Our Trash is Your Treasure
by Squintz on Feb.18, 2011, under Happenings
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/
| Entrance Donation: | Adults $5, Kids under 16 FREE |
| Seller’s Table: | $10 (limited number, reserve early) |
| Club Sponsorship: | FREE (just send us your info) |
CNC User Group Wrap-Up
by Squintz on Feb.13, 2011, under CNC, Happenings
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.
Getting started with CPLD’s and FPGA’s
by superfro on Jan.13, 2011, under How-Tos
Chris has been dabbling with CPLD’s and FPGA’s. He wanted to share some helpful resources with anyone else looking to get started with them as well.
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Difference between CPLDs and FPGAs:
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VHDL Tutorial:
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Xilinx ISE Software (Windows or Linux, 32 & 64 bit available)
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Digilent Xilinx FPGA Board:
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Digilent Xilinx CPLD Board:
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Xilinx Platform USB Programmer:
- http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=platform+xilinx&_sacat=See-All-Categories
(you can program through the USB of some of the boards but you can do a lot more with a VHDL interface)
- http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=platform+xilinx&_sacat=See-All-Categories
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How to install the cable drivers in Linux:
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Opencores.org: (open source hardware modules (“cores”) for FPGAs)
- http://opencores.org/projects They have a lot including multiple CPU designs.
DIY 8×8 LED Array
by Gary on Jan.08, 2011, under Projects, Videos
Like most normal people, I enjoy blinky lights. Although I helped build the ring of lights in the Tron disc, I was not involved with any of the hardware or software used to actually control the LEDs. Prior to this project, I had never done anything more than simple PWM control of a few LEDs directly from a micro-controller, so I decided it was a good time to learn how to control a lot of LEDs. Since this was done for the purpose of learning, I did everything as difficultly as possible, such as building my own LED array on a protoboard instead of just buying an array. I also wrote code to bit-bang the serial data instead of just using the compiler’s built in SPI function. But, I wanted a generic serial data module anyway after dealing with the Nokia 6100 and it’s weird 9-bit SPI. The main point of the whole project was to simply do it myself without asking anyone at the space for help with anything. I’m sure the code could be a lot better, but it does what it is supposed to do (I think). :)
Tron Identity Disc Mod
by Squintz on Dec.13, 2010, under Netduino
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)
RotoFoto Wins First Place
by Squintz on Nov.21, 2010, under Contest, Hackathon, Videos
Harford Hackerspace took First Place in the first ever Baltimore Hackathon. It took nearly all 48 hours for us to plan and build RotoFoto. RotoFoto is an automated 3D imaging system that takes a series of 2D images of an object and stitches them into a 360 degree interactive image. This allows viewers to use simple mouse dragging gestures to rotate an object to see if from all angles. Watch the complete build in the below time lapse video. We will demonstrate the build shortly so check back soon.
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Baltimore Hackathon
by superfro on Nov.19, 2010, under Happenings

Just wanted to let everyone know we are participating in the Baltimore Hackathon. You can check it out here .
Also this weekend while we are working on the project, our webcam is live. You can view that here.
Visit from Jeff Del Papa last night
by superfro on Oct.14, 2010, under Happenings, Meetings
I wanted to just say thank you to Jeff Del Papa @ the-nerds for stopping by the space last night and sharing his Junkyard Wars experiences with us. Jeff and his team have been featured on a few episodes in the US and UK. It was very cool to be able to ask Jeff questions about what happened behind the scenes.
NYC Maker Faire
by superfro on Oct.14, 2010, under Happenings
A little late posting this, but a few of us went to the NYC Maker Fair. I personally had a blast and wanted to share some pictures with those of you who missed it.
Mirror Grinding Class – Thanks Pete
by Squintz on Sep.29, 2010, under Books, Happenings
We would like to thank Pete Koziar, author of Dauntless Homecoming, for visiting our hackerspace and teaching us how to grind our own mirrors.
We’ll post video of the course soon…
Thanks Pete!



