Day 3: No lectures, but Hardware hacking
Sorry for not updating my Blog yesterday. It seems that there was a problem with my server or the internet connection at home. I couldn't reach the machine to setup the ssh-tunnel. No tunnel, no encryption, no updates.
Yesterday was an interesting day in terms of lectures. I had several talks taking place in both hangars at the same time, so I didn't know where to go.
Hardware hacking with C-Base
I ended up with the folks from C-Base. They offered an USB FM-Transmitter Workshop. The goal was to solder a small device that can be powered by USB. Using the output of an analogous sound device one can set up a small "radio station". The hardware is a design from piradio.de (german).
The workshop was well visited, in fact there where many people interested in soldering the device than there where devices available. They hope to get a bunch for the weekend, so check the URL above if you're interested in visiting another (possible) workshop on sunday.
From my point of view there was some organisation missing. The people attending the workshop were nearly left alone with the task of soldering it, instead of several people overlooking progress and watching out for errors. For my table I took this job, offered some advice here and there, and gave several introductions into soldering. Three people where using the wrong kind of tin-solder. The material was dedicated to higher temperatures, so the elements weren't connected to the layer correctly.
what made assembling the kit more complicated was the fact that the board lacks holes where the transistors, resistors and capacitors are inserted. So it became some kind of SMD technology, but there wasn't any glue to fix the elements onto the board.
There was no antenna cable available. When I'm planning a workshop and want the people to actually use the devices, I would bring some.
It was fun anyway, no offense ment.
Yesterday was an interesting day in terms of lectures. I had several talks taking place in both hangars at the same time, so I didn't know where to go.
Hardware hacking with C-Base
I ended up with the folks from C-Base. They offered an USB FM-Transmitter Workshop. The goal was to solder a small device that can be powered by USB. Using the output of an analogous sound device one can set up a small "radio station". The hardware is a design from piradio.de (german).
The workshop was well visited, in fact there where many people interested in soldering the device than there where devices available. They hope to get a bunch for the weekend, so check the URL above if you're interested in visiting another (possible) workshop on sunday.
From my point of view there was some organisation missing. The people attending the workshop were nearly left alone with the task of soldering it, instead of several people overlooking progress and watching out for errors. For my table I took this job, offered some advice here and there, and gave several introductions into soldering. Three people where using the wrong kind of tin-solder. The material was dedicated to higher temperatures, so the elements weren't connected to the layer correctly.
what made assembling the kit more complicated was the fact that the board lacks holes where the transistors, resistors and capacitors are inserted. So it became some kind of SMD technology, but there wasn't any glue to fix the elements onto the board.
There was no antenna cable available. When I'm planning a workshop and want the people to actually use the devices, I would bring some.
It was fun anyway, no offense ment.
cptsalek - 11. Aug, 15:31