Are you as enthralled by 3D printing as the rest of us?  Have you had trouble finding or learning the currently available 3D design tools?  Then you should come to LVL1 on June 4th, from 6 to 8pm, and take the LVL1 Sketchup Workshop!  Sketchup is a free 3D design tool, used by everyone from artists, to engineers, to architects.  This tool allows you to create 3D models, which you can then take and print on one of the two LVL1 3D printers.

Like many of us, John Pagyga was immediately taken by the idea of 3D printing.  As a landscape architect, he has already adapted sketchup into his daily routine, so he was able to translate those skills into near-immediate 3D printing prowess.  He’d like to share these skills with others in the LVL1 community.  On June 4th, from 6 to 8pm (immediately preceding one of our regular Tuesday meetings), he’ll be teaching a workshop about the ins and outs of Sketchup in a 3D printing context.  Come on down, and learn you a 3D design tool!

You can sign up now using Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6810364985

Seating is limited to 15, so sign up now and sign up often!  This is a pay-what-you-want workshop, with all proceeds going to LVL1.  Eventbrite imposes a $0.99 minimum, but anything above that goes!

If you’ve got any questions, email workshops@lvl1.org, or pop over to our mailing list!

This weekend, we were lucky enough to have Sonny Mounicou come up from Memphis to teach a workshop on building a Prusa i2 3D printer.  10 people were in attendance, and everyone walked out with a working 3D printer!

The workshop was a grueling 24 hours, running from 8am to Midnight on day one, and 8am to 4pm the next day.  By the end of the workshop, though, everyone was slinging plastic!  Aaron was talented enough to be printing cubed gears after a mere 14 hours!

A big thanks to Jon from SeeMeCNC, who came in to help out with the workshop.  He also managed to sell a couple of printers while he was at the space! And an absolutely huge thanks to Gerrit, who kept us all fed throughout the event.  May no build-off ever go without catering.

Jon from SeeMeCNC (And his huge printer)

Gerrit, Keeping us all alive

Scroll past the break for more pictures of the event, but I’ll wrap it up here by saying that the build was a great event.  10 people in the LVL1 community got to build 3D printers, 2 more people bought 3D printers during the event, and our expertise for printers is growing.  This event even motivated some to start a Louisville-Area Thrug (3D Printer User Group).  If you’re interested in 3D printer, join the conversation here: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/kyin3dprinters

Until then, we’ll be hacking away at our printers.  For those who missed out, don’t despair: Sonny let us know that any time we can get 8-10 people together for a build, he’ll make the drive!

More pictures below the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

A big personal thanks to everyone who came out to the 2012 LVL1 Boneyard Hackathon.  We had 9 teams consisting of 54 hackers compete for 24 hours straight, putting to the test their technical capabilities, endurance, and creativity.  We had 9 great projects, and everyone had a lot of fun!  Our youngest competitors were only 11 years old! Everyone here already looks forward to the next event.

Thanks to Jon for recording a summary of the projects at the hackathon.  I’ll upload a full video of the project showcase soon!

Team Bloominglabs made an incredible 3 musical instruments, a mixer for them all, and a bunch of LED blinky stuff! They brought 9 hackers to bring this all together, and were a flurry of activity throughout the hackathon.

The Raging Narwhals, a team from the Triangle Fraternity at LVL1, made a floppy drive keyboard. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite working by the end, but it was an impressive effort, and they plan to come back to finish it up. They brought a huge team, and almost all of them stayed through the night!

The LVL1 Stonecutters managed to make a 3-D Scanner and Animated Gif Maker using the parts in the boneyard!

Team Rainbow Unicorn built a first place trophy, so even if they failed, they would win.

The Dirty Cheaters put together an incredibly impressive Rock ‘em, Sock ‘em robots kit, which included rack and pinion steering, and no microcontrollers.

Destined for Failure built a looping synthesizer controlled by a PS2 mouse. Very impressive, especially consdiering this was the group’s first foray into Arduino progrmaming!

Team Polar Bear build a laser pong game, complete with scorekeeping, 8 bit sound effects, and varying difficulty levels. Superb engineering, guys!

The Noobs were our youngest team, and they put together a custom computer using parts from the basement, including custom LED signs.

Finally, Bob the Bodybuilder built a very loud keypad controlled synthesizer. They even devised a means to convert sheet music to keypad tablature.

I owe a huge thanks to everyone involved. Thanks to FoodCalc Inc. (http://www.foodcalc.com) for supplying libation for the event. Thanks to Joe L. for helping out throughout the event. Thanks to Gary F. for being a trooper, staying way later than he meant to, and helping out almost every team here. Thanks to Jose C. for taking way more crap than he deserved. Thanks to Lauren, Jynn, and Steph for acting as team breakfast, and keeping us all from starving.

Plenty more photos on the flickr stream. Peruse through, and if this interest you, come to our space! Links above and to the right will help you find us.

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.

There will be a beginner beekeeping class at LVL1 on Sunday 3/13 from 2-4.  As people get more interested in gardening and learning where their food comes from urban or neighborhood beekeeping is gaining in popularity. I will bring every type of equipment I own plus pictures of things I don’t.  You will learn what can be expected if you decide to get some bees.  Why would I want bees you ask?  They make honey.  They help your garden.  They make honey.  They help your neighbors garden.  They make honey for goodness sake! There will be no bees at the class. This is a perfect opportunity to find out if beekeeping is something you want to try.  I’ll be bringing some honey to sample.  There is no cost for this class.

Todd W.

Remember daylight savings is Saturday night!

CMKT Circuitbending Workshop, Friday March 11th, starting at 7pm.

We start by building a simple tool, a Bending Buddy, that will help everyone learn how to solder, drill plastic and mount components. This device will aide in their exploration of circuits. After that, we would have a broad overview of topics that would including basic pitch bends and types of potentiometers, several ways to wire an audio output, other types of bends (distortions, glitches), types of bendable toys, reading schematics, and working with ICs, breadboarding, and prototyping. People are encouraged to bring projects in-progress or any problem-projects to share/brainstorm. Students would come away with a circuit-bending tool, a basic understanding of circuit bending, and some ideas about how to further control their toys with external circuitry.

$20 for the class. The $20 covers the materials for the bending buddy, helpful circuit bending reference sheets, and the materials used in the instruction of the class. We will also have other kits and components for sale “a la carte”.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=130027143736128

LVL1 and the IEEE Louisville Student Section are happy to announce that LVL1 will be hosting the University of Louisville IEEE and their soldering workshop.

This soldering workshop will take place at 1PM on October, 16th, at LVL1 (814 E. Broadway).  This workshop will bring in 15 Electrical Engineering students from the University, with 5 walk-in seats held for the LVL1 community.  These seats are first-come, first-serve, and the cost will be $10.

Students in this workshop will be soldering together a small variable frequency sound generator based on a 555 timer IC.  Students will learn basic thru-hole soldering skills, wiring components to perfboard.

The IEEE Louisville Student Section is a University Student Organization which serves as a professional and social network for Electrical Engineering students at the University of Louisville.