Ever wanted to copy a three dimensional shape? Molding and casting allows you to copy nearly anything – from hands and fingers to toys and sculptures. This beginners workshop (led by relative novices too), will provide you with hands-on exposure to simple molding and casting.

As this workshop, you will:
– be provided with materials for both molding and casting
– make a mold of your thumb or finger
– mix your casting material, and then use your mold to create a solid copy- take it home!

Here’s some sample casts I took a few weeks ago with the materials that we’ll be using:

This workshop will be hosted by hacklab.to, at 170a Baldwin St., Toronto (which is upstairs, above Graffiti’s Bar & Grill) on the evening of January 9th 7pm-8:15pm. Workshop participants will be charged $10 to cover the costs of materials.

Event registration is required. Tickets (12 only) are available at:

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2640745541

This weekend’s robot hackathon was a huge success. Not only did everyone who participated have a blast, but we actually ended up with a nifty little robot too. You can also check out Eric’s blog post on the event as well as this fantastic set of flickr photos. Here’s a clip of the robot in action in one of our early tests:

The robot in the video runs on a set of powered train track rails. Power is drawn from the rails into the Arduino and the motor shield atop the carriage (photo: motorizing the carriage). The arduino is our robot “brain” (photo: coding the brain) that issues all the movement and LED blink commands (yes, any robot worth its salt MUST have blinking LEDs). While we now have several feet of track installed, this turned out to be a difficult job since hacklab apparently has  a 4″ thick concrete ceiling. But thanks to a lot of hard work (photo: drilling the ceiling) it’s now rock solid and looks awesome. The idea is to lay additional track that will eventually allow the robot to drive along the ceiling all over the lab. Our “use case” is a robot that can be commanded to head over to the desks, pick up empty pop cans and ferry them over to the recycling bin (more about that in a moment).

After the above video was taken, we started to outfit the robot with additional capabilities and sensors. The first was a Sharp IR distance sensor that we’d like to use for robot positioning along the track. The second was this little contraption (see if you can guess what it is before scrolling further):

This little gadget is actually a winch that can raise or lower a bucket from the robot. In our proposed  pop can pickup “use case” the winch is what will enable the robot to pick up and deliver pop cans to the recycling bin. …what? “ugly” you say?  Not to us. What it lacks in sleek lines and striking curves is overshadowed by character and performance. As an example, if you look carefully, on the left side of the spool we have a heart shaped piece of acrylic that serves as our motor hub (yes, every self respecting robot needs a heart)! And equally cool is that just above it we have a limit switch with a roller on it that tracks along the edges of the heart as the spool turns, sending our robot three electronic “clicks” each rotation (two at the top of the heart and one at the bottom) that help us encode/track the position of the winch. It also has a homing switch at the top to allow the robot to figure out where the bucket is after a reboot.  So will it lift a pop can? You bet!  The heaviest object we tested with it was the fire extinguisher …which it lifted without a problem!

And of course, this is just the beginning. We have lots of code left to write, track to lay, and sensors to add. We also plan to give the robot a xbee wireless connection so we can issue it commands from within the lab as well. Adding a pan/tilt laser pointer atop the robot is also on our to-do list.

Thanks to everyone for an awesomely fun weekend, and feel free to roll up your sleeves and join us on this project as Hacklab’s Train Overlord continues to evolve!

UPDATE: Notes from this session as well as a detailed online tutorial have now been posted at:  http://wiki.goodrobot.com/wiki/Servos

To reserve your spot for this free workshop please confirm through eventbrite:
http://arduinoservo.eventbrite.com

This workshop is for anyone who would like to make things move using hobby servos.  Attendance is free and limited to 11 people. Beginners at any level are welcome, though ideally you will have a very basic familiarity with Arduino (for example, you might have tried something like the arduino blink tutorial).

The workshop will be held at Hacklab (170a Baldwin St) 7pm-9pm April 18th. Hacklab is located in Kensington Market, a few blocks SW of College and Spadina. For directions see:                                   http://hacklab.to/location/

In this workshop we will discuss hobby servos, how they work, and what they can be used for. Then we will use our Arduino (an open hardware platform) to control them. For those interested in working with robotics or making things move, controlling servos with arduino is a great first step.
Please bring:
– A laptop (make sure you have downloaded and installed the Arduino Software: see arduino.cc )
– An arduino (Creatron sells them on College St just a few doors east of Spadina)

I’ll supply a variety of servos that you can experiment with. See you there!