Arch Reactor Blog

Learn to make Pysanky in April

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Arch Reactor will be hosting several Pysanky (Ukrainian Egg) workshops in April. Stop by and decorate your own beautiful egg.

April 2: 2pm - 9pm

April 4 - 7pm - 10pm (with break for the business meeting)

April 9 - 2pm - 9pm

April 11 - 7pm - 10pm

Supplies will also be available for independent work between April 2 - 11 whenever the space is open

More information including a detailed powerpoint on the process at: https://archreactor.org/project/pysanky-eggs

Please plan on a minimum of 3 hours to make an egg. There's a lot of "waiting time" in this craft, thus it's easy to complete two eggs in nearly the same amount of time as making one.

Not suitable for younger children.

Wand Party This Sunday, February 12

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Stop by Arch Reactor on Sunday, February 12, to make "Magic Wands" You may make one or more for yourself or donate your creations to an upcoming Arch Reactor Fundraiser.

Please note that this style of wand-making involves hot-glue. Children are welcome but must be Closely Supervised by their parent/guardian.

Super Bowl of Destruction Winners!

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There was excitement, competition and mass destruction. The football game was also pretty good. Two hours of destruction created a huge amount hackable material. In the end many teams competed but only one could win. Here are the winning entries:

1st Place: James His robot scored well in creativity, functionality, and hack factor categories. Prize $100 gift card to Microcenter Computer

2nd Place: Derek Sigler and Family. This walking robot embodied all of Derek’s enthusiasm, and scored well in creativity, functionality and extra points for making a walker. Prize nVidia Jetson development board.

3rd Prize: Nathan Shrenk and Family. This robot scored points for use of LEDs and hacking it out of a gaming controller. Prize Second Robotics robot controller board.

4th Prize: Jordan Mann and Family. Brand new to the Space, this team learned soldering, hacking, and what Arch Reactor is all about. Scored points for creativity, passionate hacking, and making the eyes light up. Prize Arduino Starter Pack.

Arch Reactor was featured on Sci Tech Now on PBS

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http://www.ninenet.org/blogs/scitech-now/scitech-now-february-1-2017/

Pixybot's v2.3

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I have recently finished a new and improved version of the Pixybots. Presenting Pixybots v2.3. The original program has been fine tuned to be more responsive. The robot also has may other features including a upgraded laser cut chassis, deans power connectors, pan/tilt head, and IR cliff detection in the front. If you have not seen the Pixy robots before there is alot of information on the orginal version in the projects page.

Here is a short clip of them in action enjoy!

https://youtu.be/mZfjZUbJNQ8

Artistic Photos of the Space

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Apollo Timbers

7th Annual Fire and Ice

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Super Bowl of Destruction

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Everyone is invited to come to the Arch Reactor for the Super Bowl of Destruction. We will have the football game on our big screen for everyone to watch. Not interested? Don’t worry, we also throw this party as something for the non-football enthusiasts. As a hackerspace, we use this time to breakdown all of the donations that are no longer usable or fixable. We have hard drives, computers, printers, server equipment, and more! Come join the mayhem and destruction! Don't forget to bring a Super Bowl party snack to share. We had lots of good food last year.

Destruction starts 12pm on Sunday February 5^th at Arch Reactor, 2215 Scott Ave. 63103.

In addition, this year we are adding a Hack-a-thon challenge. After the destruction we will rebuild with all the donated materials in the Space. This year the hot toy for kids was Hatchimals, similar to Tamagotchi electronic pets.

The challenge is to hack together a robotic pet of your own. Here are the rules:

Must indicate when the pet needs to be fed, walked, and cuddled
Must be built from materials donated to, resulting from destruction, or already at Arch Reactor. No new materials brought in from outside. The only exception is a storage device for code you intend to use.
We will start building at 2pm.
Building will stop at the end of the football game.
Free to full members. Supporting members and non-members pay a $15 entry fee since we are using materials donated to Arch Reactor.
Projects will be judged on Creativity, Functionality, Resemblance to a Pet, and Hack Factor.
Prizes:
- First Prize Nvidia Jetson (provided by Second Robotics)
- Second Prize $100 Gift Certificate to Microcomputer Center (provided by Arch Reactor)
- Third Prize Robotics Main Board (provided by Second Robotics)

For more information, check our website and discussion boards at archreactor.org or contact me directly

-Morgan Miransky

mailto:directorofpublicrelations@archreactor.org

6th Annual Gift Exchange & Holiday Party

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Seven of us participated in the Dirty Santa Gift Exchange this year. It was great fun and this year there was no real gotcha gifts. The was an electric disc shooter, a quad copter, an uno kit, a intro to microcontroller kit, a Walgreens gift card, an Arch Reactor coffee mug, and a line following robot kit. Derek had to change the rules so, "he wouldn't get screwed over."