Tag Archives: Makerfaire

Spacehack upgrades, Just in time!

You may have spotted a little while ago that we got a place at Maker Faire UK for the fourth year in a row.

For the past few years, setting up Spacehack hasn’t been a simple job, mainly because of how the server box (the gold pyramid) was a flimsy cardboard box with various things taped to it. We also had issues with the four consoles. Many LCDs were failing, pots not rotating correctly, switches not working or missing. So we had to do some upgrades.

One of the most ambitious upgrades was the server box upgrade. We wanted to get this one done before the Maker Faire this weekend, to make setup easier. I’m pleased to say that we have completed it on time! You can look forward to seeing the new server box this weekend.

The upgrades have enabled us to make the server more rugged and much more compact. We’ve eliminated the need for three of the five power supplies by making everything run on 5v. We even have a touch-screen GUI for managing the game. The GUI’s written in pascal, of course. 🙂

Just to be clear about why this needed doing; see this picture of the guts of the original server box. Yuk!

We’ll be back at Maker Faire UK this year

Despite crashing the USS guppy into the Life Science Centre’s unique exhibition space numerous times, somehow we’ve been invited back for the next Maker Faire UK.

This will be the fourth year that we’ve been at the Maker Faire UK. We will, of course, be taking spacehack. We’ll also be bringing along some other projects too. John’s tetris table shall be making an appearance and we’ll no doubt have some other goodies you can play around with.

Be sure to check out http://www.makerfaireuk.com/ when details of who else is exhibiting are released.

Some photos of our past adventures in the Life Science Centre…

York Hackspace at MakerFaire UK 2014

We went to Derby Mini Maker faire

We’ve been to lots of maker events. This weekend we went to Derby mini maker faire. This is the third year we’ve been to the event along with spacehack and some other projects from hackspace members. As usual the whole day had a great atmosphere.

Spacehack at Derby

Spacehack has now been to eighteen events and still it keeps going. We have a long list of problems to fix as spacehack slowly takes on the persona of the ageing and barely space-worthy spacecraft is was designed to simulate. We don’t have any events planned for spacehack at the moment, so perhaps we’ll have a chance to fix things before the next event.

Bob also brought some retro computing gear along. He was demoing the RC2014 Z80 Microcomputer he and the PiDP8 recreation of the PDP8 computer powered by a raspberry pi. To add some extra retro-tech into the mix, he was using a psion netbook as a serial terminal for the PiDP8.

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John also brought along his tetris table. It’s a table with a grid of LEDs that plays tetris. Many people, including me, were very easily distracted by the tetris table and held up the queue of people wanting to play.

tetristable

In the four years I have been to the Derby maker faire (as a visitor at first and now an exhibitor) it has always improved each year. We look forward to DMMF 2017 being even better.

I’ll leave you with this video of a dinosaur having a wander around the makerfaire.

We’ve been accepted for Maker Faire UK 2015

Yes, we will be making a return to the Life Centre in Newcastle near the end of April to show off spacehack again and bring some interesting new stuff too.

makerfaire uk 2014

Our setup from last year

The consoles are being upgraded and we should soon have four consoles fully functional. We’re hoping that new for this year will be: up to four player games or at least two simultaneous two player games, improved gameplay and streamlined startup, and then mostly just some bug fixes.

Bob has also mentioned that he plans to bring along an “out of body experience”. The fine details are being kept top secret right now but if all goes well, this should be ready to go for April too.

We can’t wait to see you there.

http://www.makerfaireuk.com/