After our initial clean, fix and build frenzy since taking over the new space on the 1st June, we plan to get back to normal member’s Maker evenings as from next week.

There’s still jobs to do, but we now have rooms set up where people can work plus kitchen and toilet facilities.

Initially we will be aiming to open the same hours as our old space and then adding more days as we sort out keyholders and regular availaibitly of people to open up.

For now it’s:

Maker Monday 6:30pm -10:30pm
Tinker Tuesday 5:30pm – 9:30pm
Welcome Wednesday 6pm-8pm for visitors, but members can usually arrive earlier and stay longer*

*In the past Wednesdays have been a write-off for actually working on projects due to lack of space. But in the new space there is more than enough room to do some project work so it can now be considered a proper members working day too!

In addition, at least one of our members is planning to use the space most weekday afternoons so it should be open then. But this isn’t a given and not yet part of our official opening hours. you should always check ahead on our mailing list if you are planning to pop in during the day.

Glen

Was great, new faces, and importantly a lot more space, so while some people chatted, others were still building the space.

The new Space, from outside,

The new space will allow us to be open more days and for longer, as well as letting our members have access to more workspace and an a wider variety of tools and materials to create fantastic things with!

We’ve just started moving things over and we should be having a grand opening in the first week or two of june, so keep an eye out here, the discussion group and on the twitter feed to see our progress.

Cay Green shows James Watson, of DNA fame, a 3D printer. Photo used courtesy of Centre for Life and North News and Pictures.

The Maker Faire saw over 10,000 people, including Nobel Prize winner James Watson, Make Magazine founder Dale Dougherty, science fiction author Cory Doctorow and Noisebridge hackerspace founder and TV-B-Gone inventor, Mitch Altman, come to Newcastle’s Centre for Life.

Makerspace had a stand with a variety of members’ projects.  These included the Raspberry Pi Web Grab, a web controlled funfair grabber machine full of sweets, retro gaming machines, glow poi and Model Railway signals.

We also had 5 different types of 3D printer on our stand over the weekend.  Most notably, Jay’s, which was jaw droppingly large.  It was quite fun to see people’s reactions as they realised what it was.

Mitch was good enough to give the Makerspace a plug in one of his talks and came to visit us at the Makerspace stand.

Brian had a stand in the DIY Bio area where you could make a bacteria kiss or use DNA fingerprinting to check if processed foods contained horse meat – which of course they didn’t…

Ed had a brilliant Laser Caper which was a great success with long queues all weekend.  This involved a Mission Impossible style laser tripwire assault course!

Over the weekend we met up with countless makers from around the world and visitors to the space from other UK Makerspaces including Leeds, London, Manchester and Nottingham.  We now have a Makerspace stamp so we were able to stamp people’s Hackerspace Passports while they were here.

Thanks to all the people who came along and said hello. We hope you had as good a time as we did.

Iain Yarnell

At Welcome Wednesday (20th February 2013) Victoria Bradbury give a wonderful informal talk about her experience with Chinese Hack spaces and the people she meet while there.

The Makerspace was packed with Alistair being relegated to sitting on the floor

Victoria talked warmly about the various makers she met while in China and what they were making. She also discussed the various problems the Chinese hack spaces had during their creation, running and sometimes demise.

Her experiences mirrored what many makers know, that when it comes to ideas and innovation people no matter where they are, want to learn, want to improve, want to share and want to socialise with others.

We also welcomed a number of visitors at Welcome Wednesday night, who stayed for the Victoria’s talk and remained after spending time taking with a number of our members.

Finally we must thank Victoria and her husband for visiting us and giving us a great talk and we hope we’ll see them again soon.

by Tony Dixon

Colin shows Chi the 3D printers

Friday’s (22nd February 2013) visit of Chi Onwurah, MP for  Newcastle Central (and also Shadow Minister for Innovation, Science & Digital Infrastructure ) was very well supported by our makers, a big thank you to all those who had the time free to come along and meet with Chi and Tony Bone, her case worker.

