Daily activity (2017)

Introduction

Post your interesting activities at the hackspace! Put down what others are doing as well if they're on the list below, otherwise ask for their permission first.

Happy to be mentioned

List of people who do not mind being logged:

• Alice
• Ben N.
• Chris Hale
• Damian
• Dan W.
• Eileen
• Hugh
• Iulian
• Jamie
• Jenny C.
• Jenny L.
• Joel
• John B.
• Josh
• Katherine C.
• Malcolm
• Matt E.
• Matt W.
• Michael P.
• Lauren
• Peter T.
• Yves

Previous Years

See Category:Annual Activity Log.

2017

September

06-09-2017

• Chris - Received Food/Drinks order, brought it into the Hackspace, unpacked it and put it all away. Also tidied the cupboard, rearranged things for better access and recycled a large number of bag/boxes.

04-09-2017

• Chris - Restocked the Fridge
• Lauren & Chris - Facilitated the running of Pallet Furniture Factory - 3 new Members created - 8 Members attended Including Iulian and Eileen
• Jamie - Processed 3 new Members
• Iulian & Eileen - Planed some pallet planks with other Members
• Lauren - Broke up some Pallets with other Members
• Lauren, Chris & Iulian - Cleaned and tidied the 'Space

August

31-08-2017

• Chris - Purchased drinks and restocked the Fridge for Social Night.

21-08-2017

• Chris - Restocked the Fridge, cleaned the sink and kitchen sides and washed up
• Lauren & Chris - Facilitated the running of Pallet Furniture Factory - 3 new Members created - 14 Members attended Including Iulian and Eileen
• Jamie - Processed 3 new Members
• Lauren, Iulian & Eileen - Broke up some pallets

20-08-2017

• Lauren - Restocked the Fridge

17-08-2017

• Chris - Restocked the Fridge for Social Night

07-08-2017

• Lauren - Facilitated the running of Sawdust Studio #2 - 8 Members attended

• Chris - Restocked the Fridge

06-08-2017

• Lauren - Facilitated the running of Textile Crafters Meetup #13 - 10 Members attended

03-08-2017

• Chris - Restoked the Fridge for Social Night

July

31-07-2017

• Lauren - Facilitated the running of Sawdust Studio #1 - 9 Members attended

27-07-2017

• Chris, Peter & Others - Restocked the Fridge for Social Night

19-07-2017

• Lauren - With the assistance of Chris, drove to Hull to collect the new Scroll Saw.

15-07-2017

• Paul B. - Soldered an audio splitter (1 stereo to 2 mono barrels).

• Peter T. - Revived a 10Khz PID controller FPGA project.

• Iulian - Soldered and programmed a 12Vdc peristaltic pump controller using an arduino and a relay.

13-07-2017

Members' meeting - ~15 members in attendance.

05-07-2017

• Dan W. - Taught first session of analog electronics. Gone through some explanations of the basic physics behind electronics, built a couple of low pass and high pass filters, and tested them using the bench signal generators and oscilloscopes. 4 members and 2 visitors in attendance.

• Iulian - Brought in 12 Dell XPS computers to be turned into CAD machines.

02-07-2017

Textiles group regular meet.

June

30-06-2017

• Iulian - Upgrading the Hackers in Oxford Mattermost to latest, for easy emoji communication and other more important features.

29-06-2017

• Josh, assisted by Jamie - Laser cutting a Settlers of Catan board out of wood.

• Iulian and Dan - 3D printing a model of a heat sink for some high vacuum sensing device.

• Iulian and Other member - Shelved the recent restock delivery.

28-06-2017

Monster Foundry #1 - Roughly 8 attendees, including a visual effects artist from London. Discussed how to make a tentacled robot that lays eggs, techniques and materials. Members include Lauren, Chris Hale, Jenny, Alice, Eileen.

• Jamie and others - Received a fridge stock resupply and deposited it in the store room.

27-06-2017

• Lauren - Drove with Chris to Basingstoke to pick up a Pillar Drill and Disk Sander.

• Malcolm - Cutting a couple of blinds. Got help from Iulian to cut with an electric jigsaw.

26-06-2017

• Damian - More soldering. Progress photo!
• Dan W. - Loaned some electronics testing equipment.

• 

  Keyboard project, soldering stage

25-06-2017

• Damian - Soldering switches of his keyboard project.
• Josh - Doing a test cut for a Settlers of Catan engraved wood game board. Jamie performing the cut.
• Tony - Donated a nice magnetic non-smart whiteboard.

22-06-2017

2nd 3D Printers' meetup - 8 attendees in total (6 members/2 visitors). First Mark did a small demonstration of TinkerCad then we looked at the broken prints and decided to test out different wall widths and what Slicer does with them. Iulian wrote a script to generate samples. Script here.

