I was in Boulder this week and while there I thought I’d check out Solid State Depot, the local Boulder hackerspace (http://boulderhackerspace.com/)… Tuesday is their weekly open house meeting night. It was awesome!

Outside the entrance

This is the entrance, the colored lights flash and cycle, I knew I was in the right place before the Uber driver found a place to park.  The Uber driver’s name was Sam, he earned his masters degree in the arts and started a fine art collaboration and printing company in 2015 which sounded pretty cool.  He didn’t know what a hackerspace was so I explained and invited him to come inside with me to check it out.  We got a tour and while there he got tips where to find laser cutters he can use in town.  Incidentally, while in high school, Sam lived in Glendale Heights, IL, the same Chicago suburb my wife is from.  I thought “wow, small world” but I had no idea… I’ll get back to that later.

Entrance/reception area

This is the entrance area.  It seems like every maker/hackerspace has a coin op cabinet at some point, I think this one may be powered by the Raspberry Pi I spied in the marquis.  They also have free stuff and we all seem to get the same 20″ box fans from the same place.  I felt right at home.  They have a big doocracy poster hanging in the lobby too (not pictured).

The next few pictures are of the main area. The woodshop is off to the right, the CNC area is in back, and the electronics lab and test room are smaller rooms off the entry area.  Ted, in the lower right in the blue sweater, seated in front of the PBR greeted me.  I introduced myself as being from Chicago and a member of Workshop 88 and he showed me around.  He was really nice, I got the feeling they take turns meeting people and giving tours, just like us, which worked well.  Ted told me that a membership costs $65 and gives you the familiar 24 hour full access to the space, equipment, and materials within reason.

They have a large crowd of regulars with deep knowledge of many topics.  Seated high on the right in the green jacket is Sebastian (“Seb”), a contributor/maintainer of Linux CNC.  Paul the left of him in the picture (mostly obscured by Mike M.) is a former NVIDIA employee who wrote the timer ladder for the Linux drivers, he is an expert in GPUs.  On the other side of Seb is Ben in the blue jacket, his recently departed grandfather worked for Tektronics.  Ben had a nice oscilloscope for sale and wanted to offer it to the club at a discount before posting it online which was really nice of him.

They have weekly club meetings at 8:00pm on Tuesdays during the open house.  They open with a call to the meeting and everyone sets aside what they are doing and gathers in the main area.  Alex, this year’s president is starting the meeting in the center of the picture in the black sweater.  Alex briefly mentioned club business which included donations, classes, finances, the need for 6″ duct for the CNC machine, etc.  Brandon, in the red sweatshirt, reported the results of a recent survey: the favorite part of the club is the social aspect, the least liked aspect was that some of the tools are broken.

The last thing they do in the meeting is have everyone introduce themselves, share their interests, and update what they are currently working on.  There were several asks and offers for assistance, it was very cool.  When each person was done they said “Bam” and pointed at the next one  – I don’t  know if that always happens or if it was organic but that type of self organization was really effective.  The meetings are similar to but not as formal as the monthly Chibots meetings if you are familiar with those.

Also pictured above on the left is Ben, or as he jokingly asked to be called “That Bastard Ben”.  On the right with the beard and plaid shirt is John W. who is repairing is repairing and/or enhancing the electric scooter behind him on the right.

John M. is on the left, Nick in the orange shirt works on FPGAs’ and is really sharp.

There was one more really interesting guy I didn’t get a picture of but he suggested members check out the recent hacking/spying wikileaks CIA articles because they point out security flaws and espionage techniques used on common devices anyone could be using.  I want to be clear, he was not suggesting that anyone in the club use the exploits, it was more from the point of view of the security threat.  That was the first I had heard of that news, a day before I heard about it in the news.  He’s a really smart low level guy whose current project was analyzing the voltage/current profile of each pin of a microcontroller to try and find a way to glitch/reboot it into a programmable mode.

