On Monday, July 15th, at 7pm, LVL1 will be hosting a solder your own TV-B-Gone workshop!  The TV-B-Gone is a great way to introduce yourself to soldering, and hacker culture.  This device will turn off over 230 TVs, from over 100 feet away.  Great fun for the sports bar or electronics store.

Sign ups are here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6748668449

Only 10 seats are available, so sign up now, reserve your spot, and come down to LVL1 on Monday, July 15th.  You need only bring yourself, everything needed is included in the workshop price of $25!

Sign up now using EventBrite.  Only space for 15 attendees! http://lvl1diypcb2013.eventbrite.com/

This is the Arduino you’ll be etching!

Chinese New Year got you down?  Even though its easier than ever to have your own PCBs made in China, being able to roll your own is a valuable skill to have, from simple-but-large designs, to the annual 2 week hiatus in electronics manufacturing known as “Chinese New Year.”

On Saturday, March 16th, Learn how to make your own PCBs using nothing more than some copper-clad board and dangerous household chemicals!  Walk away with yet another Arduino clone!

You’ll walk in with all the knowledge you need to perform toner-transfer PCB etching using Muriatic Acid and Hydrogen Peroxide. The process is described in more detail here: http://www.meatandnetworking.com/projects/toner-transfer-and-muriatic-acid-etchant-making-pcbs-at-lvl1/ Hone your soldering skills on a bare copper board, and blink an LED with the finest!

All you need for this workshop is yourself! If you want to test your Arduino, bring a laptop with the latest Arduino IDE installed.  If you already have an FTDI cable, buy the FTDI-less ticket.

Once again, sign up now and sign up often! LVL1 Members get a discount! Sign up now using EventBrite.  Only space for 15 attendees! http://lvl1diypcb2013.eventbrite.com/

Team Sign ups here: http://lvl1makefoodnotwar2012.eventbrite.com/

It’s time for another 24 hour hackathon!

This October, from Saturday the 20th to Sunday the 21st, pit your building skills against 9 other teams attempting to assemble the finest food-flinging machines in the world!

Your challenge is to build a machine in 24 hours (or less) that can fling the tastiest foodstuff the longest distance with the most style.  Teams can bring in any supplies they want (up to $150 worth– We will be asking for receipts at the door!), but you can’t put anything together until the start of the competition.  From then on out, it’s a free-for-all to build your contraption using the supplies you’ve brought in alongside the supplies at the LVL1 hackerspace.

As with last time, buy only one ticket per team!  One ticket gets your entire team in the door! Try to think of a team name before you show up!

At the end of the competition, teams will judge eachother in the following categories:

• Taste: How delicious is it, after being flung?
• Distance: How far did you fling it?
• Ingenuity: How well-built was your flinger? How crazy?
• Appearance: Is your food recognizable on the other end?

The rules:

• $150 budget, not counting parts from the boneyard at LVL1
• Must be built in 24 hours (nothing preassembled!)
• Team size is unlimited (in either direction), but 3-6 is recommended

Sign up for the workshop HERE: http://lvl1arduinobeyond.eventbrite.com/

Workshop is BYOA (bring your own arduino).

Another Arduino workshop at LVL1!

On August 26th, from Noon to 4pm, we’re going to cover software on the Arduino.

This is different from other workshops we’ve done on Arduino.  We’ll cover the IDE, built-in Libraries, their uses and pitfalls.  We’ll go over the current Arduino sheild ecosystem, investigate embedded C best-practices, and more!

This workshop will be strictly BYOA (bring your own Arduino), and will run about 4 hours.  Feel free to stick around afterwards to ask any questions we didn’t cover.  Buy your Arduino from Radioshack, Sparkfun, or any number of other online vendors.  Bring your laptop and a USB cable, and we’ll make the Arduino sing.

Here’s a detailed list of topics covered:

• What is a Microcontroller?
• What training wheels does Arduino provide?
• What are sheilds?
• What are libraries?
• Getting into the IDE
• Blinkenlights
• Built-in Peripherals
• Pitfalls
• Basic embedded C techniques
• Going beyond Arduino

This Saturday, January 21st, there will be a KiCad Workshop from 1pm to 5pm.  Sign up here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2696636713.

