This Tuesday is shaping up to be a Super Tuesday!  Tuesdays at 8:00pm are our regular meeting times, but this Tuesday, 4/12/11, we’re throwing in a Sumo-bot throw-down, and a Yuri’s Night  Celebration.

What: LVL1 Tuesday Meeting, Yuri’s Night Celebration, and Sumo-bot throw-down!

When: Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

Where: The LVL1 Hackerspace, 814 East Broadway, Entrance on the rear alley

For visitors, our regular meetings usually consist of 30 minutes of talking about LVL1 business, events, and miscellany, followed by building, hacking, making and general mayhem, extending well into the night.  This Tuesday, however, we’ll be celebrating Yuri’s Night, a world-wide party commemorating the 50th anniversary of mankind first slipping the surly bonds of earth, and extending our reach into space.

LVL1 will be hosting members of the Louisville Astronomical Society for some urban star gazing, and we’ll be trying to listen for the ARRISat, an amateur radio satellite currently attached to the International Space Station, transmitting just for Yuri’s Night, before it becomes fully armed and operational later this year.

In addition, almost a dozen members of the LVL1 community have been working on Sumo-bots for the upcoming tournament at Hive13, Cincinnati’s hackerspace.  We’ve got enough bots running around here for our own tournament, so we’ll be doing exposition matches all evening, building, testing and tweaking our sumos!

Come one, come all to LVL1 this Tuesday at 8:00pm.  Anyone and everyone is always welcome.

From my yammer post:

I thought I’d share this LVL1 approach to equipment and inventory management. Of course once we opened our doors last July, the contents of our members garages vomited forth their contents into our space. It was very difficult to keep track of what equipment we had, where it was, who wanted to retain ‘ownership rights’, whether it worked, how to make work, etc.

An idea bubbled up to inventory everything. A daunting task to be sure. I decided it’d be easiest to create a wiki page for each item. We crowd-sourced the effort and had the membership show up one Saturday to log everything and eat pizza. It worked well.

But wait there’s more! With a little bit of MediaWiki templating, I was able to generate QR codes on each wiki page (and therefore each piece of equipment). We printed out these QR codes on sticky mailing labels and applied them to oscilloscopes, saws, makerbot, the bathroom, Ben (frequent canine visitor), and everything in between. So now anyone with a smartphone barcode scanner app can scan the QR code on a piece of equipment in the space and get ALL OF THE INFO. Each piece of equipment has a readily accessible/editable wiki page of metadata goodness.

Members can leave operation notes, known problems, safety instructions, links to manuals, passive aggressive notes, humorous taunts on the wiki page of each item in a very accessible way.

It’s working pretty well for us! YMMV

Then the follow-up:

View source on this template entry to see how it’s defined:

http://wiki.lvl1.org/Template:Equipment

And then view source on this wiki entry to see it’s usage:

http://wiki.lvl1.org/Veruca_Gloop

We’ve tagged *lots* of stuff in the space.

• Example case: Coffee Maker. People have trouble figuring out the weird tab sensor thing on this coffee maker that prevents it from working. It’s a confusing design, but the information page clears it up.
• Example case: Soldering Irons. Includes a downloadable comic to teaches you how to solder.
• Example case: First Aid Kit OH GOD WHAT DO WE DO??! QR code to the rescue.
• Example case: LVL1 itself We started tagging spaces too!

So there you have it. Just make a wiki page for the thing and include the mediawiki template. Instant QR code! Print out the the page on some mailing label adhesive paper on our printer, and slap it on the device.

Almost every night of the week, LVL1’s 2,000-square-foot communal workshop is a hive of tinkering, socializing and building. Oscilloscopes, wave-form synthesizers and multi-meters, all donated by members, line the shelves and tables inside the hacker space. Puffs of smoke and tiny explosions erupt from the poised tips of soldering irons. Hand-built robots click and flash. Musical instruments are modified, purposefully mangled and built from scratch. Consumer electronics have their warranties voided by simply being opened up, cheap broken toys are cannibalized for parts, and, above all, information, free and plentiful, is shared.

At a Tuesday night meeting, Tim Miller, a quiet, dark-haired network technician in his mid-20s, draws a rough sketch of a tree on the dry-erase board at the front of the room, adding a squiggle at the end of a branch near the top and stepping back into the crowd of half a dozen that has wandered over and gathered behind him.

He crosses his arms as the group considers the problem: At the end of a test flight, the computer payload for a robotic helium balloon that members of LVL1 designed has gotten stuck 80 feet in the air, tangled in the upper regions of a giant tree on a Christian dude ranch in Vernon, Ind. Somehow, the payload — a 12-pound mother-brain of chips and sensors about the size of a microwave — has to be retrieved so the data it has collected can be analyzed. Ideally, the payload can be installed beneath another balloon that, in the coming weeks, will attempt a record-setting flight across the Atlantic.

http://leoweekly.com/news/hacktory

By using the donate button below you will be taken to Paypal to make a donation to the laser cutter fund. When you use this button the donation is earmarked for the laser cutter fund, not the general fund.

White Star Balloon

White Star Balloon Project – official site

Monthly Donation

Help LVL1 with a small monthly recurring donation of $13.37!

LVL1 Makership

We’re raising money for a Makership fund. A makership is similar to a scholarship, but the focus is on a creating something. We are using this fund to support an aspiring maker in financial need. The fund includes all LVL1 membership dues for 1 year, plus $400 to fund their proposed makership project.

