Update: The class is full. Watch for another blog post for round two!

Photo by Mr. T in DC

Wanna bang on some hot metal and make something while learning some forging? Well then sign up for this quick class where you will make a letter opener out of a railroad spike. You will learn to taper & draw, spread, twist, and maybe even to scroll some steel. And you get to take it home and show it off!

Classes will be held between 12pm and 6pm with two people per one hour time slot.

Cost will be $20 for the hour long class and the railroad spike.

What you need to know:

• If you have a nice pair of safety glasses, bring them – we have some available, but they may not be comfortable.
• Wear ONLY cotton clothing and closed toe shoes (preferably leather with rubber soles) Any other fabric may catch fire and will melt onto your skin and continue burning you which is never fun.
• Your off hand will be holding the steel and tongs and will require a glove. Please bring a well fitting LEATHER glove if you have some. This helps reduce chafing and prevents burns. Your hammer hand does not have to be gloved.
• This activity has a high risk of burns – you will be dealing with glowing hot steel, sparks, and hot slag.  Wearing appropriate clothing and gloves minimizes this risk, but accidents still happen. You have been warned, now come have some fun!

Email Adrianna @ AdriannaMcKinley @ Gmail . com with two preferred time slots (noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm, 5pm, or 6pm). You will receive a confirmation for one of the two slots. Please arrive 10 minutes early.

Are you new around here?

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and you’re hardly alone. PS:One has seen explosive growth in the past year or so, and we’ve decided to create a formal way of teaching new folk how to be a healthy, happy member of the PS:One community.

Meet with PS:One old-timers (including at least one former president) to learn the many opportunities available to PS:One members, plus hacks for getting around easier.

You’ll learn:

• the one and only rule you need to remember at PS:One!
• what mailing lists and IRC channels you should join
• how to get discounts on classes, tee-shirts, stuff around town, and even monthly dues!
• how to get certified on equipment
• how to bring new equipment into PS:One
• how to create a class, event, group, meeting, or what have you
• how to request a class, event, group, whatever
• how to blog
• the wiki.
• do-ocracy and how to do-ocratize things

The basics:

• Who: anyone who wants to learn how PS:One works
• When: Sunday January 13th, 4 pm until about 6pm
• Where: PS:One 1st floor
• Cost: free

Here are the class notes – please feel free to read beforehand or if you can’t make it.

Winter is not coming, winter is here. The doppelbock needs kegging. It’s looking glorious. We haven’t had Beer Church in far too long, and the new year is here, bringing with it the requirement that we shall brew an IPA. Well, maybe an IPA. An IPA or another lager. That’s up to whoever shows up and tosses in their 2 cents (monetary, or opinion). The Brew & Grow’s strategic location and our wide array of existing equipment mean that we can do whatever we want, and what we want is to make beer.

However, not before we sample our existing brews; attend Beer Church this Sunday (1/6) at 1PM and you’ll get to try our as-yet-untasted Doppelbock and our hopped session mead “I Didn’t Mead It That Way” which has so far received solid reviews. We’ll be having a tasting to start (please bring your own unusual store bought or homebrew beers to share, if you can, to supplement the selection), discuss what we’ve done so far (several brews under our belts now!), go over a bit of how brewing works for newcomers. This all happens interspersed with the beer tasting, to keep things interesting.

Once we’ve got the groundwork laid we’ll decide what to brew, make a short expedition to Brew & Grow around the corner for ingredients, and get cooking! We expect to be done brewing by about 4:30 PM as we aren’t going to go too nuts this time.

Nitty Gritty

When: Sunday January 6th, 1PM
Where: Pumping Station: One, 3519 N Elston, Chicago
What: Beer tasting and brewing hands-on
Who: Anyone 21 or over, Pumping Station: One members or not!
Why: Because beer is a worthy purpose for your Sunday afternoon

Eric Gregori will be giving a talk about doing computer vision on the Android platform using the OpenCV library. It will take place at Pumping Station: One’s (http://pumpingstationone.org). Automated Manufacturing Night on Thursday, 1/10, at 7pm.

