Intro to Programming the Arduino: Physical Pixels
Led by shop member Doug.

Build a physical pixel with your Arduino microcontroller.
In this introductory-level class, participants will:

• set up and configure the Arduino environment on their laptop
• learn basic electronics skills while building a small, functional circuit
  write code that:
  • explores the inputs and outputs offered by the Arduino platform
    reads a dimmer
  • controls the color of an RGB LED
  • sends messages to your laptop for status and debugging purposes
• meet interesting and like-minded people who are passionate about technology and the DIY ethic

Tickets and information.
Classes are open to the public as well as to members, you don’t have to be a member to attend!

The details:

WHAT: Finish It Friday
WHERE: HackPittsburgh, 1936 5th. Ave.
WHEN: Feb 3rd, 7pm
MINISTERS OF DONE: Us!

Photo by Luc, used with permission

Luc was first runner up in the Dec 2012 Cool-off, and we’re glad he can give us a more in-depth explanation behind his creation.

Free and open to the public.
Doors open at 7pm and the event will start shortly afterwards.
We’re at 1936 Fifth Avenue, in the garage around the back on Watson St.
Look for our flag over the door.

Join us Friday January 20th to learn how to use these analog mechanical calculators.
While mostly supplanted by digital electronics, many speciality slide rules are still in use today. We’ll have several different kinds on hand to show the wide-variety, and also to provide hands-on experience using them.
Thanks to the generosity of shop member Logan, we will also have several basic slide rules to give away!

Free and Open to the Public.
Doors open at 7pm and the event will start shortly after that.
We’re at 1936 Fifth Avenue, in the garage around back on Watson.
Look for our flag over the door.

Photo courtesy of US Air Force and Wikipedia

Join us this Friday (1/13/2012) for an Introduction to Welding with shop member Gabe.
Gabe will cover a little of the history of welding, safety, different welding processes: Tig, Mig, Arc, and some key terms to each. He’ll go into details on the welder and welding processes we have in the shop: Mig and fluxcore (GNAW and FCAW).
Sample welds of various techniques, both good and bad, will be on-hand for comparison. He’ll have a short demo of welding of platesteel and maybe of sheet metal.
Note: This is not a welding class. Due to liability issues this is not a hands-on welding experience.

Free and Open to the Public.
Doors open at 7pm and the event will start shortly after that.
We’re at 1936 Fifth Avenue, in the garage around back on Watson.
Look for our flag over the garage door.

The Maker/Hacker movement is exploding all around the globe,
including right here in Pittsburgh.

What is a Hackerspace? Why should I join? What will I get out of it and how?

Join us this Friday (1/6/12) and we’ll answer those questions. We’ll cover some of the projects we did last year; we’ll talk about some upcoming/potential group shop projects that are looking for folks who want to work on larger projects; we’ll end with some guidance on how to use a Hackerspace (ours!). We’re a great resource/place/community… as member Matt likes to say: “I learn something new every time I’m in the shop.”

Summary: WE DO COOL SH… STUFF. WE HAVE FUN DOING IT. YOU CAN TOO!

Free and Open to the Public.
Doors open at 7pm and the talk will start shortly after that.
We’re at 1936 Fifth Avenue, in the garage around back on Watson.
Look for our flag over the garage door.

Brief highlights of what we did this year:

Mini Maker Faire Pittsburgh

Our BIGGEST event! On Oct 23rd we co-hosted with the Children’s Museum Pittsburgh’s First (Mini) Maker Faire. Almost every shop member participated in some way, many in large ways, and we had a great turn out. Several members had booths presenting their own projects as well.

MakerFaire Detroit
Our second Biggest event, involving many members of the shop; the PowerWheels Race Car was our shop-wide project for this event and we took second place in the drag race on our very first year competing.

We launched our fourth Near-Space Balloon on August 27th. Many members worked in advance of the flight, with our biggest launch team to date making the road trip to Ohio. The left-over helium was used for our follow on Ping Pong Ball Drop project, where over the course of nearly two months we launched over 120 ping pong balls; the furthest recovery was reported in upstate New York.

We appeared in HACK THIS by John Baichtal, including the Hack-Signal and the two balloon projects just mentioned.

Dayton Hamvention at the end of May was a big event for the Ham Radio operators in the shop and the second year we’ve been representin’ there.

Classes:

From time to time we offer classes or workshops where we can go deeper in depth on a subject than we have time for during a Friday night talk. Classes are open to the public (past classes have drawn attendees from several states away). Our goal is community outreach and education as well as getting folks into and exposed to the shop and what we do here. (Instructors donate their time, ticket prices cover the cost of materials and little extra as a small fund raising.) This past year was soldering focused:
* Learn to solder with the Wayne & Layne Video Game Shield Kit
* Learn to Solder EL-Wire
* “The Maker Experience” – a special event for students of an English class at the University of Pittsburgh who had an evening in the shop, which included soldering.

