cool gear demos. There was an Elektron MachineDrum, a Korg ESX-1, a
Novation Launchpad. On the more DIY route of gear, we had a fully
functional Drone Lab machine as well as a couple people soldering up some
atari punk consoles. A Stylophone even made a guest appearance. There
was a nice awesome jam session involving most of this gear as well as a
violinist, which can be listened to on
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/fubarlabs-live-stream. we will have
another Electronic music night soon, and hopefully more people can
come and enjoy this great combination of music and electronics.

AlexW

Arduino Boot Camp, Intro to the Arduino Microcontroller – July 31st 1pm – Description below, register online at Eventbrite.

DIY Beverage Night (Brewing beer/soft drinks) – August 11th 8pm – We will be brewing, discussing, and drinking homemade beverages such as beer and soda.  We will learn how to brew beer and plan a brewing project for the space.

Apocalypse Survival Night – August 18th 8pm – This workshop prepares people for the zombie/robot/nuclear/global-warming/reality-television apocalypse.  The study group focuses on survival and emergency preparedness.  Anyone is welcome to attend, free of charge.

Still in the Planning Stages – TBA

Physical Security Workshop – Learn about Physical Security by understanding methods of lock picking and how to protect against them.

Open Source Your Project – Rick Anderson, veteran programmer and champion of open source software will lead a discussion on how to turn your work into an effective, community driven open source project.

Every Week at FUBAR

Open Hack Night – Every Thursday 7pm – Anyone is welcome to come by and bring something to work on.  You’re welcome to bring anything to hack on but we’ll always have people around that can help you with your Microcontroller projects.

Soldering Sunday – Every Sunday 1pm – Come learn to solder, or sharpen your skills.  We’ll have all the necessary equipment, as well as electronics kits and random junk to practice on.  This event is free and open to the public.

Date: Saturday, July 31, 2010 from 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM (ET)
Location:
Fair Use Building and Research Labs
403 Cleveland Ave
Highland Park, NJ 08904
Registration:Click Here to register through Eventbrite (registration ends July 20th)

This class will introduce students to the Arduino Microcontroller – a powerful platform for developing hardware that interfaces with the physical world. The Arduino can be used in robotics, art installations, 3D printers, and other do-it-yourself electronics projects.

During this class students will:

• Build circuits that utilize sensors and output devices that allow the microcontroller to react to its environment.
• Learn electronics, programming, and physical computing concepts by building fun projects.
• Find out how to get help on their own projects and learn more about the Arduino after the class.

The class includes an electronics kit and an Arduino Microcontroller.

Students must provide their own laptop computer. Students are encouraged to download the Arduino software before the class.

Want to clone your plants? Come find out how. Alice Zelman, a graduate of the Plant Science program at Cook College, will show you how to use simple lab procedures and equipment to take advantage of plants’ developmental capabilities and grow a mini garden in a petri dish. You will create and take home your new botanical adventure in a dish.

New Jersey’s Only Hackerspace finally has….well…..a space! Stop by our new location, check out what we’re working on, find out what FUBAR Labs is all about. We will be demonstrating our 3D printer, and showcasing member projects. Drop in any time between 1pm and 6pm.
You can RSVP via Facebook here (not required)

Pics and walkthrough after the break. Oh, and yes, we plan to do this more often.

The printer in question – an old HP PS-1110

The printer also has a scanner, which means another encoder and motor to score.

The top comes off easily with a torx screwdriver. Sweet. Score us one printer centric button pad and a glass plate. Possible makerbot control pad? Who knows!

We try to start taking out the goodies on the inside without damaging it. Why are we careful? The precious booty contained within:

A motor with gearbox and nice and super precise rotary encoder disc. We want to preserve these and try not to bend anything, especially the encoder disc.

Unfortunately, the plastic shell was clearly not designed to come apart. Thankfully, we have a pair of members who like to go dremel crazy.

Note the safety glasses. Safety first kids.

After some massive dremel cutting, we finally get to the circuit board deep within. Granted, we might no be able to reuse most of the parts on it, but it might be useful for SMD soldering rework station practice.

After some struggling, we finally get the paper roller motor, encoder, and axle out in one piece and relatively unscathed. Excellent – this will make an excellent part in some future project.

Shortly thereafter, and lots of dremel cutting due to a stripped screw later, we have the circuit board out.

To the victor goes the spoil of wars. All parts that might get reused in a project in the near future. Hackerspaces – green by design.

Tomorrow (Sunday) We’ll be at the Highland Park Street Fair from 11:30-4:40 on Raritan Ave in Highland Park. At 5pm we’ll be kicking off our first Soldering Sunday. If anyone wants to come by we’ll have soldering irons, solder, and various boards and components to work on. No experience required. Soldering Sunday is free and open to the public, but a $5 donation is suggested.

FUBAR Labs, always looking for a reason to make something or destroy something, jumped at the chance to enter the competition.

Excited, we opened the box on video. True to the age old saying, we got exactly what we paid for.

Now what? We’ll see. But for now our brainstorming sessions are filled with hook based designs. Apparently our box of junk REALLY likes hanging things.

What do a bunch of members do on a lazy Sunday afternoon? Buy a crap ton of nerf guns and mod the heck out of them, that’s what.

Member Phil takes a video of us getting bored and making a Jacob’s Ladder at the hackerspace. It essentially amounted to a simple, quick test of the 12,000 Volt transformer soon to be used in our future Tesla Coil.