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The Detroit Makerfaire was a blast. We talked to lots of hackers, and showed off lots of cool projects, winning 5 Editor's Choice awards for various projects, and at least 1 Makerbot Awesome award. Short re-cap here: http://www.lvl1.org/2011/08/01/thank-you-maker-faire/ The fire-breathing pony is really making the rounds this morning: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/01/maker-faire-pony-has-wiimote-controlled-indigestion-belches-fir/ Even Team Coco loves it: http://teamcoco.com/content/it-came-intertubes-fire-breathing-pony-edition
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Aug 1, 2011 19:54
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What are you using for fuel in that thing? It looks like it needed to be pumped during the demo, so I'm guessing something liquid that you pressurize.
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Aug 2, 2011 18:01
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Simple cans of starting fluid.
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Aug 2, 2011 19:49
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Hillridge your hackerspace looks amazing, I'm really jealous. I just found out and went to my first meeting in the makerspace here in Dallas. Makerspace because it's a lot more than electronics - sewing, painting, photography (dark room! with cool revolving door!), wood working, and metal working. Oh, and a biolab (and something like 2 PHDs in biology). They just moved into a new facility in Dallas with 4000 sq feet, half of which is air conditioned rooms and the other half a big warehouse. Everything is in a bit of a disarray right now but the group has only been together like half a year or so and is already at 50+ members and a good facility. It's unfortunately like an hour drive for me, which sucks, but there's really no where else I can do metalworking short of renting my own shop. Membership is only $50/month which is hard to beat for a place to work. Unfortunately there's little in the way of tools that I need, but that will hopefully be fixed within a few months. Everyone there is quite interesting but also very interested/talented in what they do. http://dallasmakerspace.org/blog/
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Aug 7, 2011 04:38
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Hackerspace, Makerspace, Potato, Potahto. We're a "makerspace" in front of anyone that might sensationalize over the "hackerspace" moniker, but it's all the same. We do as much sewing and woodworking as anything else. It's all about the community and the space. Our prez has taken to giving the movement the demonym "spacer," since all groups end up eventually referring to the locale as "the space."
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Aug 8, 2011 16:37
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Zuph posted:Hackerspace, Makerspace, Potato, Potahto. I always hated the goddamn hacker/maker moniker that everyone seems to apply to people who build random things. Honestly, spacer seems somewhat better.
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Aug 10, 2011 05:16
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I refer to it as a membership based open access workshop. We don' really have a name for the people in it. This past week we took a gokart someone had left behind, put a bigger engine it in, added blue under glow, headlights and taillights, and tried (semi-successfully) to turn the tailpipe into a flame thrower. We didn't have the right size gear laying around, so we used a much smaller one for the drive gear. Result? very little takeoff acceleration, but a dangerously high top speed of 50+mph.
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Aug 13, 2011 16:29
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Hillridge posted:I refer to it as a membership based open access workshop. We don' really have a name for the people in it. Sounds a bit like something a few of our guys have been working on:  DRC_9059.JPG by OculusLVL1, on Flickr Also, work has begun on a project which will allow you to explode watermelons with your mind:  DSC_9073.JPG by OculusLVL1, on Flickr
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Aug 13, 2011 16:45
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Needs more duct tape and zip ties: Yes, the gas tank is taped on at the moment: 
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Aug 13, 2011 22:13
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I strongly feel like Zuph and Hillridge's last posts ought to be combined somehow. Go-kart demolition derby with psychically exploding watermelons?
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Aug 17, 2011 20:54
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So the hackerspace I do some work at thegeekgroup.org is trying to win a contest youtube is putting on. If you win you get put on the main page for some length of time and some other enhancements that increase awareness. http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/08/augusts-on-rise-nominees.html Here is a plea from the founder for more votes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf8jZI4RI7Q Vote goons vote!
