Current Projects

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N.B. This wiki needs a spring clean and the information on this page may be (considerably) out of date.

Honey extractor project (Solar)

Jean (and other beekeepers) need a way to extract the Honey from the wax. This is normally done by heating up in pots. But there is a more passive way of doingvit using the green house effect. Details will be developed here: Solar Honey

Facilities

Created the Facilities page so that people can see what we have.

And then realize we already have it: Inventory

Company left over equipment

Helped about 1 metric ton of equipment that was going to be discarded find a new home.

Recycle Teak furniture

We helped allocate some wood.


All,

Please can I thank Vina, her other half Andy, Ryan and Andres for helping to arrange the recovery of teak benches that were due to be thrown out from NPL - they are a really useful source of quality hardwood and will go to railway preservationists to restore an old carriage.

Recycled wood is a much more sustainable source of hardwood than forestry, and unfortunately the modern fast-grown hardwood varieties are not as dense or stable as slow-grown rainforest wood (which is no longer available) so this timber will be really appreciated by those who receive it.

This is the story of a similar timber recovery from labs at Birmingham university http://www.lnersvrcoachfund.org.uk/armchair_member.html

and the sort of coaches that some of that wood was used in http://www.lnersvrcoachfund.org.uk/teak_set.html

The NPL tinber is going to go to the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre at Quainton Road, and I understand some is lined up to make some repairs to a London North Western dining car built in about 1898 http://www.brc-stockbook.co.uk/LNWR_No77.HTM

Some of the recovered material may end up at Little House for a week or two whilst the logistics of collection are arranged - we hope to be able to sort that out early in the New Year, sorry if it gets in the way.

Thanks

Jon


Getting the wood from NPL required quite a lot of co-ordination and administrative permission from within NPL itself. Everything had to be properly OK'ed, and one or more people had to be taken away from their normal duties in order to supervise the removals.

Subsequently, we had an informative letter from the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre, thanking us for saving the teak and oak wood from NPL. They said:

"Some of the timber will be used almost immediately in our LNWR Picnic Saloon of 1892, as I need to make 8 new seat ends. These are distinctive things, each around 4 feet high with a bulbous head. The Picnic Saloon, an early attempt to earn additional revenue by hiring out to small parties for the day, was sold out of railway service in the 1930's and grounded as a cricket club clubhouse. Outgrowing their needs 25 years ago it came to the railway centre where we are currently rebuilding the interior. The old bulbous heads on the seat ends were sawn off in the 1930's and so we need new ones. These lab bench tops will be ideal for the task as they are thick enough and although made of butted-up planks the sections are wide enough to not cause a problem. If we had to purchase the timber it would have been far beyond our means and some nasty compromise would have ensued!

"The remaining timbers will be put into store as stocks of this type and dimension of wood are useful to us in many restorations. We have quite a few Victorian era carriages, some still awaiting restoration -three are even finished in varnished teak and run on the second Sunday of the month April to October (except in August). One day the Picnic Saloon will join them."

Coordinating Ham Fair

2017: [[1]]

Eggbot

The idea is to have a little robot that will paint eggs automatically. Ideally we will have them ready before the April the 1st Ham Library Fair 2017 so that we can showcase things that can be done at RML. Following up from something Jon and Harriet mentioned a year ago: Blog_2016#2016-02-10_Wednesday And some of us have already started building it: Blog_2017#2017-03-14_Tuesday Thank you Paul and Nick!

The process can be found here official page or on this instructables. Do note that the licence of the Eggbot prohibits us to sell on the actual eggbot but we can certainly sell on the eggs!

Feel free to chip in! We will probably need some eggs (preferably not real ones!).

Extra reference: eggbot on thingyverse Up to date code eggbot software

  • Progress so far!
    Progress so far!

Batch image editing

Reducing resolution

had to reduce the resolution a bit but I learnt a new skill in the process. 

$ convert RMLPanoramaRichardWoolf1.jpg -scale 40% RMLPanoramaRichardWoolf1s.jpg

$ convert RMLPanoramaRichardWoolf1.jpg -define jpeg:extent=4Mb -scale 50% RMLPanoramaRichardWoolf1s.jpg

define limits the size of the file. while the scale reduces the number of pixels. using a command line tool called image magick that can batch convert a whole set of images really quickly. See our upload page for the different versions.

Thumbnails and montages

We wanted to tweet many images in one go, also maybe come up with a way to make images more light weight. So we put the 4 images we want in the same folder.

