Following the Government’s latest advice (23/3/2020), we are now obliged to close the space until further notice. (The advice is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-to-the-nation-on-coronavirus-23-march-2020 )

There are several reasons for this:

1. The government’s advice suggests we might be breaking the law to remain open (in spirit if not in letter).
2. We have a duty to each other to reduce the spread of this disease, and as the incidence of it continues to increase in our area, we must make sure we don’t make this problem worse by allowing it to spread between each other.
3. Commercial Union House has also been obliged to close, so in practice, we would also have to close regardless.

We know how important our community is to each other, as a source of friends, ideas, and conversation – while the physical space is closed (and alas, we can’t access our tools etc), it’s important that we have a way to keep in contact if we want to.

We’re working on this right now (likely to be based on Matrix.org). If this interests you, keep an eye out on the NE Makers discussion list.

Yours,

The Maker Space Board

Due to the updated Government advice regarding social distancing to reduce the spread of COVID-19, Makerspace has taken the decision to CANCEL Welcome Wednesday and any other public-access events with immediate effect.

So, it will not be happening this week, and will not happen again until the government advice or situation changes.
This means that the space will not be open to receive non-members or guests, and the social visit to the pub will also not happen.

For members ONLY, the space will be accessable, but you should only come in if:

You need to work on, or collect something from the space
You are feeling well, with no temperature and no new cough symptoms, AND nobody in your household is self isolating.

If you are a member, and are going to come in to the space, please:

do not come in if you are unwell
do not come in just to socialise
please respect other members’ personal space and do not get close to them if this can be avoided.
ensure good hand hygiene (ie regularly wash them), and use a tissue to catch coughs/sneezes (see note above about not coming in if you have a new cough!)

Government advice may well change again (it is likely to become more restrictive) and if this happens the space may need to be closed to everyone, so if you have some things in the space that you would not want to lose access to, it would a good opportunity to take them home as soon as possible.
Ideally if we did close the space, we would aim to give people an opportunity to get their things, but we cannot guarantee this.

Thank you all for your cooperation with this.

If you don’t already know,  we host weekly visitor evenings. Here’s the lowdown

What is Welcome Wednesday?

Welcome Wednesday is our public open night to give visitors a chance to pop in and see what Maker Space is all about.

How do I attend, do I need to book ?

No booking as required, just turn up here between 6pm and 8pm

Come in by the main building entrance and look for the light up sign.

Signs will show you the rest of the way.

Who will be there?

You will usually find a good mix of current Maker Space members and old and new visitors. Some will be chatting, some may be working on projects.

Is it ok to talk to people who are working on things? I don’t want to disturb anyone.

Yes, don’t be afraid to ask people what they are doing,  you won’t be disturbing them. It is very much understood by our members that Wednesday is more of a social night than a night for quietly getting on with something undisturbed.

Can I bring my own project to discuss or work on?

Yes we encourage visitors to get involved and to make use of the Space and our tools and knowledge  (though some larger tools such as the laser cutter and lathe are off limits to visitors because they require a full safety induction and training).

What if I don’t have anything to work on?

Just pop in for a tour, a chat and a cuppa

I want to see what Maker Space is about but I’m not interested in joining yet. I don’t want to commit to anything

Don’t worry, visitors night is just that, a night for you to visit and see the place. You’ll never get the hard sell to join us. Though if you are interested we will of course give you all the info you need to get started.

I can’t make it until later on is that ok?

Yes you can pop in anytime between 6pm-8pm. There may still be people around after 8,  but between 8-8:30 we are usually packing up to leave. Many of us head off to the local pub after that, to continue dicussions and get a bite to eat. Anyone is welcome to join us there.

Wednesday is difficult for me,  is there any other day I can visit?

We strongly encourage you to try to get along on a Wednesday as you’ll get to meet more people and see more stuff going on,  but if Wednesday is an absolute no go for you and you are VERY keen to visit,  we can sometimes accommodate another day. This is down to the individual keyholder on the night as to whether they have the time to take you around,  so please contact us to request this or introduce yourself on the discussion group and request there.

Anymore questions ?

Just pop them in the comments box below.

The scanning process uses a digital camera and a projector. The projects projects light patterns onto the scene being scanned and the digital camera to capture the scene. The object being scanned is typically placed on a turntable so that all sides can be presented to the camera/projector set up. As the model is rotated on the turn table, images are collected by the camera from which the David Scan software generates 3d information about the scene.

The system demonstrated was a single camera set-up and was bought as a complete kit (calibration plate, camera, projector, software, turntable). The aproximate cost of the set-up was £4000, definitely positioning it towards the ‘pro’ end of the market.

The camera and the protector are mounted securely onto an aluminium beam (the red beam in the photographs). This creates a fixed relationship between the camera and the projector. It is important that this doesn’t change during the scanning process. The beam can then be mounted onto a tripod for ease of handling. The camera and projector are connected to a computer (Jason used a powerful laptop).

The calibration plates are used to calibrate the camera and projector pairing at the beginning of each scan. The two glass plates are (painted) white and have a grids of black dots. They are held at 90 degrees to each other with a bracket. Different sized dot grids are present in order that the camera set up can be calibrated for different sized objects/scenes (between 60 to 500 mm). Once calibrated, a resolution of up to 0.05% of scan size (up to .05 mm) can be achieved.

During calibration, the projector projects a series of black and white patterns onto the calibration plate. The camera captures the resulting scene and the David Scan software calculates the relationship between the camera and projector. Once calibrated, so long as the relationship between the camera and projector dosn’t not change, they can be moved around and will scan any scene they are pointed at.

In order to simplify the scanning process, a scan of the ‘background’ (minus the object to be scanned, but including the turntable) can be taken which can be subtracted from every subsequent scan so long as the camera/projector are not moved. Hence the use of a tripod. This is analogous with the way cameras on laptops can remove the background and superimpose a different background during video chat sessions so long as they are held static.

Image showing the calibration plate (top left), turntable (top centre), camera/projector set up (top right), and laptop running the David Scan software (foreground).

Jason set a small object (a Frankenstein’s monster toy) on the turntable and set the system up to take around 20 scans (18 degrees of rotation each time). The scanning process only took a few minutes. Each scan involves the projector projecting a series of black and while patterns (the structured light) onto the model followed by red, green, and blue in order to collect colour channel information. Because a background reference scan (sans model) had been taken, that was able to be subtracted from each scan. Hence only information that is different from the first ‘background’ scan is kept. The David scan software does a pretty good job of aligning the scanned geometry, but a degree of post processing is typically required.

Here the structured light projection can be seen. The calibration plates are just behind the model, but once used for the ignition camera/projector calibration, they are not needed again.

Upon inspection, it was found that the scan had some information missing, so Jason ran another scan of the missing area with the camera/projector lowered to a different angle. Again this data was aligned, and stitched together with the first lot of scanned data. The resulting scan was very impressive (see below).

Image showing the original object and the 3d geometry created using the David Scan equipment/software. The software doesn’t show it, but the colour information collected was also very accurate.

Other things learnt from the demo:

• Not all object scan well. The equipment has difficulty resolving objects or features that are very shiny or very dull (matt black). In some instances, this can be overcome by spraying the object prior to scanning. The SKD-S2 substance can be used (although it is expensive), but there are also cheaper alternatives. I can’t remember what these were so if anyone else can (or Jason?), please amend/add here.
• Once the mesh model has been generated, it can be imported into Instant Mesh, a free ‘re-meshing’ program that allows to to add directionality to ‘quad’ mesh models.
• Jason offers a scanning and modelling service (google: Jason Spiller modelling).

Hope this was useful, any questions contact Jason or myself.

Android development seems only ever to be taught through the suggestion you should ‘use eclipse’ (or another IDE) and not worry about the ‘magic’ that compiles your various files in to your output apk.

I’m not a fan of that kind of thinking!

I like text editors, compilers, archive tools and knowing what applications are involved – it makes it all more real and helps track and fix problems when they occur.  I reluctantly admit the integration in an IDE generally provides some useful functionality, but it usually comes inextricably linked with a cost that developers worry less about keeping track of things in their head.

