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Workshop Slides link!

RaspberryPi Pico Beginner Workshop for total beginners, all are welcome. A 3d printed robot claw, electronics bits and a RaspberryPi Pico of your very own is included in the $75 ticket price. You’re more than welcome to bring your own kit and attend the workshop for a pay-what-you-can donation. Please contact us to let us know you’re coming!

Zach will show you how to get started with the RaspberryPi Pico, the super-friendly microcontroller platform that even artists love. We’ll cover…

• getting the software installed and going
• hooking up the RaspberryPi Pico
• little bit of basic programming in microPython using friendly examples

You too can copy and paste your way to a working project!

What you’ll need:

• A laptop on which you can install software.
• The thonny python IDE installed: https://thonny.org/

Come on out to learn with us and support your local hackerspace, hacklab.to!

Weekend Open House – Sunday June 11, 2-6PM

Hacklab’s Open Houses follow what is know as the The_Tuesday_Pattern. That means there are folks that Tuesday never works out for them. To help close that gap, Hacklab members are coming together and reviving our occasional open house events on weekends.

Please join us!

HackLab.TO is happy to be among the 150 sites for this years Doors Open Toronto!
Come visit our uniquely adorned space filled with members’ projects ranging from art to electronic exhibits and design projects.

Saturday May 27th, 10am – 5pm
Sunday May 28th, 10am – 5pm

• Sunday April 30th
• 2PM – 7PM

Got some old electronics hiding away at home? Looking for a source of spare parts for a project? Junk Independence Days where people bring in and swap old electronics and e-waste.

Typical / past items included:

• iPods / Mp3 Players / camcorders
• Computers, laptops and parts
• Printers / Scanners
• Stereo amps, speakers
• Traffic walk/don’t walk streetlights!
• Hobby Electronics parts + kits

Not to be forgotten, there are always lots of little chips and bytes for random hacking too. Anything left at the end will be picked up on Monday and responsibly recycled!

House Rules: Items brought in for the Junk Day are not to be disassembled on site. If you want only part of an item, take it home, and bring the rest back next junk day.

See Dates and Donate to Attend at Eventbrite

• November 27th
• 2PM – 7PM

Got some old electronics hiding away at home? Looking for a source of spare parts for a project? Junk Independence Days where people bring in and swap old electronics and e-waste.

Items likes:

• iPods / Mp3 Players / camcorders
• Computers, laptops and parts
• Printers / Scanners
• Stereo amps, speakers
• Traffic walk/don’t walk streetlights!
• Hobby Electronics parts + kits

Not to be forgotten, there are always lots of little chips and bytes for random hacking too. Anything left at the end will be picked up on the following Monday and responsibly recycled!

House Rules: Items brought in for the Junk Day are not to be disassembled on site. If you want only part of an item, take it home, and bring the rest back next junk day.

With Ontario re-opening efforts well into Step 3, Hacklab is also making steps towards re-opening to the public. As of Tuesday Aug 3rd, we running a limited form of our usual weekly open houses.

To maintain a safe space, masks and social distancing will still be required while inside the Hacklab Toronto space. But we look forward seeing folks out and being social once more.

Like many Canadians, Hacklab’s membership has been watching the events that have led to the ongoing protests in the United States and the world, including here in Toronto. We acknowledge and denounce the ongoing systemic racism, white supremacy and police brutality that many Black, Indigneous and racialized communities face everyday that have led to these protests. We acknowledge that these problems exist in Toronto, including in the Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) community. Hacklab stands in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and the fight against all forms of racism. 

As a maker collective in Toronto, Hacklab is committed to helping build a community where everyone can live with dignity and freedom from fear. While we strive to be a welcoming makerspace in Toronto, we admittedly have fallen short in many areas that have led to gaps in representation of individuals from Black, Indigenous and other racialized communities.

We acknowledge that as a maker collective we need to do more to be an inclusive community. We understand that we need to centre the voices of the many Black, Indigenous and racialized makers of Toronto and the surrounding areas. As part of our actions, we are actively working to ensure these voices are heard. Our commitments include:

• Expand our outreach to Black, Indigenous and other racialized communities (e.g., by forging closer ties with groups led by and represented by those community members);
• Identify and reduce barriers for Black, Indigenous and racialized members of the STEAM community to participate in Hacklab as guests, members, and board members; and,
• Ensure that Black, Indigenous and racialized members of the STEAM community guide Hacklab to actively improve our diversity and inclusion efforts and support ongoing decision-making that considers diverse perspectives through our new Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

We all have to take ownership and responsibility to actively oppose racism within our organizations as well as ourselves as individuals in order to break down systems of oppression and exclusion. We recognize as Hacklab that we draw strength from the diversity of ideas and perspectives. As a community space that encourages people to socialize, share knowledge and collaborate, we recognize that making our own space more inclusive will strengthen our ability to “make things, repurpose things, program things, invent things and make lights blink” for the betterment of our members and our broader community.

Hack The Planet!

– HackLab.to

The Ontario Government is ordering all businesses not covered by the updated essential business list to remain closed until at least June 30th, 2020, with the possibility of an extension as the situation evolves. This is to confirm that HackLab.TO remains officially closed until further notice. This means, our public events continue to be suspended, and members should not be entering the space.

We will continue to update you as we receive updates, and we look forward to further growing our online community with all of you via email and other channels until such time as the doors of HackLab.TO are able to be reopened. We encourage you to be supportive and understanding of one another as we continue to get through this novel situation together.

COVID-19 Toronto Public Health Advice: https://www.toronto.ca/home/covid-19/

~From your board @ HackLab.TO

Dear Past, Present, and Future HackLab.TO guests,

Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic effectively immediately until at least April 6th, 2020 Hacklab will suspend public events, including the open house.

This closure comes in recognition of:

• public schools being closed for an extended two weeks in addition to March break
• businesses being encouraged to have employees work remotely
• and social distancing being implemented in shared spaces in the effort to flatten the curve and halt the spread of COVID-19 virus both in our area and the province.

We are sad to close our doors to all of you during this time as the community has always been and will continue to be a key component of the HackLab.TO experience. Open houses usually held on Tuesday night provide an opportunity for us to connect with the local community, invite new members to join, as well as share knowledge and resources in general.

HackLab.TO is an inclusive maker space advocating for all, so please remember that COVID-19 is a virus and as such it is not specific to one race, nationality, or ethnicity.  Treat each other with kindness, care, and compassion in this trying and challenging time.

We hope to see you all soon and are looking forward to getting back to activities as usual.  Until then, please visit our website https://HackLab.TO for up-to-date information, or subscribe to our twitter feed @hacklabto or facebook.com/Hacklab.TO !

~From your local makerspace HackLab.TO