Today’s photo from the lab is a progress shot of a mirror with built in light. The maker was gracious enough to pose with his project just after assembling all the electronic components into the hand made frame.

We’ve been at our new location 1266 Queen St West #6 in Parkdale for a year! Come celebrate with us (free RSVP here) on Saturday Sept 26th, 8pm till late. We’ll have Moldover from San Francisco here making live electronic musics (take his workshop that afternoon!), and we’ll be generally having a good time – come learn to solder using the maker festival rocketship kits, or see us powering up our new backyard mini foundry! All are welcome – you do not have to be a member to attend, bring friends! BYOB.

Back by popular demand, hacklab will be having an open house this Saturday (Sept 12th), noon-6pm. Come get a tour, socialize with our members, work on your project, see our new milling machine, just as you would on a Tuesday evening, but on Saturday afternoon instead!

Glimps at DIYBIO

Hacklab has been hosting our friends DIYBIO for a while now. And with their presence a great symbiotic relationship has developed between the two groups. DIYBIO has a  bio lab in the Hacklab  space that has grown to a place where they can start running experiments.  The photo gallery below shows one of the experiments recently conducted. For more information on DIYBIO visit their website at DIYBIO.to. As well as visit Hacklab on Tuesdays for our open house to talk to some of the DIYBIO people in person. 

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 Hacklab Toronto is proud to announce that we will be hosting the first ever I2P Conference and Crypto-Party from August 15-16, 2015.  There will be discussion on I2P development and challenges, talks by INFOSEC experts, a CryptoParty hosted by Toronto Crypto, and lots of social time.  Signup and a detailed list of speakers and activities can be found by clicking “more”, below.

If you want to attend this conference, you MUST get a ticket at i2pmeetup.eventbrite.com – EventBrite works with fake names, TOR Brower and Mailinator.com to keep you anonymous, however.

Read more below the cut, and see you there!

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Hacklab will be hosting 4 satellite events for maker festival:

Hacklab 7th Birthday Party and BBQ – Saturday July 25th at 6pm – late. Tickets are $10 and get you free food and drink! Project Show & Tell event at 9pm, come and see or come and show off yours!

Hacklab open house – Tuesday July 28th, 6pm-11pm. Get a tour on our most crowded open house of the year! Come hang with fellow makers and get some last minute help on your project.

3D Hubs & ColorFabb Workshop Toronto – Wednesday July 29 6-8PM. Tickets include some samples of cool new 3D printer filament materials and workshop on how to use them.

DIYbio.TO presents The Evolving Landscape of Open Source & Biotechnology, a discussion of open source and biotech with Ryan Merkeley – CEO, Creative Commons; Abigail Cabunoc – Lead Developer, Mozilla Science Lab; Raymond Hui – Scientist, Structural Genomics Consortium; and others, including you! Free or PWYC.

Finally, Maker Festival itself is August 1st and 2nd at the Toronto Reference Library, hacklab will be an exhibitor, come and see our stuff. And the stuff of ~100 other makers! Tickets are free!

Lockpicking is a fun and unusual skill, and can help people get a better grasp of their physical security situation. Come to one of Hacklab’s two lockpicking workshops and learn a skill which is applicable for physical/digital security experts, security-minded home-owners, and anyone who wants to survive the zombie apocalypse!

Hacklab is running two Lockpicking workshops on July 5; the first running from 2pm until 4pm, and the second running from 5pm until 7pm. This event is open to all ages and all interested parties. Free signup at EventBrite is mandatory — there are only 5 spots available at each workshop. This event is Pay-What-You-Can, with a suggested donation of $10 or more to help us keep the lights on. Nobody will be turned away for lack of funds.

If you don’t get a ticket, don’t worry: we’ll be running this workshop again soon!

Signup for Lockpicking Workshop #1 or #2 at Eventbrite

Hacklab will be at the Maker Festival this coming August 1st and 2nd, showing off our awesome member projects. Previously known as the Toronto Mini Maker Faire, it’s back this year bigger and better, with more room for exhibitors, and a upcoming set of satellite events all across Toronto and the GTA. Maker Festival celebrates making and the people who make things, including things near to dear to hacklab’s heart like electronics, robotics, 3D printing, wearables, and drones. Tickets to the event are free and you can RSVP now to avoid the waiver-signing line. If you’re a maker, the Call for Makers is still open – but hurry it closes May 30th at midnight! We’d love to have you at a table beside us at the festival!

Hacklab member Daria demonstrates the radiating power of our 100W 80m-band transmissions on the Hacklab’s new amateur radio antenna.

Hacklab has been slowly been building a HAM set-up for a while now.
It started as a discussion and when equipment started being installed it quickly built up to a full installation. Note if you are part of another hacker space or an individual in North America or in the GTA with their own HAM set-up, Tuesday night is our open house and it’s likely the best time to reach us.