Given my introductory rant above, I’m now going to dump a ‘magic’ script here… android_cli_env.sh

The envisaged usage would be:


$ vi android_cli_env.sh # set up paths and project name
$ source android_cli_env.sh
$ mkProject
$ compile
$ startVM
$ testApp

For those who are interested to know more they can read the bash script to see what it does, or read the article that I eventually found that explains the various tools involved.

I hope that’s useful to someone, I may put some links to ‘getting started’ up here at some point as people have said they’re interested in Android dev in the past…

** This post was edited on 9th June 2016 as a result of  feedback provided by comments posted at http://hackaday.com/2016/06/02/safely-creating-a-li-ion-pack-from-phone-cells/ **

This is a write up of how I made up a very cheap 1000mAh battery pack to run a couple of devices for my quadcopter flying, namely my RC Controller and my FPV headset.

Normally such devices would be run from small Lithium Polymer batteries.  But, “Li-po” batteries tend to be a bit more expensive. and are not really needed for such low drain scenarios ( Li-Po can provide very high current drain needed to fly quacopters for instance) and they are very easy to discharge to the point where your pack becomes damaged and it can be dangerous to recharge a damaged pack

To prevent deep discharge your device needs to have a low battery warning feature. My RC controller has, but my headset does not.  Even with a low battery warning it’s still possible to leave the unit unattended, miss the alarm and flatten/ruin the battery

I figured a Lithium ion pack would be cheaper to make and fix if i accidentally ruined a cell with over discharge,  so I decided to put my own together out of mobile phone batteries.

I searched Ebay for the absolute cheapest standard phone battery i could find and came up with the Nokia BL-4U for just 99p delivered!  These look to be legit. Note the Nokia hologram.

Beware of ultra cheap unbranded batteries off Ebay. They can vary somewhat and your batteries  should all have a similar resistance if you are going to build them into a pack. Three of these and a couple of small connectors means a pack that costs about £3.20 to put together

Two connectors ? well one is the main power connector for powering your device. the other is a balanced charge connector which allows each cell of the pack to be monitored  and charged using an appropriate balanced charger such as the Turnigy “AccuCell 6” or “AccuCell 8” ( other brands are available)

Danger, Danger, Will Robinson !

Before i explain the build, the usual warnings. I present this purely for those who might find it interesting, I do not advise you do it

• Batteries can be dangerous. ( lithium batteries more so)
• Over charging can cause it to combust
• Short circuiting can cause it to combust.
• Looking at it in funny way can cause it to combust…

I may have made that last one up. I don’t want to scare you too much.  Li-Ion Mobile phone batteries are “relatively” safe (Li-Po batteries on the other hand are whole other level of potential hazard) The mobile phone cell is usually framed in a strong plastic “skeleton”, it is wrapped in thick metal foil as a fire protection and  includes thermal and electrical cut-outs which will kill the power from the battery if anything unusual is detected.

However meddling with them, as I do here,  can cause them to become unsafe. So please heed the following warnings:

• The battery terminals are closely spaced and recessed into the plastic. You need a fine tipped soldering iron to get in there.
• You need to avoid heating it for too long, you can damage the battery, you can also melt the plastic around the housing  ruining you solder connection and potentially causing a short circuit if you melt away the insulation between the contacts
• In case of battery fire, always work in a well ventilated place, preferably out side or with easy access to outside.
• Always have something to hand, such as tongs/pliers, ready to pick up and move a burning battery.
• If you do have a battery fire, place it in, either a “Li-po Safe” which is a strong fibreglass pouch ( available from ebay)  or a metal container/bucket and leave outside to burn itself out.
• NOTE: This pack cannot delivery enough current to fly a quadcopter. It is only for low current drain devices.

OK, dire warnings over, on with the build…

Components:

• 3 x  Nokia BL-4U 1000mAh batteries –  Sourced from  Ebay for 99p each
• Very thin packing foam sheet –  I get loads of components delivered  wrapped in this stuff.
• Some sticky backed plastic – I used polyester printer labels.
• JST-XH 4 way plug – If you don’t have the Crimps, Connectors and Crimping tool to make the plug, you can buy balanced plugs ready crimped with flying leads ready to solder from ebay
• Some heavier but flexible wire for the main positive and negative charge/discharge wires
• A power connector suitable for what you want to power eg.  XT-60 XT-30 , Deans etc
• masking tape or sellotape/Scotch tape.

Wiring

Although they are called phone “batteries” they really are just a single Cell, a battery is really a collection of cells. So from now on I’m going to refer more correctly to the individual Nokia batteries as “Cells” and the overall pack as the Battery.

Each cell has three contacts,  marked:-

– Negative

o Sensor  ( on some batteries this is marked “T”)

+ Positive

For this project only the + and – contacts will be used. The “sensor” or Thermistor pin  is used by the phone to monitor the thermal state of the cell

The pack is made from three cells wired in series with  balanced charger configuration according to this diagram:

If you bought a balanced charge connector ready wired, the colour codes on your wires may not be the same as in the diagram.  If so,  ignore the colours and stick to the pinout numbers. Pin 4 must always go to  positive pin of the pack.  Pin 1 must always go to negative (if you buy your connector already crimped pin 4 can often be green instead of black!)

Soldering

The order of these connections  is crucial or you may fry your balance charger or Battery monitor

1.  Solder your chosen battery connector onto the main power wires first in order to keep the power wires separated and safe. If you forget to do this and end up soldering them afterwards (as i did)  remember to keep the wires isolated as you solder them.  Strip, solder and heat-shrink each wire separately BEFORE STARTING THE OTHER. If you accidentally  touch the wires together,  or bridge the connectors with your soldering iron tip,  the short circuit will release a lot of current in one go. There is a danger of electrical burns from the sparks and / or starting a battery fire.
2. Twist the battery connector wires together with the appropriate balance connector wires and solder each of them to the appropriate cell,  One to the negative of the first cell, the other to the positive of the last cell.
3. Solder the battery interconnects between the 1st, 2nd and 3rd along with the remaining balance wires.

That’s as much detail as I’m going to go into. If you can’t follow that diagram you probably shouldn’t be attempting this!

Soldering tips:

• I quickly tinned each contact first.
• Then twisted and tinned the wires that were going in them. Clip them short so when they are soldered in you have no exposed wire showing
• I then remelted the tinned contacts while pushing the tinned wire into it
• You need to be quick with these solder connections. I popped the thermal fuse on one of the cells just trying to solder to it on my first attempt. I fortunately had a spare.

Before encasing the pack test its voltages!

If you have balance charger or battery tester you should get between 3v & 4.2v per cell. If some cells are reading double what is expected, you have you balanced charge wires crossed. If a cell reads zero you either have the wires crossed,  a bad connection or you have popped a thermistor during soldering. Measure each cell directly with a multimeter to make sure each is providing a voltage.

Building the pack

Assuming  you have wired  everything  up correctly you can now start building the pack.

Stack the cells with foam sheet in between each one.

I alternated mine front to back to keep the contacts well away from each other. You can have all the leads coming out of one side of the battery,  or the main wires out of one side and the balance connector out of the other. Lay the wires as neatly as you can without any contacts touching each other,

Wrap the whole pack in a layer of foam and tape down with masking tape

Wrap the outside in self adhesive plastic; Polyester or vinyl. Printer labels are perfect for this. ( yes, i know my battery tester in this picture is incorrectly set on Li-Po  )

Finally mark the pack with it’s Battery type “Li-Ion” and nominal voltage “11.1v” and retest with a suitable meter to make sure no connections have snapped.

Across the main power wires you should have between 9v – 12.6v depending on the charge state of the cells you started with. If you have less than this or no voltage at all you may have a bust cell.

