Retro Game and Computing Night

A few of us had a bit of reminisce on Twitter of some of the old Pre 2000 pc's doing the rounds back then. On that note how about doing a Retro Game and Computing Night at #lightboxlab, featuring some of the vintage consoles,computers and games that are pre 2000 maybe?

At this stage I'd like to get an idea on who'd be interested in this and what we could set up so post if your interested in coming along and if theres anything you'd like to bring with you. I think I've a ZX81, BBC micro and maybe an old Atari 400. All have been in my folks attic for the last twenty years so I'll dust them off and see whats working.

Anyone interested

Post on our Google Group

Twitter @droghackspace

or E-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Regards

Paul

Dublin Mini Maker Faire 2012

The evidence of a growing revolution in making and hacking in Ireland was very much in effect at the Dublin mini maker faire  this weekend.  I'm sure the Science Gallery were not expecting the huge numbers on the day but they seemed to be coping well.  I arrived with the family early afternoon and after checking out some of the hack the city exhibits we paid a visit to Stephen Howells Kinect 2 Scratch stand.

My daughter couldn't wait to have a go as all the kids in here loved the ping pong game built with just four lines of scratch code. This room was particularly busy and I think a little crowd control would have been welcome to prevent kinect system confusion with recognition but it was great to see the interest here.  Next it was on to the NUI Maynooth makers club. 

Some really interesting projects here also and one thing I noted was the number of Arduinos being used in projects at this stand which really showed how popular this little device is. In this case it was integrated with a pretty cool hack  controlling LEDs in an interactive Tetris game which was another hit with the kids.  It was also in use in an excellent drum sequencer which was blasting out some cool techno beats in the room.

After  a hectic visit to the cafe for some grub we moved outside to the physics lawn.  There was tons to see and do here,  and certainly more going on then I can fit in this article!  Irish hackerspaces TOG and 091 labs along had plenty to show from wearable computing,3D printers  to soldering classes, homebrew, a quadroptor and a giant buzzer game!.  (my daughter was very happy when she left the camp after winning w a TOG duck :-) 

 The "imagineering" carousel of crazy looking steampunk-like toys was a particularly strange but wonderful thing to behold and there were plenty of non tech things to get involved with too, including a giant drum,  cigar box guitars  and model making.  Other strange sounding devices provided background music to the camp. 

 Scalexcercise (from Brighton) and the Lego stands were also excellent. So well done to the organisers and all involved, it was fantastic.  I'm sure this is something that will grow again next year. And I'm hopeful the lightboxlab community here in Drogheda and its surrounding areas we will be able to contribute a project or two to it next year!

Retro Game and Computing Event 25 August

The Retro Game and Computing Event will take place in #Lightboxlab at Millmount on 25th August from 2 PM to 6PM. There will be a nominal charge of around €5 to cover rental of the Incubation Centre on the day.  There has been good interest in this and we hope to have a good selection of Retro PC's and Consoles on the day. Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or our Google Group if you are interested in attending or have an old device you'd like to show off.  If anyone has an old casette player with a 5 Pin Din socket (Told you this was Retro!) can they contact me if possible? 

August Meet

Meet up on 1st August at #Lightboxlab

There was a great attendance for our August Drogheda Makerspace Meet up so thanks to all who attended on the night. Jonathan demonstrated the use of Thingspeak which is a web based open application platform which can be used to send and receive data via HTTP requests. So as a demo Jonathan hooked up an Arduino with a temperature sensor and added the Thingspeak Twitter API to a python script which grabbed the temperature output and automatically tweeted it directly to Twitter (25 degrees btw). As another demo a motor was added to the Arduino and started directly from a Tweet from the web. As proof of concept this has loads of possibilities for future #lightboxlab projects around the area of automation.

I brought along the Raspberry PI with the expectation of hooking it up with the Arduino but hit some performance issues with it thanks to a cheap ebay SD card :( Next time round I'll be better organised to show off the coolness of this device properly. So instead we played with a few NFC tags I had with me. With the aid of a few Android NFC enabled phones we were able to program the tags with an Android app called NFC Task Launcher. With the tag programmed scanning it enabled the phone to launch the task assigned which in this case was a pre-programmed tweet. In real world situation I use another Android application called Tasker in conjunction with the NFC Tags. A swipe of the one attached to my car dock does the following:

• Disable Wifi
• Enables Bluetooth
• Enables GPS
• Turns screen rotation on
• Launches my Car Dock Android App
• and Speaks any SMS messages I get through my car speakers

Disconnecting the bluetooth then reverts to my normal phone settings. I think we'll see a lot of these tags as they are pretty versatile.

There was animated discussion throughout the evening of other subjects along with a demo of a cool Minecraft plug-in developed by Jonny Devine. Links to some of the subjects are linked below

http://www.thingspeak.com
http://www.makeymakey.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouya
http://www.leapmotion.com
http://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Raspberry/Magic_Wand.html

Last of all we'd some great discussion centered around what Lightboxlab is all about, future projects, tutorials and future makerspace requirements as lightboxlabs develops. Again it was great to see the interest and attendance last night and thanks again to Mr. Sean McEntee, Incubation Centre Manager, DKIT for facilitating us with the use of the Millmount Incubation Centre. See you all soon for the next one!

Paul Doyle