Camping + exuberance + technology = ?

A number of us from Edinburgh hacklab are going to the FIRST EMF camp in September. It might interest you, so here’s some information on the event from the organisers…

Electromagnetic Field (http://www.emfcamp.org/) is a great gathering of specialists, enthusiasts and newcomers from many disciplines. A three-day camping festival for people with an inquisitive mind or an interest in making things: hackers, artists, scientists, craftspeople, geeks, and engineers. There will be talks and workshops on a wide range of subjects as well as open sessions where anyone who wants to kick off a discussion can claim a time and a space. But connections are as important as curricula, so expect many opportunities to get making with new friends or just have a drink and a chat.

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After almost 2 years of existence as a non-incorporated organisation, Edinburgh Hacklab has incorporated as a limited company by guarantee. This legal structure is used successfully by the majority of other UK hacker spaces. So what does this really mean. From a day to point of view the hacklab will operate as it did before. Read more about Edinburgh Hacklab Limited[…]

www.quickrota.com is a site that allows a group of people to co-manage a regular rota. Participants of an active rota are emailed one-at-a-time to indicate when “its their turn”. Tom Joyce and I developed this over the last 3 months in response to a problem we see in my jobs, flats and in Edinburgh Hacklab. Read more about Hacklab inspired “QuickRota” out now![…]

After last years raft race, that we wrote about at the time there were grand plans to as to how the raft could be better. We would start building further in advance, there wouldn’t be any pallets used and no fitness balls either….. …. fast forward to two weeks ago. Late Tuesday night as hardware Read more about Award Winning Hacklab Raft[…]

It’s a week before the next music night, but I’ve finally got round to writing up the last event. We kicked off with some real, actual laptop and guitar jamming, led by Julien. More of this sort of thing! Gareth gave us a talk about cSound, and Gary (who’s an OLPC dude) also happened to Read more about Music Night May 2012[…]

So after much waiting the first Raspberry Pis to arrive put in an appearance at last Tuesdays open night. After no small task of finding a USB keyboard and mouse and doing an HDMI monitor bodge we were ready to go. So what is the first thing to do with the Raspberry Pi, lets play Read more about PIs and Eyes[…]

Quick recap, “the mission”: we want to build an affordable open source industry quality robot arm. We think we can make it out of low quality components but stick an accurate sensor on the end effector (the ‘hand’) and sidestep the huge costs of precision mechanical components. Web cams are cheap, and people already own computers capable of the required visual processing, so we think that optical localization is a better strategy for many applications that researchers, entrepreneurs and engineers might like to do – if we can get the optical localization accurate enough.

Last time we calibrated our £18 Microsoft LiveCam 3000, and experimented using Vision Visp’s moving edge tracker. We found that the moving edge required a highly accurate object and we could not build one to the 0.1mm accuracy target we set ourselves. Furthermore, the actual moving edge tracker was not particularly CPU friendly, so we decided to pursue a different strategy this time.

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My Raspberry Pi delivery date is now only two ice ages away! Until the mighty Pi ships, where can you get a cheap embedded Linux fix? Please welcome the catchily named TP-Link TL-WR703N! So what is it? For about £20 you can get a teeny embedded Linux device (in a nice little enclosure) with built in Read more about Can’t wait for the Raspberry Pi? Hack a router![…]

This Friday, 18th May, is our monthly music night, starting from around 8pm in the lab. Come along to talk about music, hacking, and make some noise! The month before last I wasn’t there, and I missed out on Andrew and Tom’s resistive fabric synth, and James and Matt of Madlab making instruments out of Read more about May Music Night this Friday[…]

The guys at Shropshire Linux User Group have been busy designing boxes to put your Rasberry Pi in. Well, that is if  you are lucky enough to have one. I don’t think I am far enough along the queue to get to place an order yet 🙁  Damn I want so bad, I want one more Read more about Acrylic boxes for Rasberry PI[…]