Charging the pack

• The advised charge rate of a Li-ion Cell  is between half (0.5C)  and 1 (1C) times the cell rating. These cells are 1000mAh which makes the calculation very easy,  between 500mA and 1000mA . ( For a phone battery this falls nicely between the rated output of a USB port and some of the more powerful USB wall chargers).
• Optimum charge rate for Li-ion is 0.8C. that works out at 800mA for a 1000mAh cell.
• The cells should remain cool during charge if kept within these parameters.

That’s it.

Get pack, wear pack, fly…

Glen

Read on to find out how I did all this and more…

I thought I’d write up what I had to do to get the Arduino ISP sketch working nicely*, and while I’m at it, I decided to explain what to do to use the Internal Oscillator at 8Mhz or 1Mhz (necessary for running the chip at < ~2.5V – to get the most out of two AA batteries).

*for my assessment of ‘nice’.

1. Programmers, Bootloaders and Boards

The Arduino environment has 3 concepts worth keeping in mind:

• the ‘programmer’ (physical device) you are going to use to program the chip,
• the board your chip is on,
• the bootloader that may need to be on the chip already for normal operation

The selected programmer defines the protocol that will be used to communicate with the device that is programming the chip. The chips can act as its own programmer (self-program) with a standard protocol if it already has the bootloader on it. If it doesn’t have the bootloader on it you have to use ISP (or ICSP as some may prefer) to program the chips through some extra external hardware (the programmer). Most of the time with Arduino boards the bootloader is used to self-program the chip, so no external programmer is required.

You have to use ISP to put the bootloader on, or change fuse settings.

The board is a more familiar concept – which physical board are you using? Mega2560, Leonardo, Mini Pro… there is a long list! This controls the fuse settings that must be programmed to make the device work. That’s because if the board doesn’t have an external crystal it will fail if the power on clock selected by the fuses is an external crystal.

If that makes no sense at all, you may want to read a datasheet about the device to work out what you can do with fuse settings.

Each of the options for these three ideas are defined in files.  The path to these files are:

bootloader variants are defined in:

arduino-1.6.8/hardware/arduino/avr/bootloaders/atmega/Makefile

List of boards the Arduino environment can work with:

arduino-1.6.8/hardware/arduino/avr/boards.txt

List of programmers the Arduino environment knows about:

arduino-1.6.8/hardware/arduino/avr/programmers.txt

Hopefully the format is reasonably easy to understand from a quick read in a text editor, as we’ll be modifying these later!

2. Using an Arduino as an ISP

There are many tutorials on how to use an Arduino as an ISP, but there are one or two important details that I struggled to find, so I’ll reproduce a minimal set of instructions here:

1. Program ArduinoISP sketch (from examples) to an Arduino that is to be used as an ISP programmer (I used an Arduino Pro Mini, be sure to select the correct board and Serial Port as normal at this point)
2. Disable the reset on serial connect! (In my case I disconnected the DTR line from the USB serial adapter, but you can also use a pull up resistor from Vcc to the Reset pin, whatever is easiest)
3. Wire the Atmel chip to the arduino ISP programmer:
   1. MOSI (digital 11) to MOSI (pin 17)
   2. MISO (digital 12) to MISO (pin 18)
   3. SCK (digital 13) to SCK (pin 19)
   4. Vcc to Vcc (pins 7, 20 & 21)
   5. GND to GND (pins 8 & 22)
   6. Digital 10 to /Reset (pin 1)
4. Select your target board settings, the “Arduino as ISP” as the programmer and then select ‘program the bootloader’ from the tools menu.
5. Wait a few moments and hopefully there will be a successful status, if so you’re bootloader is programmed.

Using your bootloaded chip

1. Wire up a serial port:
   1. VCC to pins 7, 20 & 21
   2. GND to pins 8 and 22
   3. TX to pin 2 (chip RX)
   4. RX to pin 3 (chip TX)
   5. DTR to a ceramic 0.1uF connected to pin 1 (enables the automatic reset when uploading the firmware, very useful to avoid having to press a reset button at the correct moment)
2. Select a board that has the correct oscillator frequency (and similar voltage ideally) as you are using, then upload a sketch.