First thumbnail all to the same size: some are in portrait mode and we know how internet hates portrait! 

$ convert -define jpeg:size=2000x2000 IMG_*.jpg  -thumbnail 426x213^ -gravity center -extent 426x213  Thumb.jpg

Then we make the montage with only one little frame. 

$ montage Thumb_-*.jpg -geometry +1+1  -background lightgreen GreenLabs.jpg

http://hamunitedgroup.org.uk/ has a poor logo on top right and a new version was needed. Dan found a better resolution one on our twitter https://twitter.com/HamUnitedGroup but it would still be great to have an SVG version that can be stretched out for any use.

So this is his workflow: Worflow (for what it's worth - I don't think it's worth mentioning - nothing scientific about how it did it - it was a bit of a headache)

First I tried Automatically tracing the bitmap using Inskape - however the results were poor because of coloured outlines present around parts of the image, and presence of non-solid colours, -which caused too many artefacts - even when limiting the number of passes (one pass per colour). I tried optimising the colours in Photoshop, but it proved quite tricky to remove the coloured outlines. (I suspect the original image may have been hand drawn and scanned in). I also tried Coral draw trace function (As suggested by PaulB), on a trail version of Coral, but this also gave poor results. In the end I manually traced over the image, using Inkscape. I created curved paths (using edit nodes), removed the traced text, identified the font, and re-typed the text (applying the text to a curved path etc). Converted text to curves, and Finally exported as plain svg.

Let me know if HUG are happy with it.

The result was saved here

Thank you Dan good work!

Christmas Tree

Friends of Ham Village green need some help, the tree was being vandalized and the decorations taken away.

This is what we came up with: Hack a Christmas Tree

Please come and help!

Ham Close

RHP and LBRUT has said that should a redevelopment come to Ham Close they would include RML in the plans. But we have to give some details as to what that new space will look like. See New RML HQ

We need to show that we are a good addition to Ham close so it would be great if we could provide ideas and colaborate to help Ham Close residents make an informed decision about Ham Close 2.0.

Little house improvements

  • Change fluorescent light to low power rating lights.
  • keep tidy and clean and stick to it.
  • fix the blinds. Are the mechanical office blinds also electrical? LBRUT facilities management might be able to help us figure it out.
  • open and close status on door and tell IRC about it.
  • paint ceiling sky blue (it would look lovely)

Ham and Petersham Magazine

>Sorry, either they should be targeted to who they apply to and if the

>emails appt to everyone there should be a bit of background or

>introduction so that us newbies understand.


This is a very good point!

Ham & Petersham Magazine is a local community magazine. It is delivered for free to all residents in Ham & Petersham with left over copies left at dentist, pubs, the library and so on. This Magazine comes out 4 times a year.

As Richmond MakerLabs is part of the Ham United Group we get to share a page with the other activities of Ham United Group.

The reason this short paragraph is especially important is because apart of word of mouth it is the only analogue method to reach the local community. Some residents don't have access to Internet or do not active know that places like RML exist.

Without local community support, such as from residents of Ham Close, we cannot ensure the future of RML.

What I normally do is consult the last 3 months here: http://wiki.richmondmakerlabs.uk/index.php/Blog_2016 and write some sentences. I also send the link to the magazine so that they choose a picture of their liking. This month I would like to aknowledge Kim aka 'chameleon ' for letting us use the laser cutter.

This is why updating the Blog every meeting is important.

Bee costume

See how it was made to flap. Bee Wing Flapper


Ham and Petersham open streetmap

There are loads of footpaths and history and images that can be added with the help of the neighbours. This goes hands in hand with the Ham and Petersham Forum.

This project was discussed at the HUG AGM November 2016.

adding trees

This is a further use of OSM (open street map) to document the trees in Petersham Common woodsThe map on Open streetmap is here the idea is to document where the trees are and survey them to see if they are at risk of falling and such. There was some discussion about using http://www.arbortrack.com/ but it might be too much details for the requirements plus it has some problem making the data available and to add it was worth £15k. Funding is less than £500 per year.

