The previously mentioned Baltimore Node was there demonstrating various projects such as air powered rockets and some sort of power tool drag racing. Set up across from us was The Digital Media Center from Johns Hopkins  demonstrating cloth circuitry and teaching others about cloth circuits. The National Electronics Museum was setup in the back with some kind of robot (which I did not see). Various other people included a company demonstrating a 3D picture taking technology, Bryan Dolge with a makerbot, as well of a bunch of gamemakers in the game making section.

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Me and my wife recently had our first child.  I’ve been trying to come up with some projects I can do for the kid.  Well, around this time of the year the fireflies go crazy around my house, so we came up with the idea to do led fireflies in a jar.  It should be something cool for him to stare at and is easy to build.

Schematics, C source code and hex file are available here on our wiki.  If you want to build one it should only take about an hour.

I’m planning on making a version 2 with some changes, stay tuned for that one.

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Make coverage and more pics here.

We’d like to thank everyone that stopped by our exhibit to view the Oobleck demonstration, PIC micro-controller LED arrays, the hand-powered Arduino random movie quote generator, build some cardboard robots, or just hang out and talk electronics. We had a great time and we hope to see everyone next year. Our next event will be at ArtScape in Baltimore. In the meantime, feel free to come by and do some hacking on one of our open hack nights.

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Eileen is the winner of Harford Hackerspace’s first ever raffle and she is the proud new owner of an iRobot Roomba. She also received Hacking Roomba book.

When we first contacted Eileen she thought we were pulling her leg. Once she overcame the initial shock and realized she had actually won, Eileen got even more excited.

We would like to send a special thanks to everyone who supported Harford Hackerspace by purchasing a raffle ticket and visiting us at RobotFest 2010 for the drawing.

Check it out Here!

We started our adventure of becoming a charitable organization in July 2009 with the help of Nick Farr from HacDC. Nick took time out of his busy schedule to visit our Hackerspace and go through the rough draft of our IRS Form 1023. Without him we would have made a few mistakes on our form. A very special thanks goes out to you Nick.

In October 2009 we put the stamp on our envelope and sent our application to the IRS hoping for the best. A lot of hard work went into preparing the application. It’s a 26 page application and several of the questions require written responses. To keep the application reviewer from guessing at what we do we included several project examples and  took photos of us working as a group.

On January 11th 2010 we got a request for more information. Apparently this is standard procedure for all applicants. The questions were fairly straight forward and we were able to call the IRS agent directly and ask her questions. After faxing her our answers the lady quickly reviewed them and told us over the phone that she was recommending us for our 501(c)(3) status.

Today, we finally received our approval letter complete with our 501(c)(3) exemption number. It has been a long time coming but I am sure all the hard work will pay off in the near future.