hackerspace
Latest
TechShop Inside is a modern shop class on wheels
Once upon a time it was a mainstay of American education: shop class -- a place where students learned to use common tools to build, create and repair just about anything their hearts desired. This curriculum is all but gone from most schools, but a spiritual successor is worming its way into some Silicon Valley after school programs. It's called TechShop Inside, and it's a 24-foot trailer outfitted with laser cutting machines, 3D printers and an arsenal of traditional tools. Its mission? Teach America's students how to design, prototype and manufacture their dreams. On Friday, the mobile TechShop made its first stop in San Francisco's Sunset district; we dropped by to check it out.
DARPA-funded TechShop location to open in Arlington, VA next year
Just ahead of its Menlo Park location's crowdfunded move, TechShop has announced a second (or third, if you want to get technical) space to let your inner maker flag fly. Later this year Arlington, VA's Crystal City neighborhood will see construction begin on the new idea-friendly space near our nation's capitol, with a projected opening of early 2014. It's the latest effort from a partnership between TechShop, DARPA and the Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Innovation, and could help the state's 837,000 veterans develop usable skills through free job-training programs. We thought TechShop might consider a region with lower rent for its next space, but since Virginia has one of the highest veteran populations in the area, who are we to judge?
TechShop to relocate its Menlo Park workspace, wants your help funding the move
Do you appreciate TechShop's community-driven hackerspaces? If so, the company would like your help in keeping one of those facilities alive. TechShop has to relocate its original Menlo Park workspace before October 31st, and it just launched a $250,000 crowdfunding campaign to help cover the moving costs. Should the fundraiser prove successful, TechShop will reward contributors with both prizes and passes to a Halloween benefit party; it will also hand out gift memberships to military veterans. Those who want to give the Menlo Park workshop a second chance can make a pledge at the source link.
TechShop: an industrial revolution for $125 a month
Someone, Mark Hatch, if I had to guess, has left a Square reader just to the left of where we've set up our cameras. It's on a table next to a small, but exceptionally diverse array of gadgets. There's a wooden book that unfolds into a desk lamp and a polymer incubation blanket for infants that's "on track to save 100,000 children's lives," according to Hatch, TechShop's spikey-white-haired CEO. But it's the little white plastic dongle that's the star of this show, through the power of sheer ubiquity, popping up in coffee shops and taxicabs everywhere. Square's modest undertaking has since ballooned to a roughly 300-person operation. The project was born in this very space, eventually moving to a building in San Francisco's SoMa district a block or so away, the mobile payment company having opted not to travel too far from the place where it was first conceived. When it comes to proximity, Square is by no means an anomaly -- if anything, the company's strayed a bit away from the pack. TechShop's overseers have, quite cannily, begun to offer up a portion of the warehouse's 17,000 square feet as office space, giving its members a shot at some prime San Francisco real estate, a flight of stairs up from an impressive array of machine tools -- laser cutters, waterjets and more 3D printers than most mortals have seen in one place. "Literally everything you need to make just about anything on the planet," says Hatch, in typically definitive terms. And while there's arguably still some sense of hyperbole in the notion of the "next industrial revolution" (as 3D-printing evangelist Bre Pettis loves to put it), it's hard to stand here in the well-lit warehouse amongst the buzz of machinery and ideas and not appreciate the sentiment.
Project Hexapod: eyes-on with Gimpy, the (half-scale) giant robot leg
Admittedly, this is one of our shorter editors on staff. But he is, believe it or not, an adult male that stands five foot, eight inches tall. Which puts that giant chunk of metal next to him at about five feet. Turns out, that slab of black steel is a prototype robot leg -- and one that's only half scale. It's the work of a bunch of hobbyists, engineers and hackers at the Artisan's Asylum in Somerville, MA where its the big dog amongst a pile of other amazing projects. This is simply an early stage in the building of what will ultimately be one of the largest six-legged robots in the world, dubbed Stompy. All told some 19 different people are hard at work on the bot as part of an intensive class taught by Gui Cavalcanti, James Whong and Dan Cody at the hacker space that covers everything from metal work, to hydraulics, and, of course, robotics. When it started in April, the goal was to build a fully functional and rideable hexapod in four months time, by breaking down the project into much simpler to tackle tasks. Now the class is gearing up to enter the final stages, namely, building the full scale mechanical monster. %Gallery-158274%
Kikori CNC gantry router eyes-on (video)
Judah Sher's cubicle wasn't originally on our slate of scheduled stops during yesterday's trip to the Artisan's Asylum hacker space in Somerville, Massachusetts, but the man behind the Kikori CNC gantry router lured us in with a rather large piece of plywood leaned up against a wall, reading "Sindrian Arts Welcomes Engadget," our familiar logo carved out in big letters. The wood was cut in Sher's sawdust-covered space, using the Kikori, one of the more unwieldy devices in the space's 118 cubes.
Freaklabs' FredBoard gives the gift of hackerspace to Mothership HackerMoms
Come this (Black) Friday, it'll officially be the season for gift-giving and general family dysfunction. So, why not warm that tech-tinkering heart while heating up the creative juices of the baby-bound set with a Freaklabs purchase that puts your money to good use? The outfit's got a monster mash FredBoard up for order that splices together an Arduino and breadboard to make your first brush with homegrown modding a relatively painless affair. Oh, and the proceeds are destined for a Mommy-centric hackerspace -- dubbed Mothership HackerMoms -- in San Francisco that does double duty as a day care for little leg-clingers and a lab for their electronics-inclined parents. These ladies-in-programming currently swap house hosting duties, but with the boost from your potential feel-good donations, could snag a proper venue of their own. Feel like getting in the holiday spirit early? Then click on the source below to bring some early cheer to Bay Area baby Mommas.
Shanghai Science and Technology Commission proposes 100 'innovation houses' for DIYers
Here we call them hackerspaces and generally they're sustained through the contributions of paying members. The Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality has decided to go with the more esoteric "innovation house" and is expecting support from the government, but the concept is the same -- a pubic place where those with an idea can go and make it a reality. The commission is proposing building 100 such studios equipped with wood and metal lathes, drills, saws and milling machines. Shanghai may be a sprawling city of over 23 million (the largest in the world), but if even just half of those hackerspaces are eventually constructed it would have one studio for every 460,000 citizens and become one of the most DIY-friendly metropolises in the world. By comparison, New York City's roughly 8 million residents share just eight.
Maker Faire pony has Wiimote-controlled indigestion, belches fire (video)
There's a good reason why My Little Pony wasn't marketed to boys. Shown off at the 2011 Maker Faire in Detroit, this animatronic, fire-breathing horsie got to spread a little heat thanks to the Louisville, KY-based modding duo, LVL1. The partially Wiimote-controlled mechanical filly is the result of the duo's Hackerspace efforts, and plans are already underway to loose this steed into the great, fully wireless open. Also on deck for the hot-mouthed stallion: a flame-spewing cabbage patch doll riding companion. How's that for a DIY-perversion of your precious 80s youth? Peep the full pyromania-tinged project after the break.
Arduino geiger counter brings open source radiation detection to the geeky masses (video)
Need to detect radiation? We sure hope not -- but if you're looking for a straight-forward, altogether geeky geiger counter, the Libelium gang has your back. En route to the Tokyo Hackerspace as we speak (and believe us, they need it), the Radiation Sensor Board for Arduino is a low-cost alternative to existing devices. It's available now either with a compatible geiger tube for €95 ($135) or without for €65 ($50). Hit up the source link to get started, but not before peeping the thing in action after the break. Is there anything you can't do with Arduino?
