Weeknotes

Week 703 – Xrays, Virtual Synths, Repair Cafe, Dressmaking

25th November 2024

Each week we’ll endeavour to publish some details of the interesting things that members of DoES Liverpool have been up to over the past seven days. You can find out a bit more about them in our introductory post.

And remember, if you’re involved with DoES Liverpool at all, let us know what you get up to so we can include it here!

Next Year’s MakeFest Dates

As a couple of people have asked recently (already planning their exhibits?), here’s the dates for next year’s MakeFests. Wirral is on Saturday 10th May and Liverpool is on Saturday 5th July.

January Start Boost Membership

Please help us spread the word!
If you, or any of your friends, could do with a Boost to get a new idea off the ground (or even just to keep going…), then take a look at our Boost scheme – 6 months free desk or workshop membership here at DoES Liverpool, conveniently situated near the centre of the city. Join our innovative community!
It’s a draw so everyone has an equal chance.
https://doesliverpool.com/co-working/boost-your-new-year/

Community Meeting Notes

We had our November Community Meeting on 23rd November – you can read the minutes here.

Things of Note

  • MCQN Ltd:JLCPCB seem to be copying the budget airline approach with random extra fees and the like; but I guess they now also send you some x-rays of your boards once they’ve come out of production.

    Here’s one of our new prototype My Bike’s Got LED boards, now en route to us 😀


    #weeknotes #ibal234 #PCB #ESP32 #manufacturing #Kicad #BikeTooter


    An x-ray of part of a printed circuit board populated with components. You can even see the components inside the metal can of the ESP32-C3 - they're in a darker zone caused by the metal shielding, but can still be made out.

  • matthewcroughan: I did not know until now how easy it could be to run virtual modular synths on #NixOS, both on a phone via Mobile NixOS and also on riscv64 devices like the allwinner d1 chip, mind blown. #weeknotes


  • DoES Liverpool:Lots of repairs happening at last Sunday’s Repair Café at DoES Liverpool!

    No Repair Café in December – the volunteers are having a much deserved day off, so the next one will be on 19th January 2025.



    Mike G fixing LEDs on a facemask while the owner looks on

    Mike R examining a gadget

    customers with a non-functioning shredder, waiting for it to be fixed

  • Adrian McEwen:Have spent most of today with a pair of oscilloscopes probing a rather sensitive formaldehyde sensor circuit trying to debug a source of noise.

    That has included my colleague Paul generating plots like this one from the HPGL output of his old CRT ‘scope, connected via an RS232 serial cable 😀


    #weeknotes



  • Jackie Pease:Experimenting with Kolam-style pattern using some salvaged plastic embroidery grid, cable ties and a very cheap COB LED strip I got from AliExpress – shame it wasn’t slightly longer!

    The LED strip is less flexible than yarn, so the curves are better.


    I’d like to try this with LED noodles.


    #WeekNotes




  • DoES Liverpool:Please help us spread the word!
    If you, or any of your friends, could do with a Boost to get a new idea off the ground (or even just to keep going…), then take a look at our Boost scheme – 6 months free desk or workshop membership here at DoES Liverpool, conveniently situated near the centre of the city. Join our innovative community!
    It’s a draw so everyone has an equal chance.
    doesliverpool.com/co-working/b
  • matthewcroughan: On my way to #zhf (zero hydra failures) in https://zurich.nix.ug, and trying to get nixos-unstable working on the little pink riscv64 Mango-Pi MQ Pro whilst at the airport.

    Surprisingly comfy to do this development on an arm platform/host, thanks to Nix. #weeknotes #riscv



  • DoES Liverpool:Nick using our Fibre Arts room to work on a commission for 3 gowns.

    Nick fitting a dress on one of our dressmakers mannequins

Coming Up in the Next Week

Monday 25 November, 7:00pm-9:00pm7pm-9pm Socialist Alternative discussion group
Tuesday 26 November, 7:30pm-9:30pmPVTV Meet-Up
Wednesday 27 November, 7:00pm-9:00pmLiverpool Revolutionary Communist Party
Thursday 28 November, 7:00pm-9:30pmMaker Night
Our free weekly evening meeting where you can find out about our space and all the making equipment in it, get a laser cutter or CNC embroidery machine induction, and work on projects from physical computing and electronics to 3d printing, routing and sewing. Just pay for materials used.

Somebody Should

The DoES Liverpool to-do list is stored in the issues of our Somebody Should repository on github. Head over there if there’s something you’d like to report, or if you want to help out fixing things.

See all the issues…

Issue counts: 414 open, 1552 closed

1 new issue:

Featured issue: Tony not engraving well. Can we move this on or close it?

No issues closed

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