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On Friday July 30th, if you aren’t already strolling through Maker Faire Detroit, come out to the space and play with some old-skool on-the-go daily-living computer interface tech including the latest Vuzix AR glasses and Twiddler.

This is a free open to the public event so come out and bring your friends.  Doors will be open at 7pm.  HackPittsburgh is located at 1936 5th Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15221, in the garage around back.

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You may be asking yourself at this very moment…”How is it that another Friday night has come and I have chosen to do another mundane activity?” My answer to you friends is this: Don’t fear for something much better is happening tonight than you could ever have imagined! Enter OPEN SHOP FRIDAY. Nothing is planned and the attendees are all in question, but one thing is for certain. GOOD TIMES ARE AVAILABLE TO ALL WHO SHOW UP!
Make your way out to HackPittsburgh tonight for an Open Shop Friday. People will be prepping for MakerFaire Detroit, having fun, working on projects, networking, and doing other awesome things that could only happen in Pittsburgh’s Premier Hackerspace! So forget about those boring plans you had to go to a baseball game, amusement park, GWAR show or wine fondue party, none will compare to the fun that can be had tonight at HackPittsburgh!

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How to turn an idea into a salable product.
This Friday night (7-9-10) come hear HackPittsburgh member Matthew Beckler talk about how his company, Wayne and Layne, LLC, took an idea and developed it into a product, using their first electronics kit, the Tactile Metronome, as an example. Topics to be discussed include market research, prototyping, part sourcing, marketing, and order fulfillment.

This event is free and open to the public.  Stop in for the presentation, and then hang out for the evening to join in the rest of the fun! HackPittsburgh is located at 1936 5th Ave. in Pittsburgh, PA. The entrance can be found around back on Watson Street, next to the big yellow garage door. Doors open at 7pm, and the presentation will start shortly afterwards. We hope to see you there!

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This Friday we will be making RECORD BOWLS!!!! Don’t miss out, this event is open to the public as well. We have a decent supply of records but feel free to bring your own. The shop will be open @ 6:00 and anyone is welcome. Come out, hang out, have fun, create and make stuff!!!! After all that is why we are here!

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In this class, Marek Michalowski of Dirty Robot Brew Works and Jon Speicher will present the history, techniques, and equipment behind a range of fermented carbonated beverages.  As a hands-on activity, we’ll be crafting an old-fashioned root beer from all-natural ingredients.  Over the course of the activity, we’ll discuss how the same processes of cooking, fermenting, bottling, and kegging can be applied to home-brewing your own beer, mead, and sodas.  Participants will take home their own freshly-capped bottles of root beer to enjoy on these warm summer afternoons.

The class will be on Saturday June 26th at 12PM.  Tickets are on sale now!

http://fizzydrinks1.eventbrite.com

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Two weekends ago, a group of determined HackPittsburgh members made a pilgrimage, for many of them their first, to Dayton, Ohio for the annual Hamvention. Little did they know that the journey they had decided to take would lead to an incredible time for all. Members Matt, Mandy, Marty, Andy, Isaac, Doug, Sayan, and Chris and his Dad all made the trip into the depths of Ohio. It took nearly all 3 days of the convention for all members to cycle through the entirety of what was the Hamvention.

All were treated to a massive flea market that hosted everything from old time tubes and radios, to the newest and latest of kits and components. Inside was strewn with vendors and manufacturers showing off their newest and greatest products. Within the group almost all of us purchased a new or used radio. We’d like to give a shout out to the guys at Universal Radio for having excellent customer service and having the products we wanted and at great prices!

While there, we ran into Make’s own Diana Eng. She’s featured on the Make blog with some awesome ham articles and antenna projects. We also got to watch the launch of a near-space balloon flight. This gave us a lot of inspiration and ideas for how to get our own off the ground.

Feel free to view some of the pictures we took @

HamFest 2010 Flickr

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Join us at HackPittsburgh this Friday, May 21st at 7pm, and learn a little bit about woodworking. We’ll review some of the tools available to members in the shop, run through a list of resources for beginning and experienced woodworkers in and around Pittsburgh, and learn a quick-and-easy way to sharpen chisels, planes, and other flat blades on a budget.

Shop member Dean Jackson will bring in a few sample projects he’s built in the past, demonstrate some of the steps to build them, and give a few resources for finding interesting project ideas for any skill level. Example pieces include Atari-themed cutting boards, Asian lanterns, and a hack or two for the table saw to make safer and more accurate cuts.

As with all Friday events, this is open to the public! HackPittsburgh is located at 1936 5th Ave. in Pittsburgh, PA. The entrance can be found around back on Watson Street, next to the big yellow garage door. Doors open at 6pm, and the presentation will start at 7pm. We hope to see you there!

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The HackPGH crew is headed to Dayton, OH this weekend for the Dayton Hamvention.  Some of us have been there before, but for many of us it’s our first time.  We are excited to see the sights and meet up with people there.  If you are going to Dayton (and really why wouldn’t you be) and would like to meet up with us then shoot us an email or reply @HackPGH on twitter.  We are hoping to plan some kind of meet up one night so watch us on twitter for details.

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On Sunday May 2nd HackPGH members Doug Philips, Sayan Chakraborty, and Matt Stultz put the amateur radio skills that they acquired at HackPittsburgh to good use by helping out with the Pittsburgh Marathon.  Each year hams from around the community volunteer to help provide critical communications for the marathon.  These jobs include passing on position information of the runners in the race and keeping the medical staff up to date on any medical emergencies.

We learned a lot while having fun doing it and went home feeling great about helping our community. Hopefully next year we can do it again, just without the rain.

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Attention amateur radio operators!  This Friday at 7pm, join us at HackPittsburgh and learn about the Narrow Band Emergency Messaging System (NBEMS). Harry Bloomberg, an Assistant Section Emergency Coordinator for the Western PA Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), will talk about ARES, how the services works for Western PA and his responsibilities there.

Harry will also give us a rundown and a demo of the Open Source NBEMS  package, which allows lists of data to be sent successfully over ham radio during an emergency.

As with all Friday events at HackPittsburgh, this NBEMS talk and demo with Harry Bloomberg is open to the public!  HackPittsburgh is located at 1936 5th Ave. in Pittsburgh, PA.  The entrance can be found around back on Watson Street, next to the big yellow garage door.  Doors open at 6pm, and Harry will take the stage at 7pm.  We hope to see you there!

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