Manufacturing applications for computer vision include assembly:

And inspection:

After his talk and questions, we will discuss, repair, and build CNC machines ranging from 3D printers to electronics pick and place machines.

Thanks to Eric for a wonderful talk and to everyone who came out.

Eric included the presentation, and the links he mentioned during it, here: http://buildsmartrobots.ning.com/profiles/blogs/pumping-station-one-a-great-group-of-hackers.  He has written an article on the topic here:  http://www.embedded.com/design/programming-languages-and-tools/4406164/1/Developing-OpenCV-computer-vision-apps-for-the-Android-platform

A recorded version of the talk is available here.  Unfortunately, the video and audio quality are low.

Eric is the President of EMGRobotics (http://www.EMGRobotics.com). He is a robot enthusiast with over 19 years of embedded firmware design experience. His specialities are computer vision, artificial intelligence, and programming for Windows Embedded CE, Linux, and Android operating systems.

Automated Manufacturing Night is a monthly event where a speaker will discuss a topic related to Automated Manufacturing on the third Thursday each month. It is affiliated with the CNC Build Club (http://www.meetup.com/CNC-Build-Club/), a group where folks work on automated manufacturing machines at Pumping Station: One. It is also open to the public.

Pumping Station: One is a Chicago hackerspace located at 3519 N Elston, Chicago IL 60618.

This talk was organized by Jeff McAlvay, who is working with a team from PS:One on an open pick and place machine (http://www.boardforge.com).

Are you new around here?

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and you’re hardly alone. PS:One has seen explosive growth in the past year or so, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that we need a formal way of teaching new folk how to be a healthy, happy member of PS:One.

Meet with PS:One old-timers (including at least one former president) to learn the many opportunities available to PS:One members, plus hacks for getting around easier.

You’ll learn:

• the one and only rule you need to remember at PS:One!
• what mailing lists and IRC channels you should join
• how to get discounts on classes, tee-shirts, stuff around town, and even monthly dues!
• how to get certified on equipment
• how to bring new equipment into PS:One
• how to create a class, event, group, meeting, or what have you
• how to request a class, event, group, whatever
• how to blog
• the wiki.
• do-ocracy and how to do-ocratize things

The basics:

• Who: anyone who wants to learn how PS:One works
• When: Thursday December 6th, 7 pm
• Where: PS:One 1st floor
• Cost: free

Here are the class notes for folk who can’t attend.

Monday Dec. 3rd. is back-to-basics night at NERP. In Part 1, Carl
Karsten and Bonnie King will give an introduction to Python programming
for novice programmers. The target will be the Raspberry Pi, and the
focus of their teaching examples will be on input/output to simple
hardware. In Part 2, yours truly will demo control of output devices
including simple circuits for interfacing electronics to
electro-mechanical devices.

Find us here…
http://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/

-Ed

Hello again, with a fresh Beer Church event hot off the presses! No plans this Sunday at noon? No problem! Now you’ve got one: come down to Pumping Station: One at noon, sip a few unusual beers (bring one of your own, potluck style – we’ll supply the tiny steins), theorize on the nature of brewing and Sundays, and – Ninkasi willing – we’ll brew a doppelbock all-grain style. It’s possible we’ll also keg “I didn’t mead it that way”, but it may well need another week in the fermentation chamber.

Kegged beers set to condition for a few weeks

Due to the lager nature of doppelbocks, we may find that we need to modify our fermentation chamber to support lower temperatures and/or split temperature. That means physical build and some software tweaking; if you want to pitch in on that, by all means join us. Everyone is welcome who is 21 years of age or older, even if you’ve never brewed before, and aren’t a member of PS:One. A tour of the hackerspace will be available for the curious at some point in the afternoon.

