Have you been following Workshop 88′s progress in the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge?  Check out all of our updates on our Element14 group page.

(Okay, “done” may be a bit of an overstatement, but we’re really close!)

Yesterday at the space, four of us met to work on the Educube project for the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge. We started with one working display mounted to a custom shield that Jim had designed. We also had one display mounted to a PCB that was not working, 4 new displays, and new custom shields (with a speaker for sound!) to assemble.

After some soldering and a bit of troubleshooting we ended up with 6 working displays and 4 stacks of all the parts of our Educubes.  We have one extra arduino clone and IrDA board to put together to make up the guts of the fifth Educube. (See photos below.)

Parts that have been ordered for the Edu-cubes started arriving in our mailboxes at the end of the week. We are testing two types of displays. One is a monochrome LCD display which had previously been used in Nokia phones. I ran into a bit of trouble with my arduino last night that had nothing to do with the displays and everything to do with the hookup wire I was using.  Fortunately, the arduino survived, and I’m able to output text to the display.

The message is a result of spending a few unplanned hours digging the end of the wire out of the pin socket on the arduino.

The other display we are evaluating is a color touchscreen.  We’ll post updates when we have that setup and running.

We’re still looking for people to get involved with this project, and people interested in becoming members of Workshop 88.  If you want to work with us on the project, send an email to cubes@workshop88.com.  If you want more information on Workshop 88, send an email to info@workshop88.com or hit us up on twitter: twitter.com/Workshop88

A little over two weeks ago, Mitch Altman announced the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge. Workshop 88 is one of the 30 hackerspaces across the world participating in this event. 

The cubes will be made of low cost electronic components and design will focus on minimizing power consumption while maximizing configurability and portability.   Cubes will be able to be configured by defining a glyph to be displayed to the user and will contain some logic to interact with an adjacent cubes dependent upon the glyph that they are displaying.  The cubes will be able to be reprogrammed, recharged, and store metrics for use by educators.

Fredo, the inveterate podcaster and longtime member of Workshop 88, has been filming a bit of his work at the space. Check it out!

We just learned that Curly’s is closed tonight for remodeling.

Hackers in the Pub is moving to the Tap House Grill on Main Street in Glen Ellyn.

Fredo writes:

Hey guys,

I’ll be riding a metric century (100 km or 62 miles) on 6/12/2011 at the Tour de Cure. All contributions benefit the American Diabetes Association.

More details TBA on when it will be rescheduled, but suffice to say, everyone who paid for tuition today will be given a new, free ticket for the rescheduled class. Email info@workshop88.com if you have questions.