Two Weekends Ago…
So this is a late update. Things have been hectic at the lab, with lots of projects under way. Contests, Art|Exhibits, a few new members, visitors, meetings, and more.
Kyle and TJ were building a CNC router. I don't think it's working yet, but looks very CNC-routerish:
RedBull Creation Contest
RedBull visited the lab this week and dropped off some information and an invitation to join in on their hackerspace challenge. A few lab members are already thinking up great projects as an entry. If you are interested in participating contact Dave E. or Kyle K. The deadline is the 24th of April, and then the next round takes place in New York City. Note - it's best to keep communications on the members only mailing list when it comes to planning and development. We love our neighbors in Richmond and DC but in the spirit of competition..
Open Lab Tonight, Friday, 7pm till 11pm
There will be people around the hackerspace working on projects this evening from 7pm till 11pm or later. Open to the public so feel free to drop in!
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.
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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