For more information, see LVL1 Makership

Its nothing fancy, but if you have a power supply you think is bad, or you think you have some bad network lines, you may want to come down to the space and borrow some new test equipment we have.  Read further on for the specs.  Thanks to the dozen or so people at LVL1 who pitched in to get this for us all to share.  For a link of other fine equipment we already have, see http://wiki.lvl1.org/Equipment

Power Supply Tester Coolmax PS-228

The product designs with LCD to show ATX power voltage. Easy to plug with ATX power 24 pin and plug in (P4/P6/P8) to show the voltage on the LCD panel.
	Easy to check ATX power supply
	Aluminum case
	Accurate voltage indicator +/- 0.1V (+12V1/+5V/+3.3V/5VSB/+12V2/-12V)
	ATX P.G. value display
	Lower or higher P.G. values alarm
	ATX output connectors check
	Lower voltage detected alarm
	Over voltage alarm
	No voltage detected alarm

Manual:
	Plug-in your ATX power 24 pin and plug-in (P4/P6/P8) into the tester.
	Turn on your ATX power supply
	LCD shows each voltage and P.G. value on the screen automatic and you can hear 2 beep sounds.
	ATX power output connector checking one by one.
	If power output is working, the LED will light on.
	If power output failed, the LED will not light on.
	Plug-in (HDD/Floppy) connector and check LED light (+12V1/+5V)
	Plug-in SATA connector and check LED light (+12V1/+5V+3.3V)
	Remove the connector after your checking
	Do not plug-in 2 connectors into the tester at the same time
	(Not include 24 pin connector)
	Abnormal voltage detected will not display on the screen.
	No voltage detect, “LL” will display on the screen.
	When detected Voltage is lower than Min. Value, “LL” will display on the screen.
	When detected Voltage is higher than Max. Value, “HH” will display on the screen.
	When detected voltage is lower than table value (A), will alarm.
	When detected voltage is higher than table value (B), will alarm.
	P.G. value detected lower 100ms or higher 900ms, P.G. value is abnormal and alarm.
	When abnormal happened, it will alarm and relative digit blink on the screen.

Each Voltage normal range:

+5V, +3.3V, +5VSB is ±5%;

Pyle HPCT45 Network Cable Tester

I can’t find much info on this tester, but here is a link to the manufacturer.

http://www.pyleaudio.com/itemdetail.asp?model=PHCT45

Over the past year the story has consistently been the same: people curious about technology show up to see what LVL1 is about. They come in as strangers, but never leave that way. New folks are especially encouraged to attend! There is a huge amount of collective knowledge to share. There are lots of projects to scratch your geek; which could use some extra hands. LVL1 has created a space for these interactions to happen, but even more importantly we’ve created an open community. We’re using the Grand Tuesday 1 year anniversary to celebrate this fact.

There will be snacks and homebrew beer. And like every Tuesday, we’ll have an open build session and lots of geeking out.

All are welcome!

Hello all,

Last night’s Open Haus was such an overwhelming success that I didn’t
have a chance to thank everyone properly.

Thank you to Kwau-La-Waul Properties and the Zink family for leasing
us such a fantastic space. Steve Jr. did a great job doing the build
out for us. They put in the new walls, plumbing, A/C, electric and
replacement doors windows.

Thank you to bluegrass.net for providing the internet connection and IPs gratis.

Thank you to Matt Frassica at the Courier-Journal for coming out to
check out what we’re doing.

Thank you to the Collexion members who came up to help us celebrate.

Thank you to everyone who brought projects to show off!

Most importantly, thank you to all the founding members who’ve
contributed their knowledge, time and finances to make LVL1 a reality.
The contributions are too many to mention, so I won’t even bother. It
takes a leap of faith to try and bootstrap a community like ours
without any guarantee of success. You are heroes, every last one of
you.

9 short months ago, Brian and Mark put out a post to see who else in
Louisville was interested in starting a hackerspace like the other
spaces popping up all over the US. People showed up. And they kept
showing up. We self-organized and came up with a plan to bootstrap
this thing. The plan worked! 9 short months from nothing but an idea
to an awesome real physical space.

The first question I always get when I talk about what LVL1 is
doing… What exactly is a hackerspace? It’s a surprisingly difficult
question to answer. I think it has something to do with computers and
electronics… These spaces are so conceptually new, that there isn’t
a lot of history to help define them. The best I can think of is to
offer analogies. Musicians need venues to perform at. Basketball
players need courts to play on. Painters need galleries to show off
their work. Skateboarders need skateparks to show off their tricks.
Poets need open mic nights to read their work. etc. etc. Tinkerers,
makers, hackers, programmers and engineers need hackerspaces to work,
learn, share and socialize. Computers and electronics alone touch
almost every facet of our modern lives, so the breadth of possible
projects is incredibly large. And a hackerspace can be much more than
just computers and electronics. I think that was demonstrated by the
wide variety of projects on display last night!

Now that we have our space, let’s move boldly forward. Our success as
a hackerspace should be measured by the good times we have, the
friends we make and the great projects we create. Remember all the
things that have helped us build a great community and keep doing
them. Go out of your way to be open and welcoming to new members.
Share what you know. If you want something to happen, take the lead to
make it happen. Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. Figure
out where to start, be prepared to fail, readjust and try again. All
of the democracy and voting in the world is no substitute for a
healthy culture of learning and doing.

Thanks again. I looking foward to this time next year, when we can
look back and again be pleasantly surprised by what has been
accomplished.

I will now officially exercise the sole privilege of my office and
redesignate my LVL1 title from “Chief Tyrant of the Collective Will”
to “Micro Colonel”.

High 5s all around!

/Chris
Micro Colonel LVL1