NortHACKton » msraynsford

3D Printing/Prototyping Talk Night

msraynsford — Thu, 12 May 2011 18:10:06 +0000

Monday night is our next Talk night, this months topic being 3D printing and prototyping. We’re hoping for a good turnout after the NSME open day 2 weeks ago.

The talk starts at 8pm but we’ll open up the NSME clubhouse from 7pm onwards.

There is a chance for some practical work after in the form of paper crafting. Bring a windows laptop if you’d like to design your own 3D model to assemble. If you’re just interested in the paper craft assembly I’ll have some simple models to hand. So bring a scalpel, metal ruler and something to cut on.

The software you require is pepakura and a trial version can be downloaded from here. http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/download/designer.html

Look forward to seeing you all on Monday.

3D Printing Talk

msraynsford — Mon, 02 May 2011 19:41:59 +0000

Our next evening talk, Monday May 16th, will be about 3D printing, the different types available in both professional and DIY versions. We will cover everything from the ground up so the talk shall be suitable for people with no prior knowledge on the subject. New people are always welcome along and all our talk evenings are free. We shall be at NSME from 7pm onwards with the talk starting at 8pm. It is generally informal in its style so if you have any questions during the talk please feel free to ask them. Talks aim to be about 30 minutes but interesting ones tend to ramble to about an hour. The clubhouse will be open afterwards for more specific questions or general project work.

(The Makerbot, just one type of DIY 3D printing)

NSME Grand Opening

msraynsford — Mon, 02 May 2011 19:25:25 +0000

Today was the grand opening of the NSME extended tracks. We set up a stall to illustrate the things that NortHACKton do. We spent a lot of time talking to the public and hopefully made a few new friends. Over 2000 people rode the trains today, the exact number is unlikely to be known as they ran out of commemorative tickets. That meant a lot of people to talk to.

The rolling ball sculpture and pinball machine were a great hit with kids and a great opener for conversations. The chain mail shirt and quadcopter also garnered a lot of interest. It was great to have people asking questions about projects and then being pointed to the appropriate person to chat to. Thanks to everyone for coming down to lend us a hand, lets hope we get some increased interest to our next workshop.

Keyboard Layout Switch

msraynsford — Sun, 01 May 2011 15:00:02 +0000

NortHACKton member, Charlie Webb, recently completed this project based around an arduino and a keyboard. Fed up with the way Windows forced him to switch between his different keyboard layouts (qwerty to Dvorak) he decided to take the process entirely out of windows hands. He modified an old keyboard, inserting an avr microcontroller between the keyboard and the PC. At the flick of a switch the MCU performs the entire keyboard remapping between the two different layouts.

The microcontroller in the keyboard also allowed him to add some extra features at the same time. The big red button on the front of the keyboard generates a whole stream of text to be inserted into whatever you’re working on. Knowing Charlie I suspect this is currently being put to extremely good use harassing the noobs on some First Person Shooter somewhere (“OMG, WTF, I Iz Leet” etc, or maybe minecraft as that’s what the cool kids seem to be doing atm)

More photos and some diagrams of the project can be found in on picasa

And he has been kind enough to supply us with the arduino code for the job too.

NortHACKton on the BBC

msraynsford — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:35:45 +0000

Thanks to my friend Grey for pointing this out, NortHACKton got a mention on a BBC article about the Maker Faire. Also you can catch a glimpse of the spider at the end of the video.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12893426

Maker Faire 2011

msraynsford — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:42:46 +0000

As Steve pointed out, we’re back from the Maker Faire. The Faire was another great success, with the centre for life estimating 3000 visitors to the event. Not to mention all the makers and crew that were manning the place the whole weekend without whom the show would be nothing. It was great to be able to meet up with other groups and makers and forge some better links between us and them.

Despite my best efforts there was still quite a lot of work left to do on the spider. Having the extra pairs of hands around on Friday meant that we managed to get it all assembled with a little time left over to head to the pub for the first of the nights out. The socialising was definitely one of the highlights. Evening chats were unashamedly geeky, with regular appearances of phones, laptops and electronics.

Meeting the public and explaining all of the projects was quite fun. The better conversations will always be with other makers who ask the more relevant questions but the whole point of being there is to explain stuff to all levels. The crafty aspects of the group seemed to be much more appealing than the technical aspects, probably because of the lower entry requirements. It’s fairly easy to understand how 30000 rings become a suit of chain, but electricity still confounds people.