Oh, and Andrew…
This is Andrew and yours truly.  Andrew is making an autonomous vehicle with his one spinning single beam LiDAR system and computer vision using an onboard NVIDIA Pascal GPU (~10W GPU running deep nets!!!).  He actually works for the same company I work for, HERE, optimizing deep neural networks for visual segmentation, recognition, and other perception related tasks… and he recognized me as one of the people who interviewed him on the phone several months ago.   He studied Geology (I think) at Wheaton College before getting a degree in Physics.  MAN, SMALL WORLD!  His project is so cool, he had a case full of different single board computers including RPI, BBB, Arduino, ST based Arduino’s and more. We talked work and projects for an hour.  He introduced me to Sebastian and some of the others mentioned above.

The wood shop:

The wood shop was large enough to accommodate big projects, and was well equipped: Combo table saw/routing table, jointer, planer, compound miter saws, lathe, band saw, drill press, scroll saws, sander, and much more. That’s a ShopBot in the background with dust collection.  I also noted that the shop was swept and vacuumed.

The robotics and CNC area:



They are getting their big CNC working with Machine Kit and GeckoDrive G540.  It’s funny because Workshop 88 is going through the same process using Machine Kit and Gecko drives for our mill.  Tom in the red sweater asked what a “Charge Pump” is and I happened to know 🙂

Brandon is about to CNC machine a new aluminum part on the Taig behind him needed by the larger mill to the left.  It’s also using MachineKit, and note the electronics for the mill in the box mounted to the wall behind Plexiglas.  I didn’t find out what the actual part he was machining was.

Robot

This robot was there, I don’t know what if anything it was for but it was cool.  I particularly like the design with most of the motors low in the base and belt drive up and through the joints.

This is their Chinese Laser cutter / engraver.  It was not working at the time I visited.

Those 4 3D printers were donated by LulzBot.  I swear at least some, if not all look to me to be Prusa Mendel or Mendel Max.  Each needed some repair.

This is the electronics lab:
Here are a couple more 3D printers, that look to be in good working order.
Mike S. on the left wearing the hat, Mike W, and Alex working on something, probably Mike W.’s scooter.  In the meeting, Mike S. shared his current project: electronic control of the exhaust fan on his fireplace which he can now remotely monitor and graph the temperature of his fireplace and the running of his fireplace exhaust fan on his phone.

I love a good whiteboard!

Another room with test equipment.

It’s hard to see but the Boy Scout motto: “Leave No Trace” was once written in red marker on the well used bench.
Another friendly clean up reminder.

All in all a great club full of interesting talented people working on fascinating projects.  It was nice to see they face some of the same organizational challenges, and I like they way they incorporate a regular club meeting with introductions and project updates into their open house night.

I’m really glad I made the time to visit and when I go back to Boulder you can bet that I’ll  aim to be there on a Tuesday night to go to another meeting at Solid State Depot.

D. Scott Williamson
Compulsively Creative

New member Gail Jo made a version of her Telephone Draw game using the Workshop 88 colors and logo.  Next time you’re at Workshop 88, check it out – or get a group together and try playing.  Rules for the game are on her Etsy page, where you can buy your own version of the game.

Here’s some ideas for the maker, tinkerer, builder on your Christmas list. (Following these links and buying from Amazon will support Workshop 88.) Most of these items are still available to be shipped before Christmas!

	Hard to go wrong with an arduino uno – even if your maker already has one, it’s always nice to have a spare.
	This kit comes with all the parts needed to get started making with arduino.
	10 NRF24L01+ 2.4GHz Wireless RF Transceiver Modules compatible with arduinos. Very cool way to quickly experiment with wireless communication between arduino projects.
	This book is a great introduction to learning how to make with the arduino microcontrollers.
	This kit includes everything needed to get going with the Raspberry Pi.
	Have a Raspberry Pi already? Here’s a handy case to help protect it.
	Add a camera to your Raspberry Pi!
	Every maker doing electronics needs a multimeter. Here’s a fully featured one at a decent price.
	If your maker is new to 3D printing, you may want to consider this accessory kit.
	A fun filament to print with is glow-in-the dark plastic. This might be a filament that someone may not choose to buy on their own, making it a nice gift.