Trouble shooting:

Things not going to plan? Start by enabling verbose options in the Arduino environment preferences to see more details and the commands that are being run.  You can try and run these on the command line to get more familiar with what each parameter means.

Ensure your bootloader is programmed at the correct speed: If your crystal is a 16Mhz crystal, use a 16Mhz bootloader! I found that my breadboard ‘duino was running at 3.3V but had a 16Mhz crystal on it – that’s not a standard option as it’s too fast for the ‘safe operating frequency’ at that voltage, so selecting the 3v3 bootloader which expects 8Mhz operation caused the bootloader to be unusable as the baud and timeouts were too fast (obvious really!). To get the bootloader working you must program the bootloader with the correct frequency for the clock or the communication won’t work – see the baud rate discussion later, the voltage is secondary, though brown out detection programmed in the fuses may cause problems – for more info on all this, read the datasheet linked above!

The chip must be connected to a valid oscillator according to it’s current fuse settings for programming to work. Other documentation indicates that another internal RC timer is used for clocking the flash writes, so it was a surprise, but I have put it to the test unintentionally and confirmed it.

This is important when you are not using an external oscillator – by accidentally writing fuse settings for an oscillator to a chip that doesn’t have an oscillator, you can’t program it again until an oscillator is connected.  You will be able to accidentally change it to require an oscillator as the chip will work on it’s internal oscillator to start with, but once the fuse settings have been updated you can not change them until the oscillator is connected. The oscillator speed shouldn’t matter too much, but it must be there if it is expected.

If you’re struggling, you may want to ensure there is a XTal between pins 9 & 10 with appropriate capacitance between 9 & GND and 10 & GND. (16Mhz Xtal and 22pF most likely).

Hopefully you have managed to get the bootloader on the chip, and the fuse settings will be set as per the board you have selected. You can put your Atmel chip in to your target board and use it as an Arduino communicating over the hardware Serial. Yay!

3. ISP is not just for bootloading!

I wanted to be able to program my arduino through my ‘Arduino as ISP’ set up, and that wouldn’t work. The problem is that, for normal programming, the arduino environment uses 57600 baud, but the ISP we just programmed uses 19200. Simple fix is to change the constant in the ArduinoISP sketch, or so I thought…
It works, but then it stops you programming the bootloader because of the flag passed to avrdude when programming the bootloader that tells it to use 19200.
That can be changed however – by opening the programmers.txt file and creating a new programmer that tells it to program the bootloader at 57600 also.

• open the bootloaders.txt & copy the ‘Arduino as ISP’ entry
• rename all the ArduinoISP.xx variables to MyISP.xx
• set:

myISP.program.speed=57600

Yay, now both boot loader and general programming work through the ISP!

4. How to change the fuses?

I mentioned that the arduino concept of a board controls the fuses (which is what we need to configure differently if we want to use the RC oscillator), so the solution is to create a new entry for a new board in boards.txt. It’s best to copy and paste from a similar board if possible and change the fuses to how you’d like them programmed.

• Copy an existing setting from a similar processor as the one you’re targeting
• Set the fuses by changing the appropriate line(s):

myboard.bootloader.low_fuses=0xFF
myboard.bootloader.high_fuses=0xDA
myboard.bootloader.extended_fuses=0x05

• Now reprogram the bootloader using the ISP method detailed above.

5. How to use the Internal RC oscillator?

If you change the clock speed you must do some other stuff too…

You must use a bootloader that is expecting the given clock speed – to use a 1mhz clock that means making your own booloader variant (easier than it sounds!).

The bootloader source is shipped with the Arduino environment, and a handy make file that specifies the settings for the variants of the bootloader to use. All that needs to be done is modify the make file (copy and paste the definition for an existing variant), change the correct settings, compile (make) the variant and then you’ve got your own variant that will use the correct clock speed for it’s baud calculations and be able to communicate with the host. Yay!