The brew may last until 4PM or so, depending on the complexities that arise. You’re of course welcome to come and go, but it’s advised to come at the start so as not to miss the beer tasting – which will feature the last of Anisethesia on tap at our bar, which we first tapped for Locktoberfest.

If you can’t make it in person (or if you’re just that intrigued, which you should be), you can follow @ps1beerchurch on twitter. We post updates frequently! See you Sunday.

Beer Church is doing great lately. We’ve made 3 beers so far – 2 stouts and a spiced pumpkin ale. We just racked the spiced pumpinkin ale last night. We’re not sure how good it is yet, having only tasted it warm and halfway through the ferment, but it’s quite unique and we look forward to kegging it in a few weeks.

We served both our stouts on October 20th, at Locktoberfest Chicago 2012, alongside Cross of Gold beer from Revolution Brewery. Good times had by all, and all the beer poured out into waiting cups at a spirited pace. We look forward to seeing what happens with Locktoberfest 2013. We served out of our brand new taps built by Ryan Pierce!

More developments are… developing, on the bar! It’ll be even cooler later, when we’ll post a full writeup with pictures.

This Sunday, we’ll have a standard Beer Church event; with the addition of a random chance of whether we’ll be making Wine or Mead. Depending on when we hear back from participants, it’ll go either way – this post may be updated in a few days.

For those new to Beer Church, we hold pot-luck beer tastings, where everyone brings their favorite unusual beer and we taste them. We discuss the state of technology, brewing, and science in an informal midday Sunday setting at Pumping Station: One.

Once we’ve satisfied palates and our conversational avenues, we’ll either make wine, or mead! That depends on whether our winemaking correspondent is able to make it. Either way, we’ll be learning something new and making a delicious beverage. Come on down – both ends of the beverage cycle will be covered!

Details

* Date/Time: 12:30 PM, 11/11/2012
* Location: Pumping Station: One, 3519 N Elston Chicago IL
* Attendance: Public, no RSVP required, must be 21 or over

Demo from Tuesday night

It’s that time of the year again, boils and ghouls! Do you still lack ideas for costumes? Maybe you just want to take your existing costume a couple steps further? This three part course will teach you what you need to know about making realistic bruises, contusions, and wounds that would make your mother scream!
Part 1 on Thursday @ 7pm will feature the basics of wounds to make them look real and painful, instead of painted on.
Part 2 on Friday @ 7pm will feature how to use latex to create torn or blistering skin that bleeds.
Part 3 on Saturday @ 7pm will feature how to use makeup wax to create wounds with deapth and how to include embedded objects.

Single class: $10
Full course: $20

How can open source technology, design, and data accelerate social change and community improvement efforts? From Open 311′s city tracking system and the Grassroots Mapping of environmental impacts, to pedal powered electricity and LED banners at protests; design and technology have proven to be robust change agents.

CivicLab is entering the field with an initiative called “Hacks for Activists” (H4A). H4A seeks to build tools that solve common problems plaguing community organizers. We’re looking for activists, designers, coders, open hardware enthusiasts, and anyone with the slightest interest in technology for social change.

Our first meeting is being generously hosted by Pumping Station: One on Thursday Oct 18th, 7:00PM – 9:00PM. Snacks, beer, and non-alcoholic beverages provided! Here’s a few ideas we’re currently exploring but new projects are most welcome:

1. Sign Me Up: An SMS/web based tool to replace paper sign-up sheets at community organizing meetings.
2. Crowd Speaker: An application that would leverage participants’ cell phones as a collective public announcement system at rallies.

For more information and notifications about future meetings, you can contact bsugar [at] skilfullycurled.org, or visit our web site at http://civiclab.us.

Please sign up on our Eventbrite so we can get an idea of how many to expect: http://hacksforactivists.eventbrite.com/

Attendees who have never been to our space, please sign and bring PS:One’s Liability Release with you. We’ll also have copies available at the site on the night of the meeting.