Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab

The CUC Fab Lab contributed to a special Augmented Reality installation for the University of Illinios graduation ceremonies.

See the official press release and visit the site Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to see it in person. see the 'About' page and the student pix.

This project was a collaboration of many departments at the UI, and the team included Robert McGrath and Andrew Knight of the Fab Lab.

Following up on the HASTAC presentation mentioned here, I have posted a much longer, more throrough discussion.

See the link at: http://robertmcgrath.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/draft-white-paper-communit...

I would like to revise and improve this draft.

(By the way, I couldn't find a good "Section" for this entry.  "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.")

On Saturday I presented a short talk about the CUCFL at the HASTAC 2103 conference in Troronto (Abstract).  Thanks to all of you who directly or indirectly helped.

I met folks from several Canadian makerspaces, and gave out our card to several of them.  Most of them were just starting out and wanted advice about how to build a successful makerspace.  I invited them to peruse our web site for tutorials, etc. and contact us.

STAR EXPO this Thursday from 5:30 to 7:00 PM - fab lab volunteers are welcome to work the table!  The event will be held at the Hilton Inn Gardens

A raffle will be held.  Suggestions welcome!

From the announcement:

First of all, I want to thank all of you for agreeing to be a vendor at our 2013 STAR Expo and Awards Ceremony.  We are thrilled to have you be a part of this special event!  As we are just days away from the Expo, I wanted to touch base with everyone on some last minute details you may need prior to the Expo.

AGENDA

CUCFL Youth Council

Saturday April 20^th, 9:30 AM

1. REVIEW CHARTER

2. COMMUNICATIONS

• Contact email for the youth council (for example CUCFLYouthCouncil(at)gmail.com)

• Google group for announcements

• Webpage

The CUCFL Youth Council is sponsoring an open lab for youth, 10-16 years old, on Saturday April 20th from 10 until Noon. Come to the lab and start your Earth Day celebrations early. You can make cards, stickers, or engravings and then take a plant home with you when you leave.

You can also see a Raspberry Pi in action. The Raspberry Pi is a 25-35 dollar computer built around an ARM processor. It is a great tool for learning to program and has been inspiring people all around the world to make lots of fun stuff. Here is a chance to try one out before deciding if it is something you would be interested in.

To take place at 12:30pm on Sunday, April 7th.

I. FAB LAB OPERATIONS

We now have an additional scanner-printer available at the lab for color printing and color paper. Ask at the desk, we ask for 50 cents a sheet.

From the Open Education Database: http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2013/a-librarians-guide-to-makerspaces/

Possibly of interest: a project from the Mixed Reality Lab at Keio University.  From this description, we could probably replicate it--though I don't know if we would want to.  :-)

See their web page for an explanation:

http://ringu.mixedrealitylab.org/

The CUCFL Youth Council is sponsoring another open lab for people between the ages of 10 and 16 on Saturday the 16th from 10 until noon. If you misses our soldering day, we still have badges available for soldering at 3 dollars a piece. If you don't have a project you want to work on, come in anyway and we will help you think of something to make. If you are able to make it please let me know at jeffhoward0@gmail.com as soon as you can.

Joan from the UIUC Women's Resource Center was kind enough to donate us some remote control toys and pine wood derby car sets. They're now available for free use in the lab!

Matthew Schroyer (www.mentalmunition.com) was kind enough to film a time-lapse of our UP!3D printer in action:

Here it is printing mounting for a sensor.

The tools and materials section has been updated to reflect our current offerings. I've also made the example creations page a little friendlier.

Luke, you will be happy to know that all pictures are now hosted on the Fab Lab server.