This year because we were a hackerspace instead of individuals I think we were taken a little more seriously. I managed to blag the group a license for Cambam and a potential discount on a 3D printer from bodge it quick.

Steve and I discussed several ideas on the way back. I think it would be nice to see all the hacker spaces put together next year. Each group should still get their own space to demonstrate their projects, but they should all be next to each other. Also it would be a really good idea to get one stall up to explain to the public what Hacker spaces are and present a map showing where each of the exhibiting hacker spaces are located. If each group puts just 2 hours into manning this stall it shouldn’t be too much effort on any one group. Stay tuned as the the other ideas will be surfacing shortly.

Martin

Spider bot plans

msraynsford — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:28:36 +0000

For those at the Maker Faire who wanted to build their own paper spiders, here are the plans. The ones at the show were printed on A4, but you can print at whatever size you like. We’re sorry we didn’t have any to hand out, the post failed us

2x small spiders PDF format, should be fine printed as A4

Small paper model of the larger spider, PDF format, can be done on A4 but A3 would be easier to assemble

If you have any questions or problems then feel free to email me msraynsford@gmail.com

Call for help

msraynsford — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 09:18:01 +0000

I spent another interesting weekend assembling the spider framework. It was quite the challenge because it is extremely large and trying to do it on my own our back garden just adds to the fun of it all. It went well and despite a wet day on Sunday I managed to get something up and standing on my Monday off (yay for valentines day). It is mostly solid but it has an alarming amount of twist around the vertical. I’ve tried to reduce this with some cross braces from the fist joint back to the body and I’ll need to assemble it again to see if it works. While it’s up I’d like to add the cardboard cladding to the body to see how that is going to work too. But I’m going to need a hand or two.

I’ll be taking the spider over to NSME on Sunday 20th Feb at 1pm and will be assembling it there and hopefully getting it to look a little bit like the final spider we want. If you’re in the area please drop by and lend a hand it would be most appreciated, there is plenties of screwing, measuring and cutting to be done (in cardboard and wood) so lots to keep people occupied, plus you’ll have the satisfaction of helping this project actually get to maker faire.

Spider Frameworks

msraynsford — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:53:44 +0000

After discussions with the Maker Faire people last week it appears it’s going to be a bit tricky to take the whole spider along to Newcastle. We can erect it outside the stadium but we need to be able to prove that it isn’t going to blow away which is apparently a little more than just looking at the vast weights in the feet and saying ‘That looks heavy enough’. So we struck a compromise deal which suits us pretty nicely. We’ll only take the front half of the spider and we’ll prop it up against a wall inside the venue. then we can set up stall underneath it. Suits us in many ways because the front half is already made and it will be easier to transport.

I realise it’s not overly worthy of an update post but I spent 20 minutes this afternoon doing a quick framework test. I screwed some of the longer pieces together to test my plans for the joint. It’s pretty strong but would benefit from a matching plank on the other side of the joint, so I shall head back to Wickes tomorrow to buy the rest of the wood and something suitable for the job. Hopefully I’ll have more to show by the other end of the weekend.

(and yes I realise that first image shows it resting on a window ledge but that does simulate the additional leg joint that will be going down there)

Etch a Sketch controlled computer

msraynsford — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:11:35 +0000

I was inspired the other day when I meandered round the internet and I saw a lot of Computer controlled etch a sketches, but not a single etch a sketch controller computer. So I put aside my other projects for a night or two and set about actually making one of these things. I’m quite pleased with the results, but you can take it for a test drive yourself, when NortHACKton go to the UK Maker Faire next month.

The basic construction is an MDF frame, mounted over an LCD monitor. Two water bottle caps act as the knobs for the etch a sketch and the guts of an old roller ball USB mouse have been re purposed to control the PC.

An old mouse already has two sets of rollers, one for left-right and one for up-down. These normally press against the ball to detect the mouse movement. A slotted disk on the roller spins between an LED and opto sensor pair to detect the rotation of the knob. I have extracted these roller and sensor arrangements and put them on the left and right of the screen. The left and right clicks have also been extended and put behind each knob.

I extended the cables from the PCB in the mouse, it’s quick and dirty, I didn’t even common up the ground wires. It works and that’s good enough for a hack right? The tricky bit was aligning the LED with the sensor correctly and was achieved with lots of careful adjustments before glueing each knob section together. Finally a little bit of friction prevent the mouse unclicking, so I wedged a small section of foam into the gap to help it return to the off position.

Higher res photos can be found here and a small sample video should appear below.