Greetings Thinkers,
As many of you know, [Dr. Ducharme] mentioned last Friday that we will host a course to introduce students to the Arduino. We quickly sold out of the initial tickets, and have since added another 30 tickets that students can purchase here. Next Monday will be an interesting night.
During the weekend, UCF held an event called Family Weekend and several students brought their families into the lab. It was a great opportunity to chat with parents about what the ideaLab is and how it could help their children practice the techniques and skills they are taught in their courses (as well as anything else they were interested in learning). We'd like to thank the parents for their time once more, and let them know we are working on making the ideaLab an even better community for helping students succeed.
As many of you know, [Dr. Ducharme] mentioned last Friday that we will host a course to introduce students to the Arduino. We quickly sold out of the initial tickets, and have since added another 30 tickets that students can purchase here. Next Monday will be an interesting night.
During the weekend, UCF held an event called Family Weekend and several students brought their families into the lab. It was a great opportunity to chat with parents about what the ideaLab is and how it could help their children practice the techniques and skills they are taught in their courses (as well as anything else they were interested in learning). We'd like to thank the parents for their time once more, and let them know we are working on making the ideaLab an even better community for helping students succeed.
On Tuesday and Thursday, we were rather busy but continued work on the vacuum former and taught several students to use the Thing-O-Matic and introduced many more to the lab. Lots of new faces appeared in the lab and we hope to see them again in the coming weeks. [John Cope] made an amazing logo for the lab and we will use an iteration very much like it. We plan to add LEDs to a sign in the lab so students can control the color of the light bulbs.
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| [John Cope]'s awesome logo for the lab On Saturday, [Terrence Winston] worked on his DIY Head Mounted Display. He managed to print, using the Thing-O-Matic, a functional part to hold his lenses in place. The part was designed in AutoDesk Inventor on his laptop. There are more parts to print until he has a completed case, but he is well on his way to finishing. We are glad to offer the tools/equipment/support to help him make his project. |
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| [Terrence Winston]'s lense holder |
On Sunday, [Scott Tanner] began work on a bike lock holder for his bike. After bringing his bike in to the lab, he was able to quickly take measurements and produce a prototype in SolidWorks and print it on the Thing-O-Matic. While some fine tuning is needed, we are sure he'll have a completed product very soon. [Frank Ramirez] spent the day completing SolidWorks tutorials in preparation for taking the Certified SolidWorks Associate exam. We wish him good luck on it.
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| [Scott Tanner]'s bike lock holder in mid-print |
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| [Scott Tanner]'s bike lock holder in ReplicatorG |
Some news of interest:
MakerFaire is coming to New York this weekend. This is the big convention for hackerspaces and hobbyists like ourselves. [Dr. Ducharme] and [Matthew Hellmer] will be attending to learn better ways to help students in the ideaLab. If anyone else is able to attend, it will be an eye-opening event that students will remember. Our main goals while there are to learn from other hackerspaces, source equipment for the lab, and learn about hosting our own MakerFaire in Orlando next year.
- New Tuesday/Thursday Hours
We are moving the hours from 1100-1600 to 1300-1930, as students are wanting to stay later in the day. Hours can change again if students start preferring them at different times. Feedback for this change comes from emails, our survey, and talking with students in the ideaLab. Pretty soon, we may change from Sunday to Friday hours, as the current survey results indicate that as a preference.
- ideaLab Closed This Weekend
The ideaLab is likely to be closed this weekend (2011.09.17-2011.09.18) due to [Matthew Hellmer] attending MakerFaire. We are working to find someone to manage the lab in interim and will update the blog by Thursday evening with further information.That's all the news this week, Thinkers. Keep bringing in the projects and enthusiasm.
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