Documentation on how to add trees to OSM is found here. I've discussed it with #OSM-GB IRC channel and found some other helpful information, Thanks to russs, chilly, derick, RichardF, SK53 :

  • mayor of london tree data set and why it might be a problem and the spreadsheet
  • OSMTracker for android which lets you lay various features into a .gpx we can then upload it.
  • GPS works best on cloud free days in the open air
  • GPS works best with no leave or dry leaves
  • councils sometimes have problems uploading to the OSM website because of licence. there is the Ordinance Survey (OS) with some complications: urban tree mapping is: It's outside no 51, we know where no. 51 is from our OS Master map so tainted by OS copyright.though you sometimes get GIS departments whose default answer to anything involving OS data is "sorry, we can't allow you to do that" (e.g. CRT) OS in 2009 when they convinced the government into adopting the Public Sector Mapping Agreement. That very cleverly snuffed out fledgeling mapping companies that might be competition to OS
  • if you want to survey trees in woodland what you need is a good compass & a 30m tape. Make all measurements from points which have been accurately recorded using GPS or better & probably you need 2 good points as a baseline you can triangulate from other trees. how do you pick the middle of the tree for triangulation ? accurately recording every tree in a wood is largely regarded as difficult. if girth is less than 2m errors will not be too serious & a lot less than using GPS
  • you probably need at a minimum some suitable labels to attach to trees before the survey starts; I think proper ones can be quite expensive, but it's worth doing if you want the information kept
  • a 50m laser distance meter would probably be a worthwhile investment in that case, they aren't that expensive
  • using a laser meter outside when there are no walls to point at is harder than you might imagine. I tried to plot my allotment with one and gave up. Seeing the laser in daylight is hard,but probably easier in a wood. The very good ones do work outside but they are pricey
  • tape measures always work, don't have batteries to run out and don't mind much being dropped :-)
  • it's also worth before starting out, doing some basic scoping, by standing in several points in the wood & doing trunk counts: it's a basic forestry survey technique, but it would enable you to estimate exactly how many trees are involved
  • self surveyed stuff is fine, just know how much work is involved. I reckon that 1 tree a minute is fast; local park has 15000, city has perhaps 30k
  • also divide the wood into compartments (may already be done) & remember that tree surveyors will just mark dodgy trees with a spray can
  • BCTV or whatever they're called now used to have an excellent manual on woodland management which may have some tips
  • To find out the number of trees in a small wood, and if trees are in rows, you can count every one or (say) every fifth one and work

out the total. If rows are not obvious sample your wood by randomly locating square plots of 10 x 10 m. Mark the corners and count the trees inside the plot. For a 2 ha (5 acre) wood lay out 10 plots, for a 5 ha (12 acre) wood 15 plots should do unless the wood is very variable. Now calculate the average number of trees per plot, multiply by 100 to discover the number of trees per hectare,and then multiply by your wood’s total area for the total number of trees. via SK53 pastebin

  • Looks to be about 7 ha so if mature figures I've just found suggest 200-250/ha, but I'd guess more
  • mapping trees

TODO:

  • lightning talk 2017-01-31 to discuss the project and maybe get more volunteers
  • check with council about data. Careful about OS data.
  • update OSM with any details

Cycle route Map

The idea is to design a cycle route map similar to the Underground design.

This project is lead by Jean.

Design guide can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOTVJjCQ3B8&feature=youtu.be

Joule Thief

Almost spent batteries have often no use and could be used for joule thief flashlight

Spot welder

Maker magazine tutorial we still have a couple of microwave transformers.

Dead Drop

The following email was sent to the document foundation UK mailing list 

Dear all,
I need an idea for a text document (odf of course?) to put in a dead drop in a tree stomp near my local hackerspace. This is to commemorate document freedom day this week.
You are all very busy to arrange a meetup at such short notice but I am sure you can come up with a good document to leave there.
References:
http://documentfreedom.org/
http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/956
http://deadtreedrop.derhess.de/index_en.html
http://deaddrops.com/
http://wiki.richmondmakerlabs.uk/index.php/How_to_Find_Us

Might be worth adding a geocache

Idea for *.txt: 

# The Tree That Gives #
Once there was a tree and a small child.
(Fill your short story here)
Generations later they still sat toguether.

3D modelling / 3D printing practice

Alternative to thingyverse: http://www.bld3r.com/

If you are more of a programmer than modeller you might be interested in openSCAD. Ian M has put together a few notes about it.

Harriet is our in house expert in modelling.

Ian B and Paul are out in house experts in 3D printing.

Here Amunizp (talk) is doing some practising

Building Blocks is also some tests done with different packages Also Amunizp (talk)

Laser cutter practice 2D modelling

Harriet, Paul and Jon are our in-house experts in 2D modeling. Paul, Jon and Kim are our inhouse expertes in laser cutting.