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Aug 19, 2011 19:25
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We needed the lift to work on the shop mustang
Hillridge fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Aug 26, 2011 |
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Aug 26, 2011 03:44
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Um, ignore this, my question was better-suited for the General Questions thread. But I do have a question about TechShop in San Francisco- is a membership worth it if I've got a wife interested in silk screening and a 4 year-old daughter equally interested in making clothes and robots?
Plastic Jesus fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Sep 13, 2011 |
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Sep 13, 2011 06:33
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Has anyone been to the Houston hackerspace, TX/RX Labs? I work at a local store that sells the kind of stuff electronics nerds need (I've also been told explicitly not to mention TX/RX at work- my manager insists that TX/RX steals his customers), and some of the classes they offer look tempting; knowing how to actually use the things I sell would be kind of a bonus!  They look pretty good on the website, but that doesn't mean anything.
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Sep 16, 2011 22:41
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I make it out to Tx/Rx about one a month or so, sometimes more frequently. It's a cool place with lots of neat people--I think the Friday night gatherings are usually 20-30 plus, grilling, beers, and other socializing. We've got a lot of welding gear, a couple of large CNC machines, a pretty large/long electronics bench with a lot of test equipment, and a few machines of the Makerbot/Mendel variety. There's also a wet lab, but I don't know much about that. One of the coolest things we do is teach classes! We've got several in rotation, and the fall class season is starting in a week or so (check here: http://www.txrxlabs.org/2011/09/09/fall-class-schedule-posted/). We'd love to see folks come out, and everyone is always pretty friendly. We've also got a small computer science study group going, and have quite a bit of old enterprise hardware to screw around on if you like distributed computing or whatnot. 
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Sep 29, 2011 06:11
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Poor Communist posted:I make it out to Tx/Rx about one a month or so, sometimes more frequently. It's a cool place with lots of neat people--I think the Friday night gatherings are usually 20-30 plus, grilling, beers, and other socializing. Oh yeah, I def want to hit up the soldering class, in the very least. It's good to hear it's a good group over there.
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Oct 2, 2011 17:11
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Repped the Hackerspace at the local hacker con. DerbyCon (http://www.derbycon.com) held its first event this weekend. We held the Friday afterparty, and hosted about 100 hackers (mostly members of spaces), and had a great time. Taught a lot of people to solder, were interviewed by Hak5 and the Tokyo Broadcasting System. The fire pony rides again. Plenty of pictures of the mayhem: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lvl1 The local lock pick group brought a lock picking game. 8 players attempt to pick simple deadbolts. Shakers attached to the deadbolts make the task more difficult, and when someone open a lock, everyone else is dispense a shot.
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Oct 3, 2011 01:30
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Karma Guard posted:Has anyone been to the Houston hackerspace, TX/RX Labs? Please don't tell me you work at the Outlet on F road. If you do I know your boss kinda well, and I wouldn't doubt he would think that. I have been a customer for 7 years or so. I have been meaning to join TX/RX for a while, im a big time welder/machinest. But I would be paying $80 to do what I do in my own garage. I still have been meaning to join to make some like minded friends, and help teach people welding. I live in the willow brook area so it's quite a drive too. From reading their mailing list they don't seem very organized and they were even doing some bitcoin mining, something I find very funny. I think im waiting on someone to propose a big project im interested in. I will give them credit they have come a long way since the Caroline collective days. Would any of you like to make a plans to go down there sometime? It would be nice to know some people to break the ice. evilhat fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Oct 8, 2011 |
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Oct 8, 2011 02:18
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We're doing a halloween party at Site 3 this week, if anyone in Toronto wants to check it out: We'll have some fire artists and lots of horrible things being done to pumpkins. I haven't been in the shop for several days now, so I'm just hoping that there won't be a cache of pumpkin seeds in the laser cutter collecting tray.
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Oct 25, 2011 19:01
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I'm going to be starting up a space with another guy in Minot ND. Hopefully we'll be able to find enough people to make it actually take off. There is not a whole lot of available space. Rent is going to be costly due to the oil boom and 2011 flood. The city has 45k people (about a third is the Air Force Base) so I'm worried there won't be a large enough amount of people to make this thing get going. Anybody have any advice or pitfalls to avoid that you could share?