Well, almost… In practice there is another ‘gotcha’. If you are using a slow clock frequency e.g. the 8 mhz clock with the div8 flag to run at 1mhz, then the baud rate generator that down samples the frequency of the clock, requires it to be divided by 16 (or 8 if using the ‘double speed’ option).  That all means you end up with a large number of baud rates simply being unusable due to clock drift. Long story short – use 9600 baud for programming these chips as it produces small enough drift that the host and the chip manage to communicate. Others baud rates may work out, but get it working on 9600 baud before trying to get it working faster!

The important changes to the makefile variant parameters are:

myVariant: CFLAGS += -DBAUD_RATE=9600 -DDOUBLE_SPEED
myVariant: AVR_FREQ = 1000000L
myVariant: $(PROGRAM)_myVariant.hex

When you’ve got your variant defined, get a command line in the directory and type:

make myVariant

and it will try.

You may need to define some paths to find the appropriate files – I had to change the following:

CC = /home/will/Downloads/arduino/arduino-1.6.8/hardware/tools/avr/bin/avr-gcc -I/home/will/Downloads/arduino/arduino-1.6.8/hardware/tools/avr/avr/include

Once you have your bootloader, the final piece of the puzzle is to explain it all to the Arduino environment, by modifying the boards.txt:

• tell the compiler what the clock speed is so it gets delays and millis correct when compiling code targeted for your board:

myboard.build.f_cpu= 1000000L

• tell the uploader what baud rate to use (default seems to be 57600)

myboard.upload.speed=9600

• indicate which hex file to program when uploading the bootloader:

myboard.bootloader.file=atmega/ATmegaBOOT_168_myVariant.hex

If you’ve followed all that, then you’ve done well! As a (dubious?) reward , here are the diffs between the original versions (shipped with 1.6.8 Arduino environment) and my working versions of the files. These list every line I’ve added or modified to get a system that works.  There are some more advanced features in the file, but I’m sure you can figure it all out!

Makefile.diff

programmers.diff

boards.diff

6. Conclusion:

Now you can run an AtMega328P with one resistor, 3 interconnects at anywhere from 1Mhz from 1.8V to 8Mhz (>~2.5V) and can add an oscillator up to 20Mhz while keeping the familiarity of the Arduino environment.

openSCAD DIP switch clamps for bread board use

Bread board with DIP switch and DIP switch clamps

1 elastic band, <10 minutes design, <10 minutes printing = <3 3D printing!

*Note for Jon: ping in this context is intended to indicate a fast moving object that may make an audible noise like a ‘ping’ when it contacts something. It highlights the unintended outcome of the DIP switch departing contact with the bread board at sometimes impressive escape velocities!

In the past we have had ghostly figures float around the room and spiders come to life. Who knows what ghostly goings on we will create this year? The event is open to everyone to come and create. We will be using everything from paper and scissors to 3D printers and a laser cutter. Please drop in from 11am until 4pm and come and help with your creativity.

A big thank you to the Crafts Council, the Institute of Making, the V&A and Ultimaker GB for helping to make this happen as part of Make:Shift:Do.

Eday is a free technolgy “show and tell”. Maker space has been involved since the very beginiing and this year we will be there with:

• Reaction game,
• Laser cut examples
• Infinity Mirror and book.
• LED Cubes
• 3D printers
• Raspberry Pi
• Eggbot
• Paper Buckyballs
• “Over Eng’d”

Come along and see us.

More info can be found here Booking through the Eventbrite link is advised

 We aim to answer these questions and more on 3D Thursdays, which take place on the 1^st and 3^rd Thursday of every month.

Public are welcome to come along and of course we will still be open for members who want to use the space for other projects.

Please note, 3D Thursday exists to teach people about 3D printing and how they can do it for themselves. MakerSpace is not a 3D print shop. If you turn up simply wanting us to print your design it is very unlikely we can accommodate you.

We can however help you design something so that it will 3D print correctly, taking into account overhangs, print orientation and structural support. We can show you to export your design and then slice it for 3D printing and finally how to operate a 3D printer so you print it yourself.  So if you want to learn about 3D Design, 3D printing or even how to build your own 3D printer please come along.

