UPDATE 2020-04-17 We cannot yet make any promises when we will return to normal schedule. Open Tuesdays are at the moment still cancelled. The Arduino course has changed to online course only. We try to keep the calendar updated, but questions are answered in Slack/IRC/Telegram too.
We recommend that key members try to make only small and quick jobs for their projects and not spending long periods in the workspace so that there are as few people as possible same time (for example workday out of office is discouraged). All work for lab infrastructure and improvements plus social projects are welcomed even if they’re time consuming.
Helsinki Hacklab cancels all open Tuesdays and postpones the Arduino course until 2020-04-15, so the next Open Tuesday will be 2020-04-21 unless situation changes. The ARM/C course second meeting will be scheduled normally. We will keep the calendar updated for any changes. The exceptions only affect open events, so key members can use the place as usual.
If you have time and want to get the upstairs level more ready for use, you are very welcome to help us improving the new expansion. The lab is ordering new doors for upstairs expansion and we are planning to install electronic locks just like downstairs, but this will take some time as the doors have to be custom made because of odd dimensions.
We are arranging a member collection for a table saw to replace the old one. If you’re a member and want to help us, you can support the project in our webstore.
Big thanks to everyone who visited the birthday party on Open Tuesday! The event brought together first time visitors, supporters, current active volunteers, affiliates, long time members and even founding members of the club. Total number of participants must have been over one hundred during the evening.
Besides the party, there was a chance to take a first look into the new upstairs area. The plan how to use the new space is getting to build up, and textile work is very much likely to get its own fixed spot in the lab for the first time.
Unfortunately nobody brought a proper camera with them, but we have some random shots in a Flickr lab camera album.
10 years of Helsinki Hacklab and workspace extension
Cutting the cake in celebration of ten years of Helsinki Hacklab on next Tuesday!
The formal association running Helsinki Hacklab was founded in the first meeting on 17th January 2010. Ten years after the hackerspace has grown into a group of over 400 members and more than 350 square meters of workspace.
We are celebrating our anniversary on next Open Tuesday in a new one hundred square meter workspace extension above our current basement level rooms. The new rooms are on ground level and make about one fourth of the total upstairs floor area.
Ground level expansion side of the building. Front doors on the left.
The group that initially started the space between 2009 and 2010 first met in libraries, in a squat house, small business development hub and an art space. Though the founding meeting was held in January 2010, it was later in June the same year when we opened the doors of our first self-organized physical space in Vallila. We moved in Pitäjänmäki in November 2014 and have remained in the same address since. Previous expansion of the space was in 2017 when we took over the remaining half of the basement level in our use, and now we are taking steps upstairs.
Birthday party on Tuesday
On next Tuesday we’ll open doors upstairs at 19.00, cut the cake and introduce everyone to the unlocked areas. The 100 square meters consist of three larger rooms, a closet room, kitchen, toilet and a bathroom with a small sauna, making Helsinki Hacklab one of the two hackerspaces in the world with a sauna besides Jyväskylä Hacklab. There is no stair connection between these two levels, making the ground level space more suitable for quiet and non-messy work, such as day out of office workdays and textile work.
We are also planning for more co-operation both with the local infosec group HelSec and Disobey ry. in 2020. This might include using the space more often for software and information security targeted courses and happenings.
Maksuohjeet vuoden 2020 jäsenyydelle yhdistyksessä on lähetetty tänään sähköpostitse. Tällä kertaa emme voi käyttää Holvi-pankkia laskujen lähettämiseen Holvin ongelmien vuoksi, vaan maksut menevät Nordea-tilillemme. Käytäthän mielellään virtuaaliviivakoodia maksamiseen, tai kopioi tarkalleen IBAN-muodossa annetut ohjeet viitenumeron kanssa sähköpostistasi. Maksuohjeet muuttuvat vuosittain, joten älä tee maksusta toistuvaa!
Happy New Year!
Payment info emails for 2020 membership in the association have been sent today. This time we cannot use Holvi bank for sending invoices because of problems with Holvi, so we use our Nordea account instead. Please use the virtual barcode, or copy IBAN info precisely using the reference number. Payment info changes every year, so do not make the payment recurring!
This year both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve collide with Open Tuesdays. Regular schedule returns on 7th Jan. with doors open again for everyone who wants to do and make stuff.
It will be an exciting new year for Hacklab, we are already preparing for Disobey 2020 and more. We’ll let you know later!
The second annual general meeting will be held in Finnish on 2019-11-30 starting at 2pm
After the official part we’ll have our christmas party. As usual the event is non-alcoholic and food/beverage is handled on the potluck principle.
Meeting agenda can be found in charpter 11. in Rules of the organisation. Additional agenda: membership of top level organisation and changes in rules.
Hacklab member exhibitions in MUU Galleria, Galleria Sculptor and Grenna Museum
Muu Galleria, Lönnrotinkatu. Nov 9th – Dec 15th.[website]
Opening of the exhibition on Friday 8 November, 2019, from 5-7 pm. All Hacklab members are invited!