Laser cut craft examples

  • Albany
  • Greeting cards
  • laser cut origami
  • Puzzles: puzzle map of Ham and petersham with removeable streets.

Deactivate the Bomb Game

Game for children aged 5 or older. A combination of hot potato, scavenger hunt and arduino electronics.

Deactivate the Bomb Game

Host DIY Valintine eCards

Host valintine or other eCards or presentations with expiry date on little house.

such as example

Setting up a wireless printer @home

With a raspberry pi or another debian machine.

Printer Server

Light for dark ally ways

Something as simple as having a flashlight on each end of the allyway. But then once the flashlight gets to one side you now have two flashlights on one end.

Is this a problem like carrying sheep and wolves across a river?

Model Plane

wing assembly
  • Details at Tomboy 48
  • Progress every week
  • Laser cut parts done
  • Assembly by hand
  • Will be radio controlled

Carbon Pedometre

Carbon Footprint Pedometre

Ham Library Project

Current Setup

Library Project v1
  • Bus Countdown on local web server on a single board computer setup in 'kiosk mode'
  • Richmond Makerlabs Recommends Post of inspiring teen novels.

Feedback

  • If bus deviated the system does not update.
  • Font not large enough [DONE]

Ideas/Evolutions

RF ID reader in the Lab

  • Install an RFID on the door to check contents in your pocket or purse. Something like what shops have.

A screen or web page will show the data retrieved.

Fractal burning with Microwave transformer

First try of wood burnt fractal

Found link in hackaday about wood burning fractals sent to youtube video of how to do it which in turn sent us to imgur image set and later linked to Jochen Kronjager website. Ring a bell? If anybody has another microwave let us know 4kV as Jochen shows in his web can be managed. It really works, though we really needed to soak it and add 3 spoonfulls of baking soda to the water. Hopefully others can post their videos and pictures. Fire extinguisher was at the ready the whole time. Electrons were inconvenienced during this exercise.

We have two transformers now. Next item is a cricket bat. Start the fracktal where where the ball hits.

Server projects

  • Little House compute infrastructure Server Neo, Server Novo, Server RML
  • Federation server for Ham and Petersham including:
    • Mediagoblin
    • Pump.io
    • Status.net
  • Minetest Server
  • Tor node
  • LetsEncrypt to add secure communications via SSL to web browsing
  • telegram and IRC communication using teleirc and thanks to ryan
    • running on gnuscreen
    • but the config is simply running out of ~ryan/.teleirc/config.js - copy that over and you’ll be up and running with the same config.
    • sudo apt-get install npm
    • sudo npm install -g teleirc
    • sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node
  • use teleirc to track projects/conversations
    • OK found the part of interest. At the end of the .teleirc/config.js file. I think something can be added a regex to look for # and append it to a file. Each time a #hashtag is used it can post the list. For extra browny points we create a command /hashtags to have @richmondmakerlabsbot post the list with the list. Anyway. Concept for #projectIdea. For extra browny points we find a way to get IRC users to see those places where the #hashtag is mentioned.
    • #rmlbot is on IRC as well thought about adding functionality to it but reading around about eggdrop and creating/editing robots it seems a client script might be better... references in case I fall asleep: http://m.wikihow.com/Develop-an-IRC-Bot http://www.egghelp.org/setup.htm http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/misc/botfaq.html Will look up where our bot is 'hosted'

Tracking RML equipment using QRcodes.

CNC Router/Mill

The plan is to build a CNC Router that is capable of milling soft metals like aluminium or brass. We have plans for a couple of machines, we need to price up the inventory to see if it is viable.

Nick made some progress

Green Cinema

Collaborate with green cinema with funding and tech. In exchange we could screen one or some of the following:

Online Bird Feeder Game

Bird Feeder Game - Making a game to teach kids about not feeding bread to ducks/birds.

Currently PigeonRambler is looking into game design on it, but needs someone who knows JavaScript/another web scripting language

Wild life monitor

  • Bird photography in the Ham library Bird Feeder: Héctor is starting to work on this Camera with Rasberry Pi we would like it to be self powered with a solar panel and pictures to be sent to the library to a screen in side. If we can get it to tweet that would be nice too. This has been approved by the Ham Library and the Friends of Ham library are very supportive. We can use the wireless network in the library.
  • Ham Pond monitor
  • Frog monitor
  • Project page Wild Life Monitor
  • Artistic variation add a decorated box to the window.