Getting to a design to the point it can be printed can take more than one session and then that design may take a few hours to print, which will need to be booked in advance on our printers. So If all you want is something printed, we would recommend going to professional 3D print house such as Shapeways who will be able to accommodate you much faster.

 Of course If you become a member of MakerSpace then you don’t need to wait for 3D Thursday to roll around. You can come in and make use of the Space’s printers on any member’s night.

See you then.

The display should be running every day so please pop along to the space to watch it.  If you can’t make it down to Maker Space in person then you can watch a video of it here:

“Make it sew” will be hosted by our very own costume designer Rosie Bristow and take place from 6pm on the 2^nd  and 4^th Thursday of each month.

Come along to learn to sew, make and mend, the event is free to Maker Space members and a small donation of just £1 to non members, to cover consumables.

The day went really well with 18 pumpkins carved, plenty of seeds collected for roasting and even some pumpkin soup to help keep us warm.

Thanks to everyone who took part and helping to make the day so much fun.  Here is a gallery of all the finished carvings.

Maker Space was there again with plenty of  Laser Cut Models, 3D Printing, Raspberry Pi, Arduino and electronic projects.

Above photos By David Charlton Photography Courtesty of Gateshead Libraries

Jon’s “Over Eng’D” flying duck and Iain’s Polar Pong gave a new meaning to the words physical computing with a mass of stepper motors and pulleys.

Tony’s “R-Kade” a Raspberry Pi based mini arcade was brought out again to entertain those people wanting a trip down video gaming history. Who would have guessed that Pacman, Galaga and Donkey Kong would still appeal the younger audience.

We had giveaways in the form of Alistair’s designed and laser cut Maker Space keyrings and custom prints on “ball pool” balls from Glen’s “Egg-bot” plotter.

The local radio amateur group, Angel of the North Amateur Radio Club (ANARC) were there for the first time. They had brought various radio receivers and transceivers for everyone to listen to.

Imperial Troops from the 99th Garrison were posted made sure no droids got lost during the days proceedings The Stormtroopers, Tie Fighter pilots, Bounty Hunters and Imperial Officers made an impressive sight.

Here’s a short Video of one of the Storm Troopers playing with “Over Eng’D” 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzU7Yh0jQLQ&

Also present were  Vector 76 with their Oculus Rift Demos,  HTML workshops, Retro Gaming, ChromeBuild Lego sessions and drop-in maker activities from Victoria Bradbury.

Thanks to Tony for the bulk of the info for this blog, Jon for the video and Jacqui from Gateshead Library for the images

A variety of ideas and designs were created on the night. Some worked better than others. We didn’t have much success making ink stamps using 3D printed moulds. The Sugru just stuck to the mould so still some work to be done there to come up with a solution.

Dragon

Colin made this lovely little model of a dragon to fit on the aerial of his little sports car. I didn’t know he was so artistic!

Tablet Stand

Jon, being the over-engineering genius that he is, came along with a fully designed blue print for his tablet stand made from Sugru and coat hanger wire.

Very original and very well made. Read more about Jon’s tablet stand on his Instructable.

Sculpture

Having completed his stand so quickly, Jon moved on to his next idea. To sculpt a self portrait on the cover of his laptop using Sugru.

So working from his favourite selfie,
he proceeded to sculpt himself out of Sugru with an attention to detail that would rival the best of Madame Tussauds. I think you’ll agree the resemblance is striking. Jon was pleased with the result.

Memo Stand

Alastair came up with a memo stand idea to demonstrate the art of ‘under-engineering’. The beauty is in its simplicity.

Read more about his memo stand in Alastair’s Instructable.

Torch Keyring

Last but not least are Tommy’s fabulous Sugru LED keyring torches. A design classic and beautifully constructed. (We’ll keep quiet about version 1.0 which failed to light up! The LED legs embedded themselves into the Sugru and could not make contact with the battery. Version 2.0 however, with a bit of card over the legs worked a treat). Check out Tommy’s Instructable.

Don’t worry if you missed out on this Sugru Build event. We have plenty of Sugru left over and are planning to run another build evening in the near future. Watch this space!