Another great open house night at Workshop 88! Ray got some assistance with his robot project from some young makers.

(from Workshop 88’s facebook page)

Last Thursday evening we had the pleasure of having a group from the Society Of Women Engineers tour our makerspace and ask questions on the many aspects of being a maker and what we were working on. They were a mix of female Engineers from different fields of engineering; chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers,and civil engineers. Really great night having them here with us. Are you, or do you have a group of people interested in makerspaces or hackerspaces? Come visit us on any Thursday evenings from 7-10 pm @ workshop88.

from Workshop 88’s Facebook page

Want to make your own case for your Raspberry Pi Zero at Workshop 88?  One of our members has left his design available for anyone who wants to make one on the laser cutter laptop.  Let us know if you want to make one and what you are using your Pi Zero for.

Last Thursday we had quite a bit going on at the weekly open house:

Ray connected the chassis of a motorized wheelchair to a remote control unit and was able to drive it around the front room.  Here’s a video:

The laser cutter was being used extensively to cut out some tesselating lizards and geckos, as well as to make stencils for an ammo box intended to hold plastic eggs. The project is called “Hen Grenades”.

Later in the evening Rachel came in and showed off her new LEGO compatible circuit boards – they are really awesome!  We were having so much fun playing with them that no one remembered to take photos.  Come in next week and ask her about them!

I really like teaching classes through Workshop 88 at the libraries.  Over the summer, I had a chance to teach a few of the classes Workshop 88 offers at some of the local libraries. One library that we like going to wanted a class to introduce their teens and preteens to the Raspberry Pi.

I recruited a few helpers and we gathered up several Raspberry Pis, keyboards, mouses, and power supplies to have enough supplies that the kids would be working in pairs or at their own Raspberry Pi.  We set up before the kids arrived and had everything ready to go. At the start of class we talked about the idea of the Raspberry Pi as a low-cost single board computer and we pointed out all the hardware features of the Pi.  Then we showed off all of the distributions that we had brought examples of.

That took all of 25 minutes for a 90 minute class. Oops.

So, I asked how many of the kids were familar with Scratch, and it turned out that more than half of them had already used Scratch in school.  I decided that they should get a chance to work with Mathematica, so that they would be exposed to something new.

There is a pretty good introduction to Mathematica for the Raspberry Pi on the Raspberry Pi Foundation website. (The actual Mathematica tutorial starts here.)

We did a bunch of things that I think worked really well:

1.) Showed basic math operations
2.) Showed how to make graphs
(One of the kids said at this point that Mathematica is basically just a less powerful calculator. That’s when we kicked it up a notch.)
3.) Kids explored how many digits of pi they could get out of Mathematica.
4.) Kids played with displaying 3D shapes using the Graphics3D function. Examples: Graphics3D[{PolyhedronData[{Antiprism, 4}, “Faces”]}]
Graphics3D[{Opacity[.4], Glow[RGBColor[1, 0, .5]],
PolyhedronData[“JessensOrthogonalIcosahedron”, “Faces”]}]
5.) Kids played with 2D shapes.  Examples: Graphics[Polygon[{pentagon, 1 + .5 pentagon, 1.5 + .2 pentagon}]]
hexagon = Table[{Sin[2 Pi n/6], Cos[2 Pi n/6]}, {n, 6}]
Graphics[Polygon[hexagon]]

Lastly, we tried to generate some sound files with Mathematica, but it didn’t seem to work too well on the Raspberry Pis.

Overall, I think the kids had a great time playing with Mathematica and trying out a bunch of things that they had no idea a $35 computer could do.