Things are moving towards a new keycard access system. While there are a number of open source systems out there, they all seem to rely on custom made boards and complex firmware. We’re looking to build something using commercially available boards and centers around an Arduino:
At the monthly meeting, Meg presented a Twitter connected self-sufficient gardening system. It currently consists of two grow lights and a watering system but will be more modular with a variety of plants as winter approaches:
Also at the meeting, a bicycle powered peristaltic pump (capable of ~1 gallon/minute) was discussed:
And Corinne demonstrated her recently completed LED cube:
Inspired by the giant doubled decker bus (now painted), Adam is midway through creating a set of high-end wooden headphones (seen here turning out some blanks for the drivers):
Micah reformed a fiberglass and carbon fiber hood to better follow the contours of his car:
Using CamBam, we were easily able to carve out an apple with a missing piece for this light-up lunchbox conversion:
Work is underway for a wicked District 9 alien costume for Halloween:
The kitchen in full swing for Canadian Thanksgiving:
Sector67 hosted a mousetrap powered car competition, given very limited supplies and 2 hours participants had to create the vehicle that traveled the farthest using only a mousetrap for propulsion:
Some dove straight to action:
While others schemed through things:
And yet others settled on a mix of the two:
Despite limiting tools to hand tools and a hot glue gun and “conventional” spring propulsion – eventually contraband was detected amongst the build materials:
With the culprits found shortly thereafter inquiring into a source of clear polycarbonate to hide behind while detonating setting off their vehicle:
Tim has created a number of spectacular art metal work this month which of course gets abused around the shop 🙂 Maybe you can give it a permanent home?
Some planning for the hackerspaces in space competition:
Lots of toying with a large tractor inner-tube finally led to some success:
And lastly some surface mount soldering is leading towards some custom made Xbox 360 controllers with special features:
