Radio 757 Goes Public From 757 Labs
Lab members and visitors know about the strange Linux computer that has been sitting in the cubicle upstairs for a while playing the loop of music. Well, as of a day ago people are listening! The project to do a local internet radio station that focused on local music has been cooking for a while, but I finally got the motivation to get things finished the other night. AltDaily put on an event at the Chrysler Museum and I heard audience members ask questions of local hip hop stars about where they can get their music played at. The panel consisted of Dj Cornbread, DJ Bee, Malice and Chad Hugo and was a nice fun event. It hit me during this as to how much of a good resource this will be to local musicians. So I finished up some needed things and it's live, and new submissions to the station seem to come in every few hours. Being genre neutral is going to be interesting!
If anyone at the lab is interested in helping run things, drop Ethan a line. The station is for local music (Hampton Roads out to Raleigh, and Washington DC (but focus on the 7 cities)) so the station won't be for geek/tech specific stuff or commercial music. There is still a bunch of work to be done on it, but it has the potential to make a HUGE positive impact on the lack of community that exists here in Hampton Roads.
Listen in (or upload your own music) at www.radio757.com.
Special thanks to Sean Bergeron and Kevin McKinley for help with the system setup, and people on IRC for some assistance with web scripting issues.
The lonely automation system now has a worldwide audience.
Kyle (and TJ)’s LED Cube Adventures
First it was a 4x4x4 LED cube, then the massive 8x8x8 LED cube. Witnessed by lab members and visitors was a number of nights spent soldering massive amounts of LEDs and hand building the circuit boards for these mesmerizing works of art. Congrats to Kyle and TJ for a job well done in building one of these!
Cisco lab has started
Just a heads up that BK has started to get a bit serious about doing some Cisco familiarization. If anyone is interested in Cisco labs or cert study, drop him a line. The lab has some Cisco toys for play as does BK, and some other lab members are network guys by day for very large enterprises in the area. Seems like a good match!
Saturday’s electronics class was great!
Sorry to those that missed it, but the electronics class on Saturday was informative! Kudos to Harold for putting on a great first class on electronics! No one was disappointed. For those that missed it, a video/audio recording was made of most of the presentation and is on disk viewable at the lab. We aren't planning to post it on the internet at large, it's for the benefit of those that attended, those that visit the lab, and those that are lab members.
Some photos from the event can be seen here. I'm sure others took more as well.
Dave Hernly working out a problem from the class.
Open hack night followup and Art|Everywhere
Open hack night on Friday was pretty dead in terms of visitors with the exception of 3 new people that stopped by for a bit. But while it was a quiet night in terms of visitors, it was an active night in terms of projects. Kyle recapped his Rampage World Tour monitor which went from non-working to looking great. The robot arm got some needed attention. Work has started on wiring it up properly. The gecko drives are being mounted with the bigger power supply and cooling. Mike's Silent Scope Hardware Error -11P failure has been corrected. We're working to engineer a repair kit for these machines and put it on the market. Don't think the lab is just about video games, it just happens that a few of them showed up as projects that need highly technical fixes. Others were working on other projects as well.
The lab has been selected as an entrant into Art|Everywhere. Very exciting! So work will begin soon on creating our masterpiece.
Open hack night, Friday March 11th @ 7pm – 11pm
Once again it's time for an open hack night! Come meet people in the community interested in technology. 7pm till 11pm at 757 Labs. See our website for directions, parking is in the rear.
Netgear JFS524 switch failure fix (no power)
A friend's church in Norfolk had a network switch failure after a power outage. Here is the quick fix to restore use to the Netgear JFS524 (24 port 10/100 unmanaged) network switches. Symptom was switch would not power on. Standard capacitor issue. There are two on the board, one was visibly swollen and bad. Values were 2200uF at 10 volts (failed cap) and 1000uf at 10 volts (good cap replaced anyway) I think. Check values before you order in case I'm wrong on the voltages, I didn't take notes and it might be 16 volt. As always observe the polarity of the replacement capacitors and referred replacement to someone who is familiar with electronics as it's on the board that has lethal voltages. Power supply board puts out around 3.3 volts at 4 amps or some such. Good luck.
Objective C / Cocoa Programming Group
We're excited to announce the reformation of the Objective C and Cocoa programming group that will be meeting here at the Lab. Their first meetup will be tomorrow, March 8th at 6:30. Come out and meet some local OS X and iOS developers.
Also be sure to come out Wednesday the 9th for the 757.rb meetup where the topic will be managing application assets with Paperclip, S3, and ImageMagick given by Mike Buckbee as well as a review of what's new in Rails 3.1 given by Ken Collins.
Basic Soldering Class Held on Saturday, March 5 2011
Our first basic soldering class presented this past Saturday was a success -- meaning no fires were started, everybody learned a lot, and no one got burnt...much. Harold did an excellent job of explaining the basics, plus he provided slides and videos illustrating many good and bad examples.
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- watching some bad examples
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- Harold provides soldering instructions & video commentary
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- Ethan fixes a fluorescent light – “it’s a cap!”
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- soldering tools
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- after the lecture, soldering practice
About a dozen attendees were present, with many more showing-up later in the day to participate, even though the actual presentation was over. Items that got "fixed" via soldering included a back-light for a Cruis'n Exotica arcade game and a set of Koss headphones that previously had wire damage due to a mischievous pussycat.
Events for Saturday, March 5, 2011
Here are two events scheduled to be held at the lab on Saturday, March 5, 2011:
2:00 PM EST - basic soldering class by Harold; bring eye protection and something to solder
in Harold's words:
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:30:14 -0500
Subject: [757labs] Class this SaturdayI finally decided to dive in and become the experimental pig for the first class! Well at least the first "hardware" related class.
This Saturday, at 2:00 PM, I plan on holding a Basic Soldering Class for anyone who wishes to show up at the Lab. With that said, if for some strange reason we are swamped, I must give preference for room to current Lab Members. That is only fair to them. I doubt we will run out of room, so please show up if you want!
The game plan is to have the herd assembled by 2 PM and the actual start time might be 15 or so minute later. The one thing that would be nice is to have a list of who all plans on showing up so I can have a roster to know when it is time to start. I won't wait all day and plan on letting 2:15 PM being the delayed start time.
For anyone who wishes to attend please bring the following if you have it:
1. Your soldering iron, station, whatever you currently use. PLEASE DO NOT RUN OUT AND BUY SOMETHING!!! Unless you really want to. There are the good bad and ugly types of irons to waste money on.
2. Hand Tools. Most soldering hand tools could be classified as side cutter diagonals or regular diagonals if you don't have those. A straight pick, tweezers, any heat shrinks etc.. Again, don't run out and buy stuff if you don't have it already.
3. Safety glasses. I am not going to demand that anyone wears a pair; however, if you do not wear any type of glasses normally ... I suggest getting a cheap pair. Remember, solder is molten metal. Your eyes do not like it. Burns to your skin are one thing ... burns to your eyes are something you more than likely wont recover from.
4. If you have any type of circuit kits or solder breadboards etc.. that you would like to work on, please bring them. If you don't have anything, please try to snag a cheap one from Radio Shack to play with. Also, if you have some old components like resistors etc.. drag them along so you can have something to solder on.
5. Solder. If you have your own type that you are used to working with bring it. If not, I should have plenty for everyone to play with.
6. Solder wick / Solder sucker. This is something that would be nice to have, but it is not required. We can pass around what we have.
7. If you have a board vise or any other sort of device that you use to hold circuit cards etc.. that would make life easier on you. If not, we will do it old school.
The objective to the course is not to turn everyone into a uber solder dude but to at least give you some insight and hands on experience to allow you to enhance your current skill set. Since I just decided to get stupid and give a class (oh joy!) I don't really have a course written up so please handle the lack of continuity and we will all get through it.
8:00 PM EST - game development meeting by Matt (cyberflux); bring your ideas
in Matt's words:
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:20:12 -0500
Subject: [757labs] Game Developers Team (March 5)I am looking to have a game.dev meeting this Saturday for those interested in creating games at the Lab. Those who are interested feel free to show up sometime around 8pm or so, but I should be there earlier. Currently I am loading services on an older dual Xeon 2 server that will host development environments for Net applications. There is currently no defined hardware for the group so there is flexibility in what platform to go with, however most have been looking at diving into the mobile device market. Any input prior to the gathering is welcomed.
Hope to see some people there! Cheers!
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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