Project:Classroom HackSpaceChallenge

Overview

This is a challenge to build a piece of equipment for the classroom.

More details here

Justification

We have to say why we should be allowed to enter, by the 11th of march. This section is a draft for ideas about why we are awesome. I suspect they are looking for impressive projects, so if people want to blow their own trumpets go ahead. Ideally mobile/electronic stuff? Srimech's turing machine might be a good thing, if he wants to get involved?

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We have recently started Young Hackspace where we show a bunch of kids around the space and get them to interact. One of the activities was we got them to draw pictures for the hackspace zoo, which we then scanned and laser cut for them to take home.

Ideas

There are different routes we could go in terms of educational content.

Creative

• Plasticine makerbot

Programmable

• Some robot or other. Maybe a plotter controlled like logo?
  • Moved to discussion page.
• Programming Bricks (see discussion page)

Science

• A visible (possibly UV) spectrometer.
  • See above link or this pages Discussion.

Draft Proposal

A draft of the proposal we will submit. Nothing so far.

The following is a proposal from London Hackspace (LHS) members that would like to participate in the Hackspace Challenge.

The LHS is a large organisation with an ever-increasing amount of member expertise and available equipment. Currently we have over 230 members from which we can draw their knowledge and skill.

We would like to submit XXX as a possible project. As it it something that would conform to the criteria set out by the competition organisers, and we are really excited about it. We have the equipment to prototype, develop and construct XXX at the LHS, due to our unique set of community-owned tools.

Signed,

.........

Draft II

We are one of the larger hackspaces (240+ members) and we have a wide range of skills people that we can call upon to help with our build.

We are committed to the teaching and spreading our knowledge. We have recently started Young Hackspace. One of the activities had them drawing pictures for the hackspace zoo, which we then scanned and laser cut for them to take home. As well as the young hackspace we have connections to colleges for testing and feed back purposes.

As a space we tended to have practical space improving group projects. Things such as a notification board controlled via IRC, a power monitor (some of it documented here http://blog.london.hackspace.org.uk/). So we have experience making projects that just work and don't need too much maintenance.

Current on-going projects include an Arduino powered vending machine, for the selling of arduinos. We're also trying to figure out how our laser cutter is controlled so we can write new software.

Lots of our members are also making the trip up to New Castle for the Maker Faire to help run the hack space there. This means we haven't decided on a project yet, possibilities include an open source spectrograph and an open source mind storms brain.

So we will be making the pcbs (using Eagle!), software and enclosures of something wonderful and useful, in-house.

Roles

Put down what you are interested in working on

Software

Member	Language
Eb4890	Any
Ciarán	Python

Electronics

Member	Skills
Ciarán	Basic soldering

Mechanics

Member	Skills
Ciarán	Happy to design, and cut stuff on laser cutter.