During Chi’s visit we showed her the Raspberry Pi computer, Will and Colin showed her and demonstrated the 3D printers and Jon discussed his Arduino project with her. It was nice to know that at least one of our country’s MP’s has done computer programming, as Chi studied C programming while at University.

Chris discussed the electric conversion of his old car which prompted Chi to joking ask if he could do the same for her 22-year old Saab.

We also discussed how Makerspace regularly helps with initiatives which help promote innovation and technology to the wider public and schools. With Jacqui from Gateshead Libraries, we talked about how Makerspace played a big part in helping Gateshead Libraries with eDay and also how with the Centre for Life we did Raspberry Jam evening.

All in all a very positive day.

Finally we must thank Chi and Tony for visiting us and we hope we’ll see them again soon.

by Tony Dixon

It was organised by Newcastle’s Maker Space and held at the Centre for Life. Around 40-ish tickets were booked and about 2/3′s showed up on the evening.

We started early at 5.30pm and continued late into the night finishing at about 9.00pm. The format for the evening was informal with a number of maker space members giving demonstrations and show and tells for their Raspberry Pi projects.

For the demonstrations and show and tells, we had Jon showing his retro video gaming Pi running a NES emulator. Jon was also show and telling about his adventures in getting the RPi and mobile 3G dongle to work together. Glen, had set up his XMBC media server on the large TV the Centre for Life had provided us on the evening. Alistair was discussing interfacing to his RPi and Chris was showing off not one but two RPi’s.Where one Pi was controlling the on’s and off’s of the row of LED’s connected to the second RPi via a web-browser over the internet. Cool.

Myself, I had a RPi running scratch which saw a lot of attention for the younger audience . I also had my Pi robotic car on show but still not quite ready to give it a spin.

Final, I must say thanks to all those Makers who helped out with the demo’s and show and tells. Thanks to all the people who came along to support us. And, a final thank you to the staff at the Centre for Life for the room and helping out during the evening.

Here at Makerspace we’re keen on the Raspberry Pi, a tiny, incredibly cheap computer that can be used for teaching about computers and coding and used for all sorts of projects, from making a low-cost media box, to building robots that you can control over the internet. It’s pretty spiffy!

We’re helping run a Workshop at Centre for Life for everyone who’s interested and would like to know more!

Here’s the blurb:

“Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. It is intended that people all over the world will use it to learn programming.

Raspberry Jams are local user groups for the Raspberry Pi. Jams are held to support hobbyists, developers, teachers, students, children and families – in fact, anybody that would like to put their Raspberry Pi to good use. While Raspberry Jam is not endorsed, sponsored or associated with Raspberry Pi or Raspberry Pi products or services, some of our regular members are volunteers for the Raspberry Pi Foundation. At our meetings we have helpful people who can help you with everything you need to get what you want from your Raspberry Pi.

You do not need to have a Raspberry Pi to come to a meeting. In fact, not having a Raspberry Pi is an excellent motive for coming along. You will discover what you can do with a Raspberry Pi when you get hold of one!”

Get Your tickets here: https://newcastle-raspberry-jam.eventbrite.com

More details here: http://www.life.org.uk/whats-on/events/newcastle-raspberry-jam

At this year’s Open Source Hardware Camp I learned that the Raspberry Pi has a serial terminal enabled by default available through the the GPIO port. Clearly it is just a text terminal but is great for using the Raspberry Pi from the laptop without needing to set up a local network to do it. It needs a USB serial adapter that works at 3.3V but these are available as a module online for under £2.

I also learned from a demo by Lewis Baker at Datarama #16 that Android phones can be connected to the Arduino and communicated to over a serial interface. Naturally I wondered if the same could be said of the Raspberry Pi, and the good news if that it can.

