Meet the Maker – TOG

TOG Dublin Hackerspace

TOG is a hackerspace based in the centre of Dublin, Ireland. It is a shared space where members have a place to be creative and work on their projects in an environment that is both inspiring and supportive of both new and old technologies. We will be showcasing project created by members of our hackerspace, such as

• Interactive Self Stirring Spoon in a tea cup Bringing life to objects through human interaction. The teacup sits on a table and as the individual interacts with the object, bringing their hand close to the cup, the spoon starts to stir as if by its self moving faster the closer one comes to the cup and slower as one moves one hand further away. Animating an inanimate object. The first working prototype has just been created at Artekcircle.com hackathon 10 May 2014. Check out  www.interactiveselfstirringspoon.tumblr.com for some photos.

• Time machine – The Tachyonic Antitelephone is a theoretical device from physics’ history, a thought experiment realised. What if our future self could send back messages in time, telling us what our life could be, warning us of impending danger, or simply steering us away from mistakes and regrets.
• Fabric cadaver – The fabric cadaver has removable body parts and will tell you when you’ve put the right organ where it belongs. Perfect for the budding sewist with designs on becoming a surgeon…
• TwitterKnitter  – v2 Send a tweet with our hashtag and see if we select it to knit into a scarf on our converted 1970s knitting machine. We showed version 1 last year – version 2 is much faster and can knit images too.
• Brainwav headset –  a headset that live-feeds interpolated brainwave activity into sound files, that the user can watch and listen to in real time (might be nice to hook a thermal printer up too, but I’m probably losing the run of myself there..)
• Rfid contolled robot arm – a plastic robotic arm that takes it’s instructions from rfid cards (Used Dublin Bus tickets) Each card instructs the arm to do a specific motion, eg, bend elbow, close clamp. The rfid cards are to be arranged on a spinning jenny with the rfid reader placed under one position of a card. A giant red button to make the reader read in the instruction. The object of the piece is for a user to move the arm in such a way as to pick up a malteeser and drop it into a shoot for retrieval. The arm and reader are controlled by a raspberry pi.
• TOG Duck – TOG does everything with ducks, so when it came round to find a way to move around Dublin Maker, a giant duck come to mind. Its a 30 times scale duck .

TOG Duck Testing

Scooter Testing with Duck Head