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Nov 25, 2011 06:54
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One of our members brought in a bunch of chocolate bars and fired up the laser cutter at this week's open house night: 
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Dec 25, 2011 10:14
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LVL1 has gotten some flak over time for not stratifying membership levels. As a whole, we think it's important to keep all members equal in that respect. Now there's a member-driven alternative, though: http://www.lvl1.org/2012/01/01/lvl1-awarding-two-new-makerships-in-2012/ Thanks to member donations, we're offering two "makerships," which come with 3 months of membership and $100 for a project. The funds for this have come entirely from the membership, none from the club. As far as I'm aware, LVL1 is the first hackerspace to do something like this.
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Jan 3, 2012 13:44
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Toadsoup posted:Anybody have any advice or pitfalls to avoid that you could share? Have the local officials inspect your potential location before you sign a lease. Also, talk to the local chamber of commerce, they may be happy to help you out. My space (MakeIt Labs) got raided swat team style by the city's building permit folk, fire marshals, and anyone else that was free that day. We'd had 3-4 front page articles in the city's paper but it took a piece in the lifestyles section of a neighboring city's Sunday paper to get their attention. The bad news is that they shut us down until we fix stuff. Some of it is our fault, but a lot of the problems were there when we moved in. The biggest pain in the rear end is that we need to make our bathroom ADA compliant since it is new construction. It was built slightly elevated, so we either need a 24' ramp or to redo it at ground level. The good news is that the city really likes us and what we do. The Chamber of Commerce and the Economic Development Committee have been supporting us 100% and have helped to move things through the permit office much faster than it would normally happen. We may also get a loan through them. We're officially allowed to be in the space again for the purpose of bringing it all up to code, but we can't do normal activities yet. We're hoping to be fully open again by the end of the month.
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Jan 4, 2012 22:33
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Hillridge posted:The biggest pain in the rear end is that we need to make our bathroom ADA compliant since it is new construction. It was built slightly elevated, so we either need a 24' ramp or to redo it at ground level. Sucks, dude  You can't just have two burly men standing by to give wheelchair-bound people a lift?
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Jan 5, 2012 05:13
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ante posted:Sucks, dude The obvious hackerspace answer is some sort of Arduino controlled automatic elevator.
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Jan 5, 2012 05:24
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We're officially open again! It took us 2 months of work, but the city has signed off on everything and we've been allowed to resume "normal" operations. If anyone is going to be in the area (Nashua, NH) this weekend, we're having a party/openhouse from 10-6 this Saturday the 18th.
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Feb 14, 2012 20:39
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Hillridge posted:We're officially open again! I grew up in Nashua and moved away last year, i am kicking myself for not stopping by when I still lived there. There was an article or two in thr telegraph about you guys, right? Anyway, if i take leave in April and head home I will definitely stop by.
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Feb 19, 2012 16:55
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Does anyone have any experience with Hackerspaces in the Seattle area? hackerspaces.org lists quite a few and I've checked out their websites, but there is nothing like first hand experiences/reputation to go along with the stuff online. I do have to say the monthly fees look ridiculous (ALTSpace goes from $50 up to $200!!!), but if the places are worth it, it may still be a worthwhile expense.
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Feb 19, 2012 21:53
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Can't vouch for any of yours but fees are why I'm not a member of HackLab in Toronto. Their equipment list is pretty much "well we've got a homemade power supply that might work, and we've got some basic tools, but we've also got this laser engraver that we use to put pictures on hamburgers and laptop lids!!!!" I mean poo poo my own personal inventory of tools is higher quality and more comprehensive all for the price of a few months of fees. Yeah I don't have the dumb gimmicky laser engraver, but I think I can live without that.
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Feb 19, 2012 23:17
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BattleMaster posted:Can't vouch for any of yours but fees are why I'm not a member of HackLab in Toronto. Their equipment list is pretty much "well we've got a homemade power supply that might work, and we've got some basic tools, but we've also got this laser engraver that we use to put pictures on hamburgers and laptop lids!!!!" Well, Hacklab is more of a straight up hackerspace than a makerspace, so it's not really meant to be a place to use heavy-duty power tools. Have you come out to Site 3 before?