KiCad is a free utility for designing and laying out printed circuit boards.  Printed circuit boards connect your circuits together without the need for breadboards and jumper wires.  With circuit prototyping services cheaper than ever, it’s simple to turn your design into a real, working board.

This workshop will cover the basics of KiCad, from Schematic Capture, to Board Layout, you’ll walk out of the workshop with the knowledge necessary to take your circuit ideas from dream to reality.

If you’re already familiary with Eagle, KiCad has a number of advantages, including unlimited board size, up to 16 copper layers on your board, multiple sheets of schematic, and more.

Please install KiCad before coming to this workshop.  If you have any problems, or questions, don’t hesitate to let us know.  If you need help installing KiCad, show up early and we’ll try to help you out.

SIGN UP HERE http://digitalarduino.eventbrite.com

We will build and program an electronic game and in the process learn LED’s, tri-color LED’s, pushbutton switches, speakers and Arduino programming.

More info here: http://wiki.lvl1.org/Digital_for_Arduino

I am teaching.  I hope you can come.  Put your Arduinos and Freeduinos to good use!

Brian

Signup at EventBrite http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2562787366

Saturday, October 22, 2011 and  Sunday, October 23, 2011

2:00 PM - 6:00 PM (ET)

Don’t have a sumobot for this years competition and Halloween party? Want to be one of the cool kids? Do not be afraid the friendly folks at LVL1 are here to help.

Learn the basics of building a Sumobot! It’s a small autonomous 10cmX10cm robot that doesn’t like sharing the ring. More information about Sumobot competitions can be found here.

All parts, tools and equipment needed to build it will be provided. If you already have a FTDI cable for programming the microcontroller, you can save $15 with that ticket option. If you do not have this cable, purchase the full ticket including FTDI cable. A FTDI cable is common with Arduino variants and is very reusable.

http://wiki.lvl1.org/Sumobotsclass

10 total seats are available. Sign ups are open  http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2288210098

-Fire Tim

IT’S TIME FOR A LVL1 MEGA-WORKSHOP!

Sign up now on EventBrite:http://lvl1summercamp2011.eventbrite.com

This summer only, at the LVL1 hackerspace in Louisville, KY, you can learn how to Design, Etch, Solder and Program your very own microcontroller project.

This series of four workshops will take place across every Saturday in June, from 1pm to 5pm.  The first Saturday, you’ll learn how to use EagleCAD to route PCBs for manufacture.  No more perfboard!

The second Saturday, you’ll learn how to use dangerous chemicals to turn a blank copper board into a functional AVR programmer!  With this clone of LadyAda’s USBTinyISP, you’ll be able to program almost ever AtTiny and AtMega chip ever manufactured, freeing you from the surly bonds of the Arduino develoment environment.

The third Saturday, you’ll learn extremely useful skills in prototyping with surface mount components, soldering tiny parts on to the boards you etched the week previous.  Surface Mount soldering is  an important skill, as projects and parts get smaller and more powerful.

Finally, on the fourth Saturday, you’ll learn how to program a CapsLocker, a nefarious device which masquerades as USB keyboard.  This device is capable of entering any key sequence at any interval, super useful for makinG SURE YOUR MARK ALWAYS TYPES LIKE THIIS.  Or p#erha#ps #ann#o#yin# him# in ##eve#n #mo#r#e interes#ting #ways.

If you want to enroll in all four workshops, purchase the four-pack and the four pack only!  If you’d like to participate in just the etching and building, purchase the “Etching It and Soldering It” ticket.  If you’d like to participate in any just the Eagle or Programming workshop, without the fun parts to take home, simply purchase those tickets separately.  If you’re confused, or would like any combination of the above workshops, contact us!

LVL1 members, you get a discount! Contact the appropriate authorities!

Sign up now on EventBrite:http://lvl1summercamp2011.eventbrite.com

LVL1 and the Louisville Digital Association are proud to present the next Idea to Execution Workshop hosted at LVL1 Hackerspace, this Thursday 5/12 at 6:30pm. The topic this time is Ruby on Rails AKA RoR.

In keeping with the collaborative nature of our Idea to Execution workshops, the evening opens led by Ernie Miller with a short talk that focuses on making the business case for employing web development using RoR along with some best practices every business or tech lead should know. In the latter portion, attendees get their hands dirty working on RoR code.

Be sure to grab your ticket now and learn what you tools you’ll need. Seating is limited!