• Dan W. - Looked at kyocera printer to see if it works. Goes to sleep too fast. Also built the signal integrator that he's going to teach in a session on the 5th of July.

• Iulian and Dan - Rearranged the electronics lab. Made wooden cupboard usable and filled it with stuff laying around.

• Iulian - Fixed the USB headphones again. The wire I soldered months ago gave in. I soldered an extension so that there's no extra pressure on the shortened cable. Should last a bit longer now.

• Chris Hale, Glyn, Jamie, Lauren - Moved the audio rack and chair frame, in preparation for disposal.

• Chris Hale - Scanning and transcribing receipts.

• 

  Printing 1

• 

  Printing 2

• 

  Printing results

• 

  Fixing USB

• 

  Integrator setup

• 

  Integrator results

18-06-2017

• Chris Hale - Scanning and transcribing receipts.

16-06-2017

Textiles group regular meet.

• Lauren - 3D printing and post processing a lion with a naturally looking mane, by printing strands in a suspended radial pattern and then applying heat such that they soften and flow down.
• Alice - Sowing a tools pouch
• Katherine C. - Making a top out of a space themed cloth.

15-06-2017

• Matt W. - Components soldering for chiptune project on prototyping perf board.
• Yves - Indexing bike shifter.
• Iulian - Wrote rough draft of vinyl cutter training (See Redsail RS720C) and passed it on to Lauren for feedback and risk assessment.

13-06-2017

• Matt W. - Soldering sockets for chip tune project on prototyping perf board.

• Iulian - Figure out how to get InkScape to export to SignBlazer for vinyl cutting. (See Redsail RS720C for details).

08-06-2017

• Joel and Jamie - Weekly work on the laser cutting project.

01-06-2017

• Hugh - Set up Arduino environment with Jenny's help, tested stepper motor with example library, working out design for an automated turning table with Iulian.

• Iulian - 3D printing a part of the Otto Bot.

• Matt W. - Soldering the chiptune timing circuits on a proto board.

• Chris Hale - Printed 5 6-sided dice.

• Replaced a charging circuit on a phone.

May

25-05-2017

Event - Introduction to quantum computing using qubit devices - A demonstration of quantum principles by 2 members from the Department of Computer Science who've been designing a representation of qubits from prototyping to production, helped by various members in the hackspace.

• Josh - Added an electric pickup to an acoustic guitar, to connect to his cigar box amp.

• Joel - Laser cutting.

• Iulian and Hugo - Cleaned large pile of cups, counter tops, microwave and swept the stairs outside.

24-05-2017

• Yves - Printed phone mount for bike.

• Iulian - Finished cleaning weaving cards. Dyed them purple. It doesn't seem to stick so I'll try a varnish on top.

23-05-2017

• Chris and Iulian - Disposed of some broken furniture and chairs. Recovered leather and vinyl off chairs and piano hinges off a cabinet.

• Iulian, Jared - Got the software running for the vinyl cutter.

22-05-2017

• Jenny L - PAT tested vinyl cutter.

• Jared - Build a rack for the filament spools, took down panel behind tech's desk and added first aid and fire assembly point notices.

• Iulian - Tuck shop restock.

• Matt W. - Building a minimalist chiptune generator using ZX Spectrum sound chips.

21-05-2017

• Iulian - Brought in a Redsail 24" Vinyl cutter. Frantically attempted to recover data from a phone with a cracked screen that was slowly fading away. Thanks to the hackspace's assortment of adapters I managed to connect a bluetooth mouse while connecting it to the computer to download the files.

20-05-2017

• Ben N. - Set up a light installation using LED strips that are calibrated with a camera to form an ad-hoc display.

19-05-2017

Textiles group regular meet.

• Lauren - Did a clean-up of the textiles laser cut sign, by sanding burn marks away.

• Jenny C., Ben N. - Fixed a Pikachu onesie, a dress and a bag.

• Iulian and Eileen - Cleaned up a set of the weaving cards and dyed the edges to distinguish the sets of 12.

• Eileen - Gave an explanation of how card weaving works.

18-05-2017

3D Printers' meet - Iulian and 2 others discussed the latest updates at the library makerspace, talked about TinkerCAD.

• Jamie - Hosted the Laser Cutter Happy Hour. Helped Joel, Iulian and Eileen do cuts.

• Iulian, Paul - Enabled mesh calibration on the Prusa i3.

• Iulian, Eileen - Designed and cut wooden weaving cards from a template using QCAD.

• Josh - Built a stereo speaker casing and amp circuit out of a cigar box.

• Joel - Laser cutting.

