Vancouver Hack Space

A special thanks to Karl for teaching me many things last night, John for helping test my steppers, and everyone for just being so damn awesome.

What:
VHS will be opening its doors for another awesome SHHH. Please join us for a night of hacking and socializing. Because it’s the 20th SHHH ever, we’ve decided to rent out more space than ever. All the fun of a normal hacking night PLUS extra space PLUS no self-imposed bed time curfew. Bring a project you’re working on, or just come down and find out what Vancouver’s hackers, crafters, and makers are working on.

Lightning talks starting at 11pm.

When:
March 3rd from 7pm until the crack of late

Where:
45 W. Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC. See video on how to get there 

Who:
Everyone  is welcome, member, non-member, guests, geek, dork, freak, maker, hacker, ect…

The Vancouver Community Lab is having a party this Saturday, Jan 28th at 8pm.
Please feel free to come by and say hi.

Also, there are still a few spots left in the welding course on Sunday, Jan 29th from 1pm to 4pm.
Please sign up at the eventbrite site if interested.

The cost is $60 for non-members, and includes access to the metal shop on a ‘metal Wednesday’ evening of your choice.

2012 is already a great year with so many amazing projects at the Vancouver Hack Space!

Automated manufacturing is huge at the ‘space.  The Sherline mill is now being debugged & calibrated.  I can barely wait to learn how to use it!  Meanwhile Peter is building a Skycam style CNC machine for light painting, John is working hard on a quadrature encoded delta robot with machine vision, and I’m converting my Delta robot to use stepper motors instead of hobby servos.

Sherline mill - amateurs beware!

Makerbot MK6 Stepstruder

Do you like 3D printing?  So do we!  Derek was showing off his Prusa printed squirrel with 0.1mm layer height.  The layers are so small that it almost looks vacuum molded.  Colin is carefully hand-crafting a controller for his Mendel.  Watching him solder is like your moment of Zen.  So meticulous and peaceful.  On the other side of the table, JF was printing a sweet new keychain on the Makerbot, which also got a gojira sized spool for dispensing ABS.  Good thing, too – that machine is available to anyone with a model to print and is ridiculously popular.  Did you know we’ve got enough printers now that we could have a race?

Crafts and fashion galore!

So much material to make with... *wipes drool*

All Signs point to VHS

Intrigued?  Come for a visit on our Tuesday open nights.  Luke took the VHS el-wire sign out of storage and rigged it near the window as a friendly welcome sign for new visitors. Just follow the foot-tall purple letters to our door and ring the bell.  We’ll grill you like the french kuhniggits and then lower a key to you.  Concerned you’ll get lost on the way?  Give us a call (+1-778-785-5982) and one of the members will be happy to escort you safely to our door.

It’s time for Super Happy Hacker House No. 19! Please join us this Saturday for a night of hacking and socializing at VHS. Bring a project you’re working on, or just come down and find out what Vancouver’s hackers, crafters, and makers are working on. Bring beer, too, if that’s your thing.

This is a free and open event. Members and non-members alike are welcome to attend.

When: Saturday 7 January 2012, 7pm until late
Where: Vancouver Hack Space, 45 West Hastings St. — back alley entrance (map)

Here’s a time-lapse video from the last SHHH.

Biopoiesis (currently in progress) is a series of experiments exploring the relationships between structure, matter, and self-organization, with a goal toward the development of autonomous computation and control systems in a computational “primordial soup”. It is based on the work of cyberneticist Gordon Pask and his research into electrochemical control systems that had the ability to adaptively construct their own sensors. This series of DPrime projects demonstrates the computational possibilities of natural processes that might serve as an alternative to the more commonplace digital forms of computation.

http://dprime.org/projects/biopoiesis/

We’ll just be doing a short demo, answering questions and discussing strategies for possible future workshops. Hope to see you there!

Biopoiesis from DPrime Research on Vimeo.

Where: VHS
When: 7:30pm Dec 20th, 2011 Tuesday

Talker: Carlos
Bottom liner: Steven Smethurst

What: 
A quick introduction and tutorial to non-euclidean geometry and Riemannian manifold, as implemented with paper and tape, and then a bold adventure into the kind of mind-bending geometry where parallel lines can diverge, angles can sum to more than tau (2*pi), and circumferences can grow exponentially.