Coder Dojo

Some of us will be helping out at the Local Coder Dojo: Ham Richmond Coder Dojo.

Will provide laptops with trisquel and some live USB hopefully.

Ham Coder DojoWe also provided some tables for the events.

Hopefully we can provide new activities.

Bus Countdown

use.

  • Same for library: needs solar panel. This can be done on the same

screen as the wild life animal monitor. If it can be set in german as well it would be ideal to attract the German community to the library. Current_Projects#Wild_life_monitor Wild Life Monitor

Garduino

  • Garduino An automatic irrigation system.

Cable winder for cisco

Cisco have donated stuff for the group and have offered an idea for a project.

Breathing monitor

A monitor to put on the waist to monitor breathing.

Remote for electric disability chair

A wireless remote control emergency stop for use by an accompanying carer, in case the self-driven wheelchair veers off towards a busy road or a riverbank.

Development of the remote control added a distance gauge, so if the electric wheelchair gets too far from the carer, the emergency stop is automatically applied.

Eel monitoring software

Volunteer co-ordination in eel monitoring. A Wordpress site hosted on the RichmondMakerLabs server, providing a calendar for volunteers to confirm their planned attendances at Teddington Lock.

Linux kernel development

Nvidiagraphics card to the noveau drivers

Fix Richmond.ml website

Fixed! Now it is richmondmakerlabs.uk

Someone who has a relationship with the Ham United Group webmaster should update the link to the wiki. The URL http://e-voice.org.uk/hamunitedgroup/computer-diy/more-recent-news/ links to the old site. FIXED!

You build it you keep it

The idea is to have people fix donated broken tech. We would mentor through the process. At the end they get to fix it. This is a project that (Andres) and Ian got some funding for extra parts, but nothing stops us from starting. Community First funding

Alternative is to buy computer kits and have them build it in coder dojo. We can find out who really needs it by asking local school directors. A Guesstimate is that each computer will cost £200 and should be assembled in less than 2 hours so that it can work inside the coder dojo format. At the end the "student" gets to keep the computer. Software OS should be free and open so this will probably have a hardware requirement. Not much of a problem now a days.

Current work

Documentation

  • Sugar on toast one laptop per child operating system for learning.
  • h-node for looking at availability of hardware in free format.

Learning Programing

  • Little project using only turtle (was LOGO) and pure python to do some artwork. Gitorious project
  • php-todo.txt using the todo.txt standard create a todo list that can can be shared with others to modify over the web.
  • Picture to video small program that can be done in several languages. from a folder of images and some music create a html5 video with svg graphics on top.
  • Coder Dojo Ham This is the real stuff!

HTML5 Learning about SVG graphic animations

Most modern web browsers support not HTML5 amongst those things there is the scalable vector graphics. these animations are very simple and easy to make. Also they do not need javascript or flash. To see some of the stuff you can do visit:

Learning to use computers and internet

Possible future projects

Hacker dice

A cube with small fink display on each side. When you roll it the face showing up will give you a random number from a pre defined range of integers. Ideall it will use emery harvesting.

Voice commands

Could be useful to set things in embedded programs that we set in the library. We would use a secret pass word to unblock the system. Blather is easier that it seems.

Gpg box

A hardware equivalent of gpg email. With private and public keys.

Polution monitor

Teddington and Ham Hydro gadgets

  • Underwater camera to watch the fish swim by.
  • Display showing the flow of water or power output on the foot bridge.
  • Measure points for PH, salinity or other things that might be

interesting to know.

Metrological station to complete Garduino

  • Windspeed and direction
  • sunlight
  • Humidity
  • rainfall/snow fall
  • LCD screen?

DNA

Build our own PCR machine. [2]

Beehive monitoring system

An open source project Natural history Museum links

1KW wind turbine

We have plans to build at least a 1KW wind turbine using neodymium or ferrite magnets and hand wound coils. [3] [4]

Reflow oven

Use an infra-red toaster oven and Arduino to creat a reflow oven.

Chooseable path adventure book

Dracula is now in the public domain, the idea is to do something similar to To be or not to be

--Amunizp (talk) Can do the LaTeX typesetting Needs someone that can actually write. Maybe some art.


HUG info app

  • python for Android kylie? Might work

Amateur Radio Kit

MKARS80 80m SSB kit (no surface mount parts)

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