What gets built, repaired and tried out at our space.
A catalogue of questions about Starship Factory reached us by email, which could be very interesting for readers of this blog too. So we are publishing our answer here:
What infrastructure is on offer and how was it financed? Under Equipment in our wiki there is a list of some of the equipment in our space. Unfortunately we still have a publication deficit in that respect. Most of the equipment is privately owned by members who make it available to others, but the association owns a few machines as well (the 3D printers, the soldering stations or the visitor laptops, for instance).
Starship Factory needs a summer break too! So our doors stay shut on Friday, 28 August 2015. But we will be back for you as usual on Tuesday, 1 September 2015.
If you cannot wait that long, you can ask on the open mailing list whether one of our members with a key can drop in in the meantime.
Every day you read about new attacks on privacy. Thanks to people like Edward Snowden we know about the NSA surveillance affair; laptop theft, attacks by spam bots and credit card sharks are everyday occurrences, and politics keeps pushing for more surveillance and deeper intrusions into privacy. It is only natural, then, that as a user you want to protect your data better against other people’s access. But what to do?
Have you always wanted to learn to program, but thought until now that it was too hard for you, or simply never got round to it? We have exactly the right workshop for you, and it is easier than you think.
Come by and let us convince you! On Saturday, 27.06.2015 from 14:00 to 16:30, Alexander Schremmer (xoraxax) is giving an introduction to the basics of programming using the programming language “Python”. Anyone who wants to learn to program can take part — member or not. No prior knowledge of programming is needed; knowing some English is useful (but not required).
On 21 June the time has come again: summer begins! So we would like to invite you warmly to Starship Factory for a barbecue and shop talk.
When? 21 June 2015, 14:00
Where? Auf dem Wolf 13 in Basel
Please bring along whatever you want to grill yourself. Drinks and snacks are, as always, already taken care of. Salads and other side dishes are very welcome.
Please note: today, 12.06.2015, Starship Factory is exceptionally open from 18:30 to 22:00, instead of the usual 18:00 to 22:00. This is due to a short-term shortage of people who can unlock at 18:00, and should improve again over the coming weeks.
On Sunday, 19 April 2015 from 14:00 to 18:00 there is a workshop by women for women:
Do you find ordinary clothes too boring too? With EL wire you can add glowing messages in many different luminous colours! And with our T-shirt film you can put a non-glowing message underneath.
On 17.04.2015 at 18:00 a workshop on “opening locks for beginners” takes place at Starship Factory’s premises.
The workshop aims to give beginners an understanding, through tangible examples, of how a lock is built, which principles ensure its security, and what to look out for when choosing locking mechanisms. The moral and legal limits of lockpicking are also covered (for example that only practice locks may be opened, ones that are not, or no longer, used for security).
New space, new possibilities: this April we are offering a whole series of workshops for interested people.
Saturday, 11 April 2015, 15:00: Making spare parts with OpenSCAD (3 hours) Missing a spare part, or has something broken? With OpenSCAD and a pair of callipers a replacement is made in no time. Bring CHF 20 and we will show you how.
This Saturday, 28 March 2015, is international Arduino Day!
From 14:00 to 18:00 you can bring your own Arduino projects to us at Starship Factory, talk about microcontrollers, or find out what an Arduino actually is. There is bound to be an exciting new project in it for someone.
Do you not have an Arduino of your own, or are all your Arduinos already tied up in other projects? No problem: Arduinos and other microcontrollers are available here at Starship Factory too, for a contribution towards costs.
Dear Starshiponauts and interested people!
On Friday, 27.03.2015 at 19:30, Flint will give a talk about keeping ball pythons at Starship Factory (see the directions). The talk is open to non-members too and lasts about 40 minutes. Questions can be asked afterwards.
The speaker would like to introduce interested people to this particular hobby, or rather pet. He owns four ball pythons himself. In this talk he covers facts about this pet as well as characteristics you have to pay attention to if you want to keep a ball python yourself.
After a year and a half and several attempts, Starship Factory has finally moved into a new home. Instead of St. Alban-Rheinweg, we have now arrived at our new and own clubhouse at Auf dem Wolf 13, between the St. Jakob stadium and the Dreispitz suburban railway station.
From now on all regular meetings will take place at our new location, starting with the Tuesday meet-up on 3 March. We have of course also updated the directions!
On 20 January 2015 from 19:30 the 1st Freifunk meetup in Basel takes place at Starship Factory’s premises.
The Freifunk scene in the Basel region lay fallow for too long. And the longer it takes, the more obvious it becomes that Basel needs a free, open, generally available WLAN network. That is exactly what the Freifunk movement has set out to achieve. The idea is to encourage ordinary citizens to make part of their internet access available to passers-by under appropriate safeguards. Freifunk explains how that works and how to stay on the legally safe side.
After the big spaghetti dinner we are sending a delegation to 31C3!
On 9 January 2015 we start into the new year!
Until then we are open on request.
Starship Factory invites everyone to a spaghetti dinner.
On 19 December 2014 everyone is warmly invited to Starship Factory. From 19:00 we will be cooking spaghetti and making sauces. Soft drinks are available on site.
We will sit together and celebrate our successful projects.
Register by email to workshops@lists.starship-factory.ch.
First visit? You will find us via: How to find us
There are lots of things you can build with an Arduino. The prerequisite, though, is being able to program the microcontroller sitting on the Arduino — that is, to put into words the computer understands what the microcontroller should do, and to store the result on the microcontroller.
Programming microcontrollers is, surprisingly, a task you can carry out perfectly well with an Arduino. Some enthusiasts have already looked into the problem and written Arduino programs for programming microcontrollers. Here are a few examples:
Every now and then in life you come across devices such as uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) which deliver power not through the familiar Swiss mains plug but through the pin-laden partner of PC power cables, the C14 plug. Often you can only connect devices with PC power plugs there, because the only cables on sale have that same C14 plug on one side and the C13 plug you know from PCs and microwaves on the other.
We would like to thank the E.E. Zunft zu Hausgenossen for their generous donation of CHF 10,000 towards our 3D printers.
With the money we bought 6 3D printers of our own for our FabLab, plus material, which our members and visitors make busy use of to be creative or to produce prototypes, for example. From the income this generates we can afford repairs to the 3D printers, buy more material and perhaps later invest in other interesting equipment too.
Have you always wanted to learn to program, but thought until now that it was too hard for you, or simply never got round to it? We have exactly the right workshop for you, and it is easier than you think.
Come by and let us convince you! On Saturday, 23.08.2014 from 13:00 to 19:00, Alexander Schremmer (xoraxax) is giving an introduction to the basics of programming using the programming language “Python”. Participants must be 16 or older. No prior knowledge of programming is needed; knowing some English is useful (but not required).
Starship Factory has received two watchmaker’s screwdriver sets from Brütsch/Rüegger Werkzeuge AG.
Since we work a lot with hardware in the embedded field, they are already seeing plenty of use.
On 16.08.2014 at 15:00 we are running a T-shirt printing workshop.
With laptop, cutting plotter and transfer press to the design you want on your T-shirt. Anyone who can use a keyboard and mouse can print T-shirts too. We will show you how! Together we will turn your T-shirt idea, or one of our templates, into a finished printed T-shirt which you can take away straight after the course.
On Friday we were given an Xbox Kinect by one of our members.
That finally gives us the equipment to test Reconstruct Me QT as 3D scanning software. So hopefully we will soon be able to do 3D scans!
Documentation on the Kinect wiki page has already been started. If our plan works out, there will soon be a guide there on how to make 3D scans with a Kinect!
Mitch Altman from the hackerspace “Noisebridge” in San Francisco has announced himself as our guest. On 20 May at 18:00 he will be giving a soldering workshop here at Starship Factory. It is suitable for beginners who have never soldered and are looking for an easy way in. The kits, on the other hand, are varied and interesting for the more advanced too.
In preparation for soldering workshops away from home, we picked up a case cheaply and filled it with soldering equipment. You could now simply grab it and travel somewhere with it to solder. The interior still needs some work, though, so that before long you only have to open the case to solder with it, instead of laboriously taking all the parts out and placing them on a table. If you can look past that, the case already works excellently.
Last week we received post from our friends in Mannheim. The parcel contained an electronics kit with a microcontroller and a display, which RaumZeitLabor had declared discontinued. The remaining kits were sent off as a farewell to friendly hackerspaces all over Europe, to carry the project to its grave with dignity.
