Considering Membership

Hackerspace
#1

Hello everyone, I’m considering membership for the Makerspace but would first like to know if the space would be useful in completing of a few projects over the summer.

  1. Build my own server, hosting a website/blog/RSS feed, cloud storage, plex, and proxy (plus a few others).
  2. Code a bot that recommends me Wikipedia articles
  3. Rice Endeavour (Arch based system)
  4. Build (and overengineer) an alarm clock that does not trigger if I am not on the bed- likely via wireless Arduino with a camera module

In general, I’d like to learn a little bit about embedded systems, but my main focus is on everything to do with computers, both hardware and software.

Thanks,
froggor

#2

So for 1 & 2, we don’t really have like rental server space or things like that, so in regards to those, DMS would mostly just be places to work or find people who work on or like similar stuff. (I’m one of the infrastructure volunteers who deals a lot with that kind of stuff at the space, home, and work). That being said, we have started having a few more classes on things like Arduino dev, general software dev, etc. I’ve thought about holding a class on infrastructure topics - but it varies so much it’s hard to.

4 is definitely something the space is good at - we have a great electronics area, and lots of knowledgeable people to answer questions.

If you’re interested in things like electronics/ embedded devices/ things like that, it’s definitely worth at least coming to open tours in Saturdays between 10am and noon (or asking for a different tour time if you can’t make that) and seeing the place.

(Also, on a more side/ personal note, I initially joined the space to do a little bit with the electronics area and have a place to work on software much like it sounds you are interested in… And then I got dragged into every area and now want to learn all the things)

5 Likes
#3

We’re an all-volunteer space. We’re like you!
Interested and excited about building things. So we won’t have ppl just waiting around to help you build, but we DO have a ton of members that are interested in building new things- both physical and coding- can recommend which technologies to use to get them done.
#1
Do you mean physically put your own server rack together to take home? Or do you mean you want to keep a server at the space? You can get recommendations on hardware, and there may be other members that would help you assemble it. But because there are so many members, and the nature of data/data security- we can’t let people keep their own personal racks connected to the internet at the Makerspace. And we don’t have private virtual servers for our members.

2-3.
For these three, the best place to start would be right here, on our web forum! I’d post both of these separately, to seek out other members that are interested in Rice, or to seek advice on coding a web-crawling bot.

#4-
There are membrane pressure sensing weight sensors that go under the mattress, as it’s basically a weight switch, it could be used to turn the alarm off when you aren’t on your side of the bed. They’re commonly used in ‘mattress alarms’ for the elderly.

2 Likes
#4

How are you looking to customize EndeavourOS? Are you using the stock XFCE DE (Desktop Environment) or a community edition. Do you want to use a tiling window manager? Customize your GTK/QT? etc.