Where: VHS
When: 7:30-10:30 pm  13th Dec, 2011 Tuesday

Talk: Wolf Tivy
Bottom line: Steven Smethurst

Thursday, December 8th marks the first-ever lady’s build night at VHS. Come by, learn to solder, and make a super cool Fuzz Pedal that you can show off to your friends. The workshop’s for beginners, so if you’re new to soldering or don’t even know what a fuzzbox is, don’t be shy, There will be friendly people around to help you out.

The workshop will be hosted by Liane Morisette . If you are interested in attending, please purchase your tickets beforehand via eventbrite. The $25 includes the cost of supplies  (-casing) and instruction. Non-members please bring a $5 donation to Hackspace to support this accomadating venue. If you’d like to see a demo of how it’s done, this video is a pretty good tutorial as well

There are only a few spots left so if you want to come out, sign up now!

Network all of the things!

Introducing VHS’s new kit, the Nanode v5. The Nanode a low-cost, Internet enabled Arduino. With a Nanode, you can easily control other remote electronics or send sensor readings via the web. Nanode can easily be connected to Pachtube, which allows you to build sensor interfaces for your browser, smartphone or iGoogle homepage. This will allow you to do such things as network RFID readers, temp seniors and build web GUI’s for your projects.

The Nanode was developed by the London Hackers. It is built using all through-hole parts, so it is easy to solder and doesn’t require any experience.

Previous to the Nanode, you would need to purchase both and arduino($35) and a ethernet shield ($45) to get the same capability. We will be offering this kit for the low price of $30 CAD.  We currently have 10 kits available,  and they can be built at the space, or at home with this picture based guide. The project requires and FTDI connector in order to program the boards*.

To sign up for a kit, please do so here: Nanode Kit Night v5. – We will build these kits at 7:30 on this coming Thursday, Dec 1st.

Nanode is also the basis for some great projects like the open souce enegry monitor or home automation setup (like these xmas lights).  Starting with this platform, we will be doing group buys for additional components and holding informative talks on how to use/expand the capabilities of this board. Additionally, wireless backpacks and add-ons are being released and we will host build nights for these in the coming months. I will also be donating a few of these Nanodes to be built into VHS infrastructure projects.

We are going to be developing our own card and board-games. These are going to be quick and dirty prototypes that we can use to test game mechanics and see what works and what doesn’t.

We can do it in groups or as individuals. I will see if I can find some prizes for the best game, most complete game, most enjoyable, ect..

Ideas for prototyping your game

• Use paying cards or business card and write playing card rules on the back of them
• Print game pieces with the maker bot.
• Cut out a game board out of cardboard and sharpie the game tiles on to it.
• Make dice and other playing pieces out of paper
• ect…

Game ideas 

• The pieces are controlled by brain scanning robots  (Star-Wars-Science-Force-Trainer) 
• Servo controlled marionette battle it out based on pre programmed moves,  Angelic_Layer,  Real Steel
• Rock paper scissors style samurai combat fighting  Bushido_Blade
• A game where you attempt to disarm a mad scientists dooms day device  Operation
• A game where you are a mad scientists and you are trying to prevent the James bond like people from wreaking your plans.  mad-scientist-defense

Helpful links

• My friend’s blog on his experience with getting a game published: http://inspirationtopublication.wordpress.com/
• A series of articles on game systems: http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GameSystems3.shtml
• Related to that, here’s my profile page on the piecepack game system’s wiki with links to my published piecepack games:  http://www.ludism.org/ppwiki/DonKirkby
• http://playtmg.com/pages/how-to-make-board-game
• http://www.sloperama.com/advice/
• http://www.amherstlodge.com/games/reference/gameinvented.htm
• Boardgamegeek

Where:
Vancouver Hack Space
45 W. Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC

When: 
Dec 6th, 2011 @ 7:30 pm

 Who:
Anyone who is interested in making or helping make a board-game.
Please feel to bring guests, and if you never been to the space before feel free to join us.

Bottom liner
Steven Smethurst