Outside groups:

We open our space to several open-to-the-public outside groups who need a place to meet. Our goals here are to help out the larger community, and to get folks in to our shop who might not have exposure to it another way.

* The Pittsburgh Knot tying club
* The jQuery Users Group
* LoopPgh (Adobe and UX group)
* The Lock Picking Club
* Open Fabrication Users Group

Collaborations:

* Mini Maker Faire Pittsburgh w/The Children’s Museum (see above)
* BirdBrain Labs has been bringing their Tech-To-Go Shop to our Friday night events for folks who need electronics delivered, or who want to pick up something on the spot.
* The Cyberpunk Apocalypse’s 2011 Cool-Off
* Python Coding Sprint (also a Friday Night event)
* Python Coding Spring for the Gibson project
* Cheerlights on Make Live – we hosted Hans Scharler from IOBridge and served as the set for his featured on Make Live! video about the Cheerlights project.

Friday Night events:

The shop is open to the public every Friday night with a talk, demo, or other event. Our goal is two fold: to get folks into the shop to see our space and what we do, and to provide education and entertainment to our members and the community. Presenters come both from our membership ranks and outside folks; they donate their time to come in and talk about, and sometimes demo, the cool stuff they’re doing.

Connecting an Arduino to an Android Phone

Transit in Pittsburgh, Open Maps, etc.

Intro to Inkscape and EMSL’s Egg-Bot

Crafting night

Making Oil Lamps

Making Bath Fizzies

Intro to Schematics and Circuit Simulation

Intro to Beekeeping

Intro to Man-in-the-middle Network Attacks

CMKT-4 (a “Prehistoric Circuit Bent Acid Rock” Band)

Intro to Circuit bending (w/ Kevin Smith from CMKT-4)

Hacking Guns

Yurt Building

Intro to EL-Wire

Intro to APRS: xastir and APRSIS (Ham Radio)

Intro to GIBSON (network intrusion visualization)

Intro to Robotics

Frequent Flyer Hacks

Intro to Needle Felting

LED Yarn Bombing

Intro to Vacuforming

Kipp – Network HoneyPots

Green Cleaning

Interaction and Industrial Design: IxDA and ISDA

IOBridge: Demo of Upcoming Products

Miracle Fruit Tasting

Spark Gap Speakers

CypherStyles: Turn Your Hobby into a Business

SpareRoom Shop’s Vinyl Cutting demo

Obscure Games

LEDs and Needle Felting: Glowing Ghosts

Intro to OpenSCAD and 3D Printing

Make your own Candles

Make your own Didgeridoo

Making holiday ornaments with EMSL’s Egg-Bot

Making Origami Ornaments

• Learn to Solder: Arduino! – Sat Feb 11th

Led by shop member Matt B.
We will guide you through the process of building an Arduino from a kit. This class will teach you to solder or help you practice your skills if they are a little rusty. You will also learn how the hardware of an Arduino works as you assemble each section of the board. Kits will be provided and in the end you will go home with your brand new DIY Arduino ready to make your project dreams come true.
Tickets and information.

• Intro to Creative Coding with Processing – Sat Feb 25th

Led by shop member Val.
Are you an artist or designer who is curious about using code creatively? This workshop will get you started on exactly that! We’ll start with the basics of Processing and work our way through drawing shapes and building interactive sketches. The focus will be on demystifying visual programming concepts and giving you a foundation to build on for future exploration.
No programming experience necessary. None at all. Really! This workshop is especially for designers and artists who want to get started with visual programming.
Each workshop ticket covers the cost of lunch as well as a copy of the book Getting Started With Processing.
Note: You must bring your own laptop. (We supply internet connectivity.)
Tickets and information.

Classes are open to the public as well as to members, you don’t have to be a member to attend!

Thanks to shop member Sarita(*) we now have a flag pole mount where we can “Hoist the Colors” when we’re in the shop for meetings and other events. The flag can be flown at an angle, or horizontally for even better visibility.
(*) shown operating the experimental hoisting pole for a horizontal presentation.

We run free and open to the public events every Friday night. Scroll down the list here to see what we are planning and what we have been doing.

We owe a huge thanks to Hans Scharler (@scharler) of IOBridge who came in to the shop last Friday to film the CheerLights segment that appeared on this past Wednesday’s Make Live show.

Credit where credit is due, though it might appear that CheerLights is a HackPittsburgh project, we were just the set for the video. We do very much appreciate the exposure. Hans drove several hours to get to our shop to film the segment for Make Live, but CheerLights is his project, and we’re happy to be a part of helping to promote it.