You will need a Micro USB Host Mode OTG Adapter in addition to the USB serial module, again costing under £2, but that is it. Another nice little bonus is my serial adapter has a 5V output that can be connected to the 5V pin of the GPIO port and power the Raspberry Pi.

As for software there are many Android terminal apps, but few that recognise the USB adapter that I have. In the end I started using the Slick USB 2 Serial Terminal that has a few issues but was good for the test. I suspect I will end up producing my own app eventually.

After all this I decided to try and USB hub and connect a USB keyboard as well, and that also worked allowing me to use a normal keyboard and my Android based Nexus 7 as a terminal screen. Not the most useful setup in the world but I can see us playing with this in the future.

Cay demonstrating a 3d printing program

Makerspace was asked to get involved with the Digital skills day that Gateshead Library ran this saturday, so a bunch of us came along with 3d printers, Arduinos and Raspberry Pis to show to to people. Cay, Jay and Paddy brought along a Reprap, Makerbot and Ultimaker, and were printing out Makerspace M keyfobs, as well as other bits and pieces.

Makerspace Ms printing in the Reprap

Tony, with Brian and absent help from Jon and Glen, was helping people do some programming in Scratch on the Raspberry Pis. Donkey Kong and Mario were playing on a couple of the Pis.

Learning Programming with the Raspberry Pis

Chris Iain and Ed had some arduino projects on display, including Iain’s wireless train signal lamps and Chris’s Mbed/Gameduino based Retro console Emulator.

The Arduino Table

We had a great day and were really impressed with the turnout and enthusiasm from all the visitors. A big thanks to all the staff at Gateshead library who organised it and made it run so smoothly and all the volunteers from Makerspace who came out to show people how much fun making stuff can be!

Jim's Dice print

Maker Monday, our night open for members has been running extremely successfully for about six weeks now. We’ve been filling the room with members working on projects. I’m quite pleased, I was worried I’d be on my own in here! now i’m just bitter that no-one seems up for me playing cheesy 80s rock at ear blistering volume…

So to continue the updates of what we’ve been getting up to…

Tonight at Maker Monday!

Alistair was testing the timer display he was building for the Centre for Life.

Tony was modifying RPi cases and getting Pi bits ready for E-day

Iain was getting his Arduino talk for E-day ready and playing with NFC tags.

John was designing the circuit for a battery charger.

Jay, Dave and Richard was doing some maintenance and replacing the heater head of his Reprap.

Jim was using the Makerbot to print out a base 25 dice.

Ed and Alistair modified the website. You may have noticed…

See you next week!

There may be a spread in Linux, Windows, and OSx users, but when it comes to retro computing the Commodore 64 is clearly the Maker Space computer of choice. We had the old PS1 up and running, but this was horribly outnumbered by 5 Commodore 64s in various stated of disrepair.

The good news is that we ended up with one more working C64s than we started with and have a very happy Jon who will be wasting many hours on old computer games for the foreseeable future.

Raymond Oliver. Dr. Jayne Wallace’s passion lies in the human interaction with digital technologies. How we can give our interactions with digital technologies fresh texture and meaning will be explored, through unpicking current assumptions and constructing new characterisations and roles of the digital, through creative practice.

Prof. Raymond Oliver will give an illustrative demonstration to help the audience understand the benefits of anticipatory medical devices. Is it possible to anticipate the onset of various conditions including dementia, depression and epilepsy?”

The Makerspace packed with people

Today we acked the Makerspace with 14 people. We had a range of people from new to arduino, to quite expeienced (thinking of Alistair and Tony). After the reorganisation of the space by listair and I yesterday, their is room for ten to comfortably do some coding and work, which is a great improvement!

Projects being worked on (amongst others) are using

• a GPRS shield
• 433mhz transmitters
• a 2 wheel robot
• lasers to make a laser game

Currently signed up

• Brian Degger – Hackteria – the international Biohacking symposium
• Toni Hammil – Reporting back from the Brighton and New York Maker Faires
• Robyn Taylor – topic to be announced