17-05-2017

Event - Google I/O Extended - Participants gave a short introduction on how they used Google-related products and then watched the Keynote and Developer Keynote.

16-05-2017

• Yves - Assembled a bicycle.

• Iulian (with Peter's help) - Soldered some Arduino Nanos and discussed how to use AVR timers and interrupts for energy efficiency for my herb garden monitoring. Realised I didn't need an extra resistor on the power line since the moisture sensors have resistors in the voltage divider.

• Iulian - Set up the room for the Google I/O event.

15-05-2017

• Lauren, Jaimie, Chris, Matt W., Andrew C., Iulian - Emptied room F to for building work to proceed. Room G will temporarily be used for storage. Fixed a couple of chairs and salvaged useful materials from the black hole that was that room.

• Iulian - Changed the temperature sensor type in the firmware to match what the Prusa head actually uses. Printed a Benchy boat and it seemed fine.

13-05-2017

Adding electronics to fencing equipment - A group of fencers organised a workshop to automate scoring.

12-05-2017

• Iulian - Fixed Prusa i3 firmware by getting latest release of Marlin (1.1.1) and configuring it for our machine. All functionality including SD card is available. Archived firmware code on the wiki page in case we need to revert back to a known working state.

07-05-2017

Textiles group regular meet.

• Iulian - Fixed the weaving loom from sticking. One of the screws cracked the wood and pushed a splinter into the channel. I managed to nudge the splinter back in so the frame now slides smoothly.

05-05-2017

• Iulian - Experimenting with cutting glass bottles for sculptures. J2O bottles are quite brittle and don't crack on the score line. Had some success with small bits so I decided that any cuttings that don't turn out correctly I'll make squares for a glass mosaic.

• Iulian, Chris, Lauren - Decided on bill of materials for TV Stand project, finalised design. Due to not finding free time to build it, we won't be able to complete it by the original suggested date.

April

21-04-2017

Textiles group regular meet.

20-04-2017

• Lauren, Chris Hale - Oiled workshop tables.

17-04-2017

• Iulian and Yves - Cleaning haul of glass shelves for the display furniture and some extra stock.

• 

  WIP

• 

  Stored

14-04-2017

• Lauren, Chris and Iulian - Designed a movable TV stand for presentations in the workshops. Original requirements and sketch by Lauren, engineering suggestions by Chris and 3D visualization by Iulian.

• 

  Rendering of TV stand

• Iulian - Organised a room scale VR experience using Oculus VR + Touch. Compared to previous tests, participants said they were more impressed by the tracked controller demos than just using the headset as a viewport. Tried several programs including Tilt Brush, a 3D drawing software where you can draw over a manequin, but also import your own models. We did a walk-around visualisation of the TV stand.

08-04-2017

• Iulian - Set up the VR room for several demos including static walkthroughs and racing games with a steering wheel.

06-04-2017

Event - "Speed-Dating" Product Solutions to Social Problems - Part of the Marmalade festival and in collaboration with the Science Trust we've had talks from product designers on their experience, then attendees talked with the experts available about their ideas.

• Iulian - Set up the VR room for several demos including static walkthroughs and racing games with a steering wheel.

02-04-2017

Textiles group regular meet.

March

30-03-2017

Members' meeting - About a dozen people met up to discuss hackspace matters and the directors present informed us of recent developments.

17-03-2017

Textiles group regular meet.

16-03-2017

Event - Members met up for the third SoapBox build. Designs have been finalised and Lauren went away to get it drawn so we can send it in.

02-03-2017

Event - Iulian and other members met up for the second SoapBox build. We have received our paperwork and decided to build "The infernal music machine". We all got homework to look at videos of traps that we might encounter and come up with simple instruments to attach to the machine.

February

28-02-2017

Event - HackTheSpace#1 - Yves organised an inventory party to catalogue our major assets using his inventory app. Iulian, Peter and Matt W. helped out with the ground work and we were all happy with the results.

27-02-2017

• Iulian - Attempted to print with the Prusa's host server but the fillament wasn't behaving itself. Finished the print of my friend's head on the Ultimaker which performed admirably.

26-02-2017

• Iulian - Set up the VR computer for some Dirt Rally racing in VR.

• Iulian - Adjusted the tightness of the Ultimaker's new extruder to prevent leakage through the screw thread.

24-02-2017

• Iulian - Did a QA pass on the inventory app by attempting to inventory all the screwdrivers. Submitted some bugs.

23-02-2017

• Iulian and Peter - Helped out with electronics advice for the Quantum Computing teaching aid.

• Iulian - VR computer fully set up. Can now run the Oculus DK2. As a bonus it also plays Rocksmith, an electric guitar teaching game.

22-02-2017

• Iulian - Delivered Shop proposal to Yves who passed it on to the directors for feedback.

