roads locals who had traveled down to Raleigh for the event. Do you think a mini Makerfaire would be possible here in Hampton Roads? Opposite time of the year from Raleigh and supportive of their event?
Open Hack Night with Chad (6.17.11)
Last Friday night there was a good showing of visitors to the Lab. One of the projects getting a lot of attention was Beau's Maker Bot "Thing-o-Matic." Others showed up to meet up with fellow members and have a good time talking around the meeting area.
Inverse Phase stops by during Open Hack Night with Chad. Good showing by members and visitors!
Inverse Phase (Brendan Becker) and company look over towards the Maker Bot as it creates a bottle opener. Intriguing discussions of creation possibilities, designing models, and future plans of the 3D printer continue.
Inverse Phase demonstrating Chiptunes Tracking to Dave.
Dave checks out the music tracking software Brendan is using in Ubuntu. A few demonstrations of white noise generation, Nintendo audio chip wave forms, and quick editing skills produces a recognizable tune in no time.
Weekend in Review
A few things from the weekend. With pictures, as promised!
Beau brought the MakerBot to life. It's a very impressive design. Calibration process is going on:
Christopher worked on building a custom amplifier and speaker cabinet. It will house the tube amplifier he already made. A mini stack design:
The microcontroller code finally works for the laser pong game for the upcoming Art|Everywhere closing night. Harold contributed hardware-wise, Ethan some hardware and software, and Matt software.
Other stuff:
David dabbled with JSON calls to XBMC running on an Apple TV that will be running a screen up near the front window of the lab. Dave worked on repair of a chicken toy for a friend. Mike was working on monitor stands for his LCDs. Just a few items that was going on.
CNC router table was disassembled. Ethan wants to re-do it in T-slot once some surplus T-slot can be sourced.
Open Hack Night this Friday (June 17th)
MakerFaire NC on Saturday (June 18th)
Non-Lab Meetup and Event Calendars
We've had a calendar of lab-related events and meetups running for ages now (it's right over there -->) but figured it would be a good idea to put together another calendar for local events not hosted at the lab. So we're sharing a second Google calendar with anything we can think of locally that might be of interest to our members and the local hacker and maker communities.
Thanks to HR Geeks for having a great list of local meetup groups to get us started. If you run a local event that's not listed here please contact us (757labs@gmail.com) and we'll get it added.
World IPv6 Day
Tomorrow, June 8th, 2011, is World IPv6 Day and we are on track to have the website live with a IPv6 address by that time. O'kay technically it has had one for months, but no AAAA record has been in place for it. Sadly we forgot to submit our participation by the cutoff date, so we will not be listed on the dashboard for the event, but even so we expect all services to be IPv6 accessible by 00:00 June 8th.
If you aren't one of the lucky few to have native IPv6 connectivity from your ISP, and haven't setup a tunnel with a broker yet, there is still time to do so with Hurricane Electric as their approval process is nearly instant. The lab's internal network gets it's address space from them, but the outward facing site gets it's address from SixXS. If you prefer not to setup a tunnel account with a broker you can use Teredo on Windows and Miredo on pretty much anything else. They give you less control, but are designed to 'just work'.
What ever option you choose, we encourage you to join in on the event in any way you can. IPv6 has been around a while, and it's not going away. The sooner you get acquainted with it the better prepared you'll be.
757Labs Android Users + Developers Group
We will have a first time meeting of an Androids Users + Developers Group on Monday, June 27th starting around 7pm. As a starter it will be an open discussion for introductions and individual interests in the platform. Some basics of the system will be covered and topics may include current marketplace applications, interface useability, present and future hardware releases, phone manufacturer complaints, carrier dependencies, and development approaches. See you there!
Lab Updates
It's been too long since the last lab update.
Projector bulb has been replaced. A "clone" carrier that supposedly houses the same brand bulb (Philips) as the original replacement Sanyo sold. Some people had suggested replacing the projector, the specs are actually pretty decent on the unit. 1024x768, LCD, 2500 lumens. It has ethernet, ethernet streaming of video to the projector, and ethernet control of functions.
Laser engraver stand is in place. Two others offered to help with the enclosure for the unit. Dave took the measurements to cut sheet metal for it.
Android software development continues to progress.
New creations are being built for the Art|Everywhere closing ceremonies event on Granby Street.
Outboard equipment for Radio757 is being wired up soon. Mics, mixer, preamps, phantom power units are all in place now.
Other things going on as always!
Location
@757Labs
- RT @kmcurry: Getting my first guided tour of a makerbot from @757labs #startnorfolk #maker http://t.co/XsHo6NTi
Links
User Groups
- 757 CCC Comic & Cartoon Creators
- 757 Objective C Group Objective C and Cocoa programming group.
- 757 Python Users Group
- 757.rb Ruby Users Group
- HR Geeks Hampton Roads Geek Community