Difference between revisions of "Bloominglabs Log"

Revision as of 07:51, 2 July 2012

Historical Document

This page is intended to document as much of our activities as possible so we can maintain a sense of history of what our group has done over time. It should be used for anything that happens outside of the Meeting_Minutes document.

July 2010

Bloominglabs is official!

Moved out of Jenett's basement and into our room at The Collaboration Room. Picked a name for our space. Formed Bloominglabs LLC and signed our lease for the room.

Held these workshops which where open to the public

• Soldering
• AVR programming I
• AVR programming II
• Arduino + RF/wireless

The Soldering workshop was our first and had 17 attendees (out of 6 RSVP's). The AVR workshops had 11 and 6 attendees respectively, and the Arduino RF workshop had 6 attendees. All went over extremely well and had very good feedback.

External Publicity

Local writer Kevin Makice wrote about The Collaboration Room and the Bloomington Hackerspace Initiative in his Wired blog Geek Dad. Member Joe Stone was at the Detroit Maker Faire the weekend of July 31st and sat on a panel about hackerspaces along with Mitch Altman.

August 2010

After the whirlwind that was July we relaxed and only held one workshop. Mitch Altman and Jimmy Rogers stopped by on August 19th to host a soldering workshop, it was another great success.

September 2010

• Obtained a drill press
• Got prototype of RFID door-access system working based on Open Access Control
• Installed shelves on main closet in space
• Cleaned up front porch power tool area
• Installed deadbolts on Matthew's and Arthur's doors
• Aluminum casting mini-workshop with coffee can forge

October 2010

• More work on RFID system
• Collaboween projects built with Matthew
• Arduino shield build parties
• Sumobot throwdown and halloween party at LVL1 in Louisville, KY
• Started accumulating hardware for plastic vacuum-forming table

November 2010

• More work on RFID system
• Prep for December soap-molding workshop
• Prep for January bugbots with Wonderlabs
• Built a plastic vacuum form machine for members to use

December 2010

• St. Nick's workshop (soap-molding/vacuum forming, hand-warmer sewing, hand-bag sewing, and card making)
• Reporter from Indiana Daily Student came and documented the workshop

January 2011

• BugBot workshop with Wonderlab

February 2011

• Contact Microphone Building Workshop hosted by CMKT4 (held at warehouse Behind Russian Recording Studios)

March 2011

• Preparations for July 4th Parade entry
• Electric wheel chair acquired for robotic platform hacking

April-June 2011

• Activity around TEDx Bloomington event - geocaching boxes started, but not enough time to finish these in time for TEDx
• Preparations for July 4th Parade entry
  • smoke ring cannons
  • twinki launchers
  • IR LED message scroll-sign
  • Strand Beast (walking machine) design well under way
  • electric wheel chair platform hacking via CANUSB adapter
• Reporter from Bloom Magazine interviewed several members and observed a meeting in June

July 2011

• Parade float in Bloomington July 4th parade!
• Moved to our new space on Roll Avenue!!
• Follow-up from Bloom Magazine to get photos of our new space
• New RFID system acquired
• Table-top sander now in the space
• Dust collection system in the works
• Open-house July 23rd
• Lathe acquired
• Electrolysis rust removal system built for the lathe and general use

August 2011

• New RFID system built and tested
• Lathe cleanup on-going
• August 13th BugBots workshop at Wonderlab
• August 23rd Jay hosts an Arduino for Beginners workshop

September 2011

• Bloominglabs is featured is an article in Bloom magazine
• Rex, Jay, Jonathan, and others represent Bloominglabs at a booth at the Indy Mini-Maker Faire

October 2011

• That old standard, the AVR workshop
• dosman and FOOLS make hack-a-day for their lockpicking game (Steve did some programming for the scoreboard). The site buckles under the load.

November 2011

• Catarina Mota from NYC Resistor and Open Materials visits and tells us about interesting materials for projects. This workshop attracted some artists, and we hope to see more artists in the future.

December 2011

• Second Annual Holiday Mini-Workshops. Again the vacuum molder was very popular. Buddha and cellphone molds were made.

January 2012

• Jenett's C programming course starts
• Annual meeting. Members make big plans and then go eat some Bar-B-Q.

February 2012

• Soldering workshop. This one featured kits of dosman's 'Phasor', with nice etched boards
• Theremin building workshops with Harmony School begin. These continue through March.

March 2012

• Second soldering workshop. This one covered SMT techniques (Thanks Nick!)
• Bloominglabs holds its first Game Day

April 2012

• Bugbot workshop at Wonderlab
• Bloominglabs hosts a 'hardware hacking village' at Indy Linux Fest in conjunction with FOOLS featuring the Rumble Challenge, Typing of the Dead, the 'Shoot the Windows Logo and Win Candy' game, Snap Circuits, and more. People really dug it.

May 2012

• The team prepares for the hack-a-thon.

June 2012

• Bloominglabs team attended the 1st ever LVL1 Boneyard Hack-a-thon
• The lathe is fixed up to the point it is now operational