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!
Wiki & Classes
First, Beau has been working to clean up the wiki. Check it out! Much thanks to Beau, great work.
Second, there is now a classes topic in the wiki with a list of some topics to get started. It's been a long time coming, but it has finally arrived. You can see the wiki page here.
Art Everywhere submission
Art Everywhere is a yearly event in it's second year where artwork is made and placed into empty storefronts on Granby Street. Some of the lab members have come up with some ideas for Art Everywhere, so we are going to submit them and participate this year. It should be rewarding!
For more information on Art Everywhere, see arteverywhere.net.
AMX Automation System + LED lighting + IRC
The IRC bot that is running on the AMX controller can now pass commands from the IRC chat room (#hackerspace on irc.757.org) through to the LED lighting in the lab. The LED lights run on the DMX-512 protocol. The command to set the colors is "amxled #rrggbb" where rrggbb are hex values (0 to F). "amdled #FF0000" makes it red, "amxled#00FF00" makes it green, etc. This is identical to HTML color codes. The AMX DMX-512 controller fades in the new color over 1 second. Later I might spruce it up more with allow adjustment of the fade variable, but for now, it's rocking (as long as the bot is in IRC.) I plan to add speech synthesis to the AMX next. Enjoy!
Logo Contest
The Lab has entered it's second year as of January 1st and while we've got all the trappings of a good hackerspace we're still missing one key component: a logo! We've had a few internal goes of hacking around with concepts but never set down and picked a deadline to vote on the options members have come up with. So we're going to throw a logo competition and the prize, of course, is that we get a free logo and thank you very much for it. The contest is open to members and non-members alike. The "rules" are as follows:
Submission Format:
- A vector format (SVG, AI, etc) *
- Optionally: An example of the logo in use (t-shirt mockup, desktop,
web page, etc)
*: If you don't have a tool that can produce a vector format send in a
high-res lossless format but keep in mind that it will likely need to
be converted to a vector format at some point so keep the "grungy"
photoshop filters to a minimum.
How to Submit: Email submissions to 757Labs@gmail.com.
Deadline: March 15th (the Ides!)
We know we've got some creative members and lurkers so we're looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with.
Location
Google Calendar
@757Labs
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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