Mobile Makerspace member Rick Green is experimenting with his Raspberry Pi as a Cnc controller stacked up with a Gertboard, CNC Shield and Four Polulu DRV 8825′s
This should allow pushing four steppers up to 1.5A with 1/32nd of a step precision.
Hopefully see some results from these experiments later this weekend.
We’re all gonna get together and have fun working on our projects. Join us at Ricks house, bring your projects and toolbox. We’ll have an outdoor space setup to work. Along with the fab shop and lots of computers.
If you don’t have a project you can have fun taking something apart (we’ve got lots of out of use items). Build an engraver from 2 dvd drives? We’ve got all the stuff, just come and hack around on it and have fun with the rest of us.
It’s been a long time since we’ve heard from many of our members.
Get in touch with Mobile Makerspace.
We’ve got a number of events planned for March and would love to get the word out to you. It would be even better to see you in person. Don’t be a stranger, come join us in the month of March.
You can send us an email at info@makerspacemobile.org, or create a post on the Google+ community, or facebook. Show off what you’ve been up to, or get in touch with what other members are doing.
Dont be shy!
WKRG News 5 here in Mobile featured a story last night about the lack of Computer Science and Programming curriculum in local schools and across our nation.
CS and programming are not being taught to school kids.
Makerspaces have always been focused on learning. Learning to code and program both in digital and physical realms has always been a major part of the bedrock of “Maker” culture. With Open Source Programs opening the possibility for young programmers to peruse source code for mainstream programs and even operating systems. And Products like the Raspberry Pi and Arduino offering (more) affordable ways to dabble in coding, automation and even web serving, with minimal commitment and allocation of resources.
Makerspaces are now popping up in towns, schools and libraries all over the country (and the world)
People are coming together to build their ideas be it code or gadgets or machines.
P.S. Last night was part 1 tonight they will be showing part 2 be sure to tune in.
. 
#Arduino, #Coding, #CodingCrisis, #ComputerScience,#Makers, #Making, #News5, #OpenSource, #Programming, #RaspberryPi, #WKRG
Our makerspace is all about sharing, collaborating and learning. We’ve held a few classes and workshops and the plan is to have many more of these. I was perusing another makerspace’s site and got inspired to highlight some of the classes other spaces have held or will be holding.
So my question to you is, what will you teach us? By collaborating we strengthen each other, we all have something we can learn or teach. All of our members are encouraged to Plan, Schedule, Teach, Volunteer and Attend classes.
Get involved, teach us what you know.
Here’s a few examples of what we could do..
We’re gonna work to get events created for February soon.
The rundown is something like.
2/15/14 – We are going to drive to Malbis and meetup with the guys from ECCM (around early afternoon)
2/18/14 – Planning meeting in the evening
2/22/14 – Not locked in yet but possibly an open outdoor build day, bring a project
We are also working on promotional materials for the Teen Tech Extravaganza with the library. We are looking at doing small posters (letter page size) and bookmarks.
We need projects to show the public in the event in March, something that moves or blinks or beeps, something with interaction and results.
There will be more about that later.
Ben asked today (ben’s post) if we have considered using Kickstarter to gain some funding. So this evening I searched for spaces who have run kickstarter campaigns. This search yielded some very positive results..
Here’s some of what I found:
Raised $34,000 of $15,000 Goal
by NYC resistor
Raised $3,000 of $2,000 Goal
Raised $5,000 or $3,000 Goal
Raised $12,000 of $10,000 goal
Raised $37,000 of a $35,000 goal.
(Hackerscouts looks like an amazingly fun program!)
These are success stories. Can we do something like this in Mobile? If we run a kickstarter would it get word of our organization out to the right backers?
We will be meeting January 21st, 2014 at 7pm to plan our events and meetings for February.
Everyone is welcome, location TBD.
Please attend if you would like to help us plan the next few steps.
I was in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago and I got a chance to check out NextFab Studios. I was really impressed with their setup to say the least. It was a 20,000 square-foot warehouse that had been renovated. It contained a cafeteria (under construction) as well as offices, woodworking shop, welding shop, electronics shop, a paint booth, a camera studio, and an assortment of 3D printers.
The first thing to know is that this is a for profit makerspace. Their business model revolves around many different sources of income including paying members, corporate memberships, government memberships, renting conference rooms for presentations, renting classrooms for teaching, and business incubation.
Electronics Shop
They have about 300 paying members. When I asked about the popularity of the different shops he said that the woodworking shop was the most popular. The people working in the wood shop consisted of mostly hobbyists, but some were people who built furniture or custom woodwork who needed extra capacity or space to complete a specific job. While I was there the busiest area was the electronics shop and product design. Lots of projects and various forms of completion.
One thing my tour guide warned about was space. While he liked having a camera studio, it went unused quite a bit. When they needed it, it was really useful, but otherwise it was wasted space that could have been used for something else. He also said that they would take large deliveries and store them for a fee. This allowed people to have their materials delivered to the shop instead of their house. As he explained all of this, I began to realize that their ability to monetize space was very important.
Computer Lab
Nextfab also offers their conference rooms for rent. I wish I had a picture, but it was really professional. People who needed to present to venture capitalists, or give any kind of presentation can rent the room, which had a long conference room table and a projector mounted to the roof. He also said that they would host corporate team building exercises as well.
In addition, they host a business incubator. For a fee, a person can rent a small office and have access to the resources of the makerspace and 24/7 access. They were hosting about 3-4 businesses while I was there. My tour guide also said that several smaller firms and some government agencies had memberships. Mostly to get access to the massive 3D printers onsite for prototyping and design. This included a Z-Corp full color 3D printer! All told, they had about 10 different 3D printers onsite.
Z-Corp color 3D printer
All together it was a great visit and I really learned a lot.
You can view the full gallery of my visit HERE.
Our next general meeting will be next Saturday on September 7th. This is open to everyone, so if you haven’t made a meeting in the past, now is the perfect time to meet everyone and get involved! Rick has secured a new meeting area in Shelby Hall on the campus of the University of South Alabama. This is another great step towards collaboration between our group and the university.
The first topic of discussion will be about our first Build Day. Build Days are centered around a specific project that we will all build together. For our first build day we will be creating a vacuum former. Have you ever wanted to make your own stormtrooper or Iron Man outfit? Well now you can! At the meeting on the 7th we will be deciding on a plan and assigning project responsibilities. If you are interested in this awesome project, you will definitely want to be there!
The next topic we will be going over our goals over the next 6 months, year, and two year marks. Fundraising ideas and what we want to do with those funds will also be discussed. We also want to hear from our members! What do you want and expect from the group? What other types of workshops would you like to see?
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