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Feb 19, 2012 23:29
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BattleMaster posted:Can't vouch for any of yours but fees are why I'm not a member of HackLab in Toronto. Their equipment list is pretty much "well we've got a homemade power supply that might work, and we've got some basic tools, but we've also got this laser engraver that we use to put pictures on hamburgers and laptop lids!!!!" I was in the same boat when I joined forces with the space I currently help run. Other than a drill press they literally had nothing I didn't have, but I liked the people and the idea so I joined up anyway. When we moved to a much bigger space we restructured from one guy running it to a 5 person board. We've since tried to focus on maintaining that community feel but also having things most people don't. We do have a laser engraver/cutter, but I wouldn't call it gimicky. We've had people come from several states away to use it, and I've seen some really cool stuff come out of there. We also have an auto lift, kilns, a TIG welder, CNC stuff, and a pottery wheel among other things. The community is still the best resource in the space though. If you don't know how to do something, someone will.
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Feb 20, 2012 04:22
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Anyone here frequent one of the Boston area sites?
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Mar 25, 2012 14:51
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A lot of our guys are also familiar with the Boston sites (especially Artisan's). What are you looking for?
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Mar 26, 2012 21:33
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Any folks in PDX been out to ADX?
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Mar 26, 2012 22:06
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Hillridge posted:A lot of our guys are also familiar with the Boston sites (especially Artisan's). What are you looking for? I went by artisan's (seems to be the only one non university affiliated) but it seemed to be more geared towards small crafting businesses. I had more of a picture of people sitting around playing with electricity and lasers and stuff. Maybe I should go to some sort of event. The classes might be nice but they seemed way expensive unless I was missing something. Maybe I should try visiting Nashua...
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Mar 27, 2012 03:34
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Hey guys, we've been getting some really good traction on this one: http://www.lvl1.org/2012/04/13/lvl1-boneyard-hackathon-2012/ I'm helping organize a hackathon at LVL1 in Louisville, KY. Like most hackerspaces, we have a basement full of crap. This is a competition to see who can turn the crap into something really cool. I've been floored by the reception so far. If anyone's within driving distance of Louisville, I encourage you to get a team put together, and drive on up. It'll be a blast.
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Apr 19, 2012 02:00
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Invicta{HOG}, M.D. posted:I went by artisan's (seems to be the only one non university affiliated) but it seemed to be more geared towards small crafting businesses. I had more of a picture of people sitting around playing with electricity and lasers and stuff. Maybe I should go to some sort of event. The classes might be nice but they seemed way expensive unless I was missing something. Maybe I should try visiting Nashua... That's pretty much what we do, play with lasers and electricity and stuff. We also seem to have more of an industrial/automotive slant to us than most hackerspaces. You should definitely come by sometime. Send me a PM if you plan on being in the area.
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Apr 19, 2012 19:12
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Zuph posted:Hey guys, we've been getting some really good traction on this one: http://www.lvl1.org/2012/04/13/lvl1-boneyard-hackathon-2012/ This is awesome and I am totally stealing ideas for our space.
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Apr 19, 2012 19:13
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Zuph posted:Hey guys, we've been getting some really good traction on this one: http://www.lvl1.org/2012/04/13/lvl1-boneyard-hackathon-2012/ Saw LVL1 on hackaday today. Props!
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Apr 20, 2012 01:47
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Hillridge posted:This is awesome and I am totally stealing ideas for our space. Go for it! I'd love to see what your guys can throw together. We've already got 4 teams signed up. Two have never been by the space before. Delta-Wye posted:Saw LVL1 on hackaday today. Props! Thanks! I don't know how, but Jose manages to get on Hack-a-day anytime he sneezes at electronics. It must be his wire-wrap and impeccable perfboarding  .
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Apr 20, 2012 12:19
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