Sure… anyone can go to the local store and buy a coffee maker with a timer. That was not good enough for our new member Ryan Merl.  Keeping in the hacking spirit, Ryan decided to make his own internet controlled coffee maker. He installed a relay between the wall cord and the power switch on the coffee pot. The relay is controlled by his arduino. He used this tutorial as a guide.  An ethernet shield is used to connect the arduino to the network.

You can find the source code for this project here: https://github.com/theanti9/HTTPCoffeePot. Be sure to checkout the Readme.doc for more details.

Special Features

• 15 minute automatic shutoff
• Controlled via HTTP Requests
• Status, start, and stop requests
• Returns JSON meant for AJAX interfaces
• Ready and running LEDs

HTTPCoffeePot can be connected to your arduino with an ethernet shield and attached to the network. It will listen on port 80, like a normal web server, and take several different request URLs to control it. The URLs return JSON with the intention that an AJAX interface will be built over it:

• /status/ – This will return some information about the current status of the coffee pot
• /start/ – This will start the coffee pot assuming that it is currently ready to be started and not started already
• /stop/ – This will turn off the coffee pot

Currently the process will work like this:

1. Put in coffee grounds/filter/water
2. Press ready button to enter coffee pot into ready state
3. When coffee is desired, send /start/ request
4. Wait for coffee to finish
5. Send manual /stop/ request OR wait for timed automatic shut off to take place after 15 minutes

I have a very simple coffee maker which is really only a switch. The modifications I made to the pot were to cut the power inside of it between the wall and the switch on the pot and place a relay in between. The relay is then activated by the Arduino board when sent the /start/ request.

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We want to send a big THANK YOU! to Mars Brown from New Orleans for sending us these awesome vinyl stickers.

In Hack This: 24 Incredible Hackerspace Projects from the DIY Movement author John Baichtal explains what hackerspaces are and he talks about how they work and who runs them. The book also features 24 hackerspace projects from hackerspaces all around the world.

Harford Hackerspace is featured in Chapter 15: DIY CNC ROUTER.

You can purchase the book from Amazon.com

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Brooklyn, NY Here we come! Paul, Jeff, Miles, David (from left to right) will be headed to New York in July to compete against 15 other teams in the Red Bull Creation challenge.  You can read the official e-mail below.

The photo on the left was taken at 3am as we were finishing up our qualifying entry to the Red Bull Creation challenge.
Here is Popular Mechanics coverage of the winners.
Our submission:

Congratulations Harford Hackerspace! Great Joy!

Your team has made it to the final round of Red Bull Creation, and you are invited to come to New York to take part in the ultimate 72 hour build-a-thon!

Go ahead and jump up and down, run around, call everyone you know (most importantly your teammates) and do what you need to do to celebrate, cause you’re invited to take the final challenge! Yes it’s true. You Won.

This is what you gotta do next:
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Last weekend we displayed our projects at Robot Fest 2011. In our photos, you may notice a few new things on display. This is because in 2010 Robot Fest also became Mid Atlantic Mini Maker Faire. Unfortunately we spent most of the day behind our table and we were not able to capture everything at the event. If you have photos of the event to share with us please e-mail them to info@harfordhackerspace.org

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I took my son to the Combat Robots Workshop at the National Electronics Museum in Linthicum, MD. The workshop was hosted by the PennBots Robot Club of Pennsylvania. The rules of the game were demonstrated to us at the arena and then it was our turn. For the low price of $25 we were given an RC toy to hack and a bunch of parts to pick through.  The biggest challenge was reducing the weight of the robot to the Ant Class (1lb).  The other classes were Flea (150 grams) and Beetle (3lbs).

I have to say that my 7 year old son made me very proud today when he cleanly pushed another bot into the pits while it was being controlled by an adult.  See him in action in the video below.  After the competition, we stuck all the robots into the arena for one last melee. Since there were only two frequencies being used it made for a really interesting match.

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Several Harford Hackerspace members spent the day at the Lochraven Skeet and Trap range shooting clay pigeons. If you are interested in the sport you should have a look at SCSkeet.com beginner tutorial and watch the instructional video below. There is a little bit more to the game of skeet than just aiming and shooting.

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We will be at the second annual Techno Swap Fest. Come buy our junk!

Feb 19, 2011  -  9am to 2pm

National Electronics Museum
1745 West Nursery Road
Linthicum Hts, MD 21090-2906

More Info…
https://sites.google.com/site/technoswapfest2/

We hosted our first CNC/Makerbot User Group meeting. A special thanks goes out to Brian Dolge for organizing the event and making it a success. We had a great turnout with about 20+ people in attendance. Marty McGuire demonstrated his Makerbot by drawing on Post-Its with a Sharpie. Harford Hackerspace demonstrated their CNC Milling machine by cutting out a wooden Ninja star. Check out the images below.

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Over the past several months the members of Harford Hackerspace have been working on modifying a Delux Tron Legacy Disc. The modification uses a Netduino and MAX7219 to increase the number of LEDs from 8 to 33. The project was featured on Microsofts Channel 9 (video) and now there is a complete tutorial of the build on Coding4Fun.

This Friday – December 17th, Disney is releasing a sequel to the 1982 movie. Tron Legacy (Official Site)