(Baltimore) Harford Hackerspace

Harford Hackerspace at Betascape 2010

Twerpling — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:10:14 +0000

Betascape was this previous weekend and Harford Hackerspace was on hand with robots, lightning bug jars, and general awesomeness. We setup early Saturday morning between Baltimore Node and the First Lego League representatives. The day was spent forging various cardboard blades with crayons and stickers with various children blacksmiths quietly honing their craft. All in all we gave away approximately 50 swords to young lads and lasses who, no doubt, brought these mighty cardboard weapons to bear against a variety of fiends.

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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CNC v1.5 revision update

solovus — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:41:34 +0000

We are currently in the process of revising our CNC design since the Y/Z axis was eating its rails over time due to slight alignment issues. We decided to upgrade the bearings in general to avoid the problem in the future. The x-axis seems to be working fine, so we are going to leave it alone for now. The revision includes CNC cut pieces instead of hand cut pieces (using table saws and drill presses). We also did a major upgrade to the bearings and went with ACME-type lead screws to minimize backlash and improve accuracy. We updated the stepper couplings to the lead screws to make future maintenance easier. The redesign is expected to be complete within the month.

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Oobleck Demo v2

solovus — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:56:51 +0000

We have decided to upgrade our Oobleck demonstration since it seems to be wildly popular. Our goals were to go bigger and reduce noise output. One 15″ subwoofer and donated amp later we were done. It is a much simpler, larger, and quieter design than our previous demo. Videos will be posted soon.

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LED Fireflies in a Jar (v1.0)

superfro — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:37:42 +0000

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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Sugru FTW!

bsom — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 01:18:19 +0000

Look what the postman brought us today! Not sure what we’re going to do with it yet, but it could have a cameo in an upcoming project… If you’re not familiar with Sugru, check it out here.

HaHa Weekly Meeting

bsom — Sun, 23 May 2010 00:26:08 +0000

Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto

solovus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:48:16 +0000

Robot Fest 2010 has come and gone. Some of the many interesting exhibits this year included the pneumatic rocket experience provided by the Baltimore Node, the many Lego Mindstorms projects, Maker Bot demonstrations, various art demonstrations, and a fashion show.

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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iRobot Roomba Winner!

Squintz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 03:56:51 +0000

Congratulations Eileen Barnett!

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.

RobotFest 2010 – April 24th

Squintz — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 19:53:44 +0000

Visit us at our RobotFest 2010 Table:

New! PicKit 2 Programmer Tutorial

Squintz — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:30:09 +0000

PicKit2 Debug Express

Paul King has created the first tutorial called “Using the PICkit2: As a Programmer” of his planned series of PICkit 2 tutorials. This one covers setting up the MPLAB software and PICkit 2 programmer to quickly compile and program the 44 Pin PICkit2 Demo Boards.

Subsequent tutorials will cover using the programmer hardware as a Debugger, Logic Analyzer, Logic Output Tool, and a UART Tool.

Be sure to read David Powell’s “Programming PIC Microcontrollers in C” as a precursor to Paul’s series.

Happy Hacking!