Pre-Gaming and Pre-Hacking #rbcreation
by bsom on Jul.07, 2011, under Contest, Red Bull Creation, Soup
The liquor has all be dranken and now it’s time to get hackin’! Paul and the gang have made it back to the RV (this was no easy feat after being drowned in booze at the kickoff party) and have begun reverse engineering their electronic badges. The badges appear to be banging out some Morse code to a single red LED. Paul is trying to get past the fuses on the PIC to read the code inside while the others set up our Rigol portable digital oscilloscope and try to record the LED blinks to a file to decode the Morse. Crazy but true, the wacky guys from Two Hands Project are hanging out in the HaHa RV right now. Apparently they are covered with stickers?!? You may remember them from a while back (over a year ago?) when they came to HaHa and filmed us for inclusion in a documentary about hackerspaces. Hey guys, what happened to that film project?
The HaHa Gears Have Landed in Brooklyn! #rbcreation
by bsom on Jul.06, 2011, under Contest, Red Bull Creation, Soup
After many hours of butt-numbing car rides and New York traffic, four intrepid HaHa hackers have taken on the wilds of Brooklyn to journey into the mouth of the caffeine-addled beast, also known as Redbull Creation. Dave, Paul, Jeff and Miles have arrived to bring the hack, Baltimore-style, to the soon-to-be-unwashed masses of McCarren Park. Our dedicated compatriot, Jason, will do his best to record all of our rants and photos here at HaHa central for all to see. Yes, that photo is Paul in a sombrero; they are expecting it to be quite hot. Warning: After over 72 sleepless hours, it could get ugly. This should be fun…
Red Bull Creation Finalist
by Squintz on May.11, 2011, under Contest, Red Bull Creation, Videos
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:
(continue reading…)
Crimping ain’t easy!
by macpod on May.05, 2011, under Soup, Tool Shed
When I build personal projects, I like things to be modular. You never know when the LCD you just wired up could be grabbed and used in another project… and wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to desolder/cut wires just to re-position something tightly stuffed inside of your project enclosure? This probably explains why I end up making so many wiring harnesses and consequently crimping wires.
In the past, I used a pair of pliers and a soldering iron to connect these crimps to whatever wire I happened to be using at the time. This worked, but it was tedious and the outcome could have looked better. Why wouldn’t I use a pair of crimp pliers might you ask? Well, when I searched for crimp tools in the past, such as the ones recommended for JST XH crimps, they were priced close to $500! Absurd!
Thankfully, a few weeks ago I stumbled across and purchased a pair of less expensive Universal Crimp Pliers sold by I Heart Engineering
I think some of the folks at the hacker space still think I am a crazy for raving about these things as much as I have, but I just can’t get over how having the right tool for the job simplifies things. They let me crimp things easier (no more cursing as the crimp flies across the room), make stronger crimps (I hadn’t realized how critical it was to crimp the wire jacket until using these), and crimp way faster than before.
In particular, they are a HUGE help when you have to crimp lots of things at once. In my case, I needed them to assemble cables I include in SX2 Mini mill tachometer kits I put together. I was rather concerned about the time it would take me to crimp all of those connectors, but with the right tool it turned out to be a breeze.
Thanks to Bill from I Heart Engineering, we now have a pair of these crimp pliers for the space too! If you ever need to use them, swing on by!
Hacking a SX2 Mini mill
by macpod on May.05, 2011, under CNC, How-Tos, Soup, Tool Shed
SX2/CN2 tachometer kit in action
I picked up a SX2 Mini mill recently via Little Machine Shop (They call it the HiTorque Mini Mill 3900). When I received it, I noticed there was a port for a digital tachometer readout on the side of it. I though this might be useful, but felt 125$+ for it was a little excessive for what it was. Atop of this, they were out of stock.
I ended up reverse engineering the protocol, building some less expensive kits, and documented how exactly I figured out the protocol. Along the way, I also discovered how to make the mill run in reverse!
If you wondered how a reverse-engineering problem like this is approached or what tools are used, this could be an interesting read:
Robot Fest 2011
by Squintz on May.04, 2011, under Happenings, Soup
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
Combat Robots Workshop
by Squintz on Apr.09, 2011, under Happenings, Soup
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.
Skeet Shooting in Lochraven
by Squintz on Apr.03, 2011, under Happenings, Soup
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.
Star Wars IV Played on Vintage ’77 Dumb Terminal
by bsom on Mar.10, 2011, under Projects, Soup, Videos
What are we going to do with our newly acquired vintage 1977 Lear Siegler terminal? Why, we’ll play ASCII Star Wars Episode IV on it, of course! Recently purchased at the 2011 Techno Swap Fest, this baby-blue beauty has classic 70′s styling, comfortable keyboard and gets 80 columns on the screen in a lovely white uppercase font. It took some coaxing to get Baby Blue to play along with an Ubuntu-equipped laptop including tweaking some DIP switches hidden inside her chassis, some clever character substitutions in the ASCII Star Wars file, reading the datasheet for the terminal itself (thanks, Wikipedia!), and wiring up both a FTDI USB-to-serial converter and a MAX232 level converter IC. But the results were worth a quick video. Future improvements could include a way to hide the cursor (hardware modification?) and possibly speeding up draws by only painting the characters that have changed. What do ya think?
Jeremy Awesome’s Amazing Technicolor Soapbox Kart
by bsom on Feb.25, 2011, under Media, Members, Projects, Soup
When Jeremy ‘Awesome’ Ashinghurst is not busy hacking at HaHa, researching new and interesting ways to make power tools dangerous or just generally being awesome, he’s busy riding his custom-built gravity-powered vehicle, also known as a soapbox kart, at dangerously high speeds down steep hills. Well, all of the hard work and road rash paid off for Jeremy recently when he won the grand prize in Make Magazine’s Karts and Wheels contest. Keep your eyes peeled for Make Volume 26, starring Mr. Awesome’s Kart, at your local newsstand. In the meantime, read his entire, well-documented build on the Make Blog. Go Awesome, go!
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Welcome to Harford Hackerspace!
We are currently operating out of Baltimore, MD (21206). Contact us: info@harfordhackerspace.org.
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The following companies have sponsored us by supplying free or discounted products to our organization. Want your link here? Contact us!Recent Comments:
- superfro said “I actually built 2.0 awhile back, I’ll get the pics up for that soon. It uses a clear mason jar and smd leds. Looks nice. I was actually considering a 3.0 soon,...”
- Lars O said “I’m building ver 1.0 right now, looking forward to seeing your version 2.0!
” - Net Semi said “These are some really cool pics. Thanks for sharing.”
- pete said “I mean, ableton and iphone?!”
- pete said “ableton?”
