Computer Classroom Announcement!

Education
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Everyone!

The computer classroom is now in the former sewing room and open for classes!

Each station except for the teacher station has two monitors. The monitor closer to the wall is controlled by the teacher so that the student can follow along by looking at a monitor right next to them instead of on a TV or a projector.

The monitor furthest from the wall on each work station is controlled by the student.

Right now, all 7 computers have active Lightburn licenses and KiCAD.

@ozindfw said that he will start teaching KiCAD classes in either November or December. KiCAD is CAD software for designing electronics!

Yesterday, @SWA successfully taught a class on using AI and Lightburn to make custom edge-lit acrylic displays in the computer classroom. All students were highly satisfied with the setup as well. His next class is on Wednesday October 30, 2024 and you can sign up for it here.

The next three steps for the computer lab are:

  1. Purchasing mousepads for all workstations so that the mouse cursors move consistently and predictably, especially when users are trying to click small icons or buttons in software.
  2. Tidying up the cables so that students and teachers don’t accidentally disconnect their computers or their peripherals.
  3. Installing the same version of Solidworks on all 7 computers, so that Solidworks classes can resume with fewer needless software frictions.

I would like to thank Britton (Burt) and Derrick of the Woodshop committee for assisting us in adjusting the desks to fit the classroom, Vasha and Yieu of the Science committee for quickly disassembling everything so that desks could be moved and adjusted, Rich Osman of the Electronics committee for checking the computers and inventorying, and @AmeliaG and the rest of the Sewing SIG and the Creative Arts committee for organizing the move from the Pillar room to the new classroom that made all of our significant improvements possible.

Finally, I would like to thank those members of the DMS Board of Directors who voted in support of our move.

Happy making, everyone!

Kevin Thompson

16 Likes
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Hi Kevin, I’ve ordered new mousepads and spare mice for the workstations. Let me know if y’all need anything else for the computer lab.

2 Likes
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I appreciate it, Kia! If we don’t already have a bunch of zip ties (roughly 30-40 of them), could you also order some of those? If we do have a bunch of zip ties, do you know where they are? I need a bunch for cable management.

We also plan to have Solidworks installed on all computers by Saturday after the staining and sealing for the wood is completed.

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I’m sure we have some lying around, but if not, I can order some. Do you need small zipties or the industrial sized large ones?

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Most of them small. But two or three large ones will be necessary

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I left a bunch of small ones in the computer lab. We have a couple of large ones on hand, so let me know when y’all need them.

1 Like
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On Saturday I used the classroom computer closest to the door, but when I tried to run LightBurn it gave the error below. Is this a known issue? User error? Should I create an issue post?

License System Error
Activation limit for key has been reached - this license is already being used on the allowed number of computers.

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Some of the lightburns still need to be fixed from command line. That’ll be taken care of soon.

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My apologies. I’ve just gone through the computer lab and redone the licenses using the command line in administrator mode. That should fix the problem. Please let me know if this issue is fixed for you. If not, I will get back to it asap.

2 Likes
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I was thinking of teaching some Inkscape classes and was wondering if it was already installed on the machines in the computer classroom. If not, would it be possible to have it installed?

Thoughts?

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It looks like Inkscape is installed on the 2 machines I’ve spot checked, but for some reason the shortcut to open it isn’t on the desktop or start menu. Wonder if that was intentional or omission.