Anu makes drawings with oil paint medium. Unlike paint, which would bleed along the fibres, the medium retains its shape on the paper. Areas saturated with it become translucent compared with the untreated opaque paper, and the drawn marks become visible when seen against light. Instead of being reflected from the surface, light in these works passes through the substrate. Filtering through the marks made with the painting medium, light itself becomes a material. The passage of light through the paper is determined by the marks drawn on it, not unlike the human mind that with its definitions and conceptual thinking delimits the endless possibilities of the world into a specific shape.
All welding of LED light steel tubing stands have been made by Anu using Helsinki Hacklab workspace and tools.
Pia Männikkö: NordiSkulptur
Galleria Sculptor, Eteläranta. Nov 1st – Jan 8th. [website]
A duo exhibition in Galleria Sculptor. Pia’s art features bodily connection between a viewer and an artwork to create immersive situations and spaces for the viewer to enter. Mapping the passage of time, as well as creating objects that gradually grow and change, play a central role in her working process.
There’s also an additional display at the Nordic Culture Point´s window gallery, Kaisaniemenkatu 9.
Axel Straschnoy: Float
Nya Småland & Grenna Museum Polarcenter, Sweden. Oct 12th – Dec 31th[website]
The buoy was launched into the sea off the coast of Lofoten, into the Norwegian current. The current carries water along the west coast of Norway, towards Svalbard. A part of it continues towards the Arctic. Thus, a buoy let loose into it has some chance to make it to the Arctic. Once there, there is a non-zero chance of it getting frozen-in in the Arctic ice. Once part of the Arctic ice, there is a non-zero chance it will one day be over the North Pole. The possibilities are slim, yes, but so were Andrée’s.
Parts of the buoy were adjusted by Axel in our metal workshop room before the final assembly and launch.
The usual early fall rush hours have started, we have new people visiting and lots of projects going on. This blog post tries to catch up recent months that have been yet uncovered since summer.
This year’s major European hacker camp Chaos Communication Camp 2019 was in Germany, in the same brick factory musem as in 2015. Hacklab.fi was there together with infosec groups TurkuSec, HelSec and others, joining forces under the moniker Salmiakki Village. Just like at SHA2017, the Nordic hackerspaces such as Labitat, Hackeriet and Xil.se, formed a combined tent village Cold North which Salmiakki was a part of. Together, we got a nice spot in the shadows and next to a balcony to get away from the heat of day.
Building a village this size the logistics was split in two batches: Oulu people sent a 3m high fully loaded pallet of mostly personal, networking, electricity and lightning stuff, and Helsinki Hacklab drove a van through the Baltics and Poland [photos] loaded with a party tent, a fridge and lots of other larger items. Most stuff ended up being used and not much was lacking from the load. We’re getting good in this.
Salmiakki Village
Salmiakki village was essentially a party place, but we had also packed some nice light effects, video art and of course salmiakki in different form. The village also was the homebase for Finnish CTF team, which ranked sixth in end results. Big thanks for Ponakka for lending us the sound system, which we hooked up into Rambo’s Technics turntable pair. Sadly we got no permission for a sauna this time (though a pizza oven elsewhere in the area was excused for some reason). We had to regret the unfortunate situation for many people, but the area had high risk of forest fires that time and electricity too scarse. Hopefully this can be fixed next time in the forthcoming IFCAT camp in Netherlands year 2021, like we had at SHA camp.
We had some time to visit Fukusima Sauna in Riga on our return trip. Thanks long time hacklab member Vihannes for hosting us and showing us around. Next time we try to plan ahead so we have time to also try out the sauna itself and see the local makerspace. The Cold North area is going to be developed further with more shared planning, information exchange and other coordination. There is the Nordic mailing list and even a new wiki set up by Hackeriet. For the next camp, the cluster should return even greater than this year!
September: Dust collector redesign and space improvement
Dust collector installation
Woodwork room got some new space after moving the dust vacuum in a different spot outside the room itself. The pipings and hoses that move the dust now have more outlets, which means even hand tools should be easy to attach. The vacuum is now located next to our back door emergency exit on ground floor. Thanks to Depili and Harald for making most of the work.
The mitre saw was changed to a new one, that has a soft start motor and built-in laser guide. Tarmo has worked on a router table, but there is still some work to do and parts to be changed, but it’s looking good already. The wood workshop also got new lights, because the old ones started to crack in pieces when opening the dust cover. There are some new fire extinguishers and quite many old ones here and there, and the wood workshop got an extra first aid kit. We got no instructions to correct anything in the space after a fire inspection took place. Remember to keep the emergency exit area clean of any trash or workpieces.
Helsinki Hacklab made a contract with a local cleaning service and scheduled a cleanup every two weeks, including the meetup room, kitchen, 3D-printing area, toilets and other semi clean rooms, which do not include the woodworking room and metal work rooms. Hopefully this helps us to maintain a tidier hackerspace when the volunteer does not have to start from complete disaster each time they have a need to clean something. After painting the floor in July, the place looks a lot better and the new surface is easier to clean.
October: Aluminium welding course plus more
Aluminium welding is something quite many people have asked, but due to the difficulty of learning it by yourself, many have hesitated to give it a try. Luckily, Anle knows the processa and promised us to arrange a weekly workshop. The interest in