19-02-2017

Event - Second Textiles meeting. Smaller group (~6) but we have new members from the last session.

15-02-2017

• Yves and Iulian - Assembled a token reader circuit as part of OxHack's digital login system.

13-02-2017

• Iulian - Helped Joel with his super low energy harvesting circuit. Seems to be failing due to the forward breakdown curve of a diode not being digital.

07-02-2017

Event - GPG education and signing party organised by Dan Weatherill.

• Iulian - Cleaned the insides of my vinyl player. Still needs PAT tested before put to use.

• Iulian - Someone got rough with some USB headphones in the space. Soldered back the wire that was yanked off the controller board.

06-02-2017

• Iulian - Scouted Bookers for hackspace consumables. Found some useful items at good prices.

05-02-2017

Event - First Textiles meetup! More than half of the 21 participants had a project with them and the rest engaged in lively conversation. Most were positive about coming back.

• Iulian - Successfuly calibrated the DaVinci printer. The 3rd testing point was not properly screwed down so at some point it was pushed off the plate and therefore wasn't making contact. The values displayed also don't reflect the adjustments needed but the values at the test points and the akward geometry means there's no easy way to adjust it. After a successful calibration the prints were still not coming out ok so some blind adjustments needed to be made.

02-02-2017

• Matt W - made the unpleasant discovery this morning that the keyfob to my flat had suddenly disintegrated. Fixed it by sandwiching a big blue blob of Sugru inside it, custard cream style, and cleaning up the resulting ooze. Sorted.

• 

  Before

• 

  After

01-02-2017

• Iulian - Installed the software for the DaVinci AiO and attempted to get a test 3D print. Noticed ABS is loaded. First print turned out with holes on one side, which suggests miscalibration of the bed. Attempted to run the calibration sequence as instructed in the manual and it threw errors. Attempted to clean the head, the number of errors have reduced but it is still not calling it a successful calibration. Attempted a second print and it seems like it touches the plate, instead of extruding, so nothing is coming out and the filament is skipping when pushed. Will probably need a recommended copper wire brush to clean nozzle and sensor on the outside.

January

30-01-2017

• Iulian - Ordered parts to fix and upgrade Ultimaker. Will arrive in a couple of months. Registered domain and twitter for the Hackers in Oxford online community.

29-01-2017

• Iulian - Visited the local car boot and got a sheet sander and a learner's chemistry set.

28-01-2017

• Iulian - Tested DaVinci AiO software to get a better understanding of it, in preparation for commissioning it for members.

25-01-2017

• Iulian - Attempted to replace the Ultimaker nozzle with parts purchased, the PT100B thermometer was wedged in and after several members tried removing it, the cable snapped. We took a hacksaw to the nozzle and found the screw meant to hold it in place had bent it shut.

23-01-2017

• Event - Continuation of GGJ17 and submission of projects.
• Iulian - Continuation of the event. wrote a script to process files written in Twine and output the voices in the script using ESpeak. End of submission release can be found here.

22-01-2017

• Event - Organised a 2-day local event for Global Game Jam 2017. The theme was "Waves". The event was picked up last minute as the original venue decided they wouldn't host it due to low attendance, so we didn't have time to become an official venue. Nonetheless a team was formed.
• Iulian - Organised and participated in GGJ17. Formed a team of 4 and made a "surveillance van operator" game called Radio Tap. I worked on the 3D models for the UI, programmed some of the animations.

20-01-2017

• Yves - Got my receipt printer to work with my raspberry pi. Added HTTPS to Iulian's Mattermost server.
• Matt E. - Investigated Collatz Conjecture and Sand Piles

19-01-2017

• Flooding event - Basement toilet had a compounded failure of the drain and flush that lead to water overflowing and flooding most of the stairwell and almost got into the space. A number of volunteers rushed to stop the water from reaching the hackspace and damaging our side of the basement.
• Iulian - Designed an optical stereoscopic 360 viewer, that works using two periscopes to view a set of printed 360 images.

18-01-2017

• Iulian - Set up an AWS instance of Mattermost to get a new online community up and running.

15-01-2017

• Iulian - Tried installing Xamarin using Visual Studio for Mac. Had to attempt it a couple of times due to the little space I had available on my Air. Failed to install the appropriate Xamarin libraries correctly so I couldn't actually create any projects.

14-01-2017

• Event - Hosted JanJam, a game jam hosted by the @OxfordIndies community. The theme was "A Journey". Strong participation with loads of projects coming out, even a couple board games.

12-01-2017

• Iulian - Purchased stock for the fridge in preparation for JanJam. Installed game development tools on the designated CAD machine including Unity3D, Unreal Engine and Blender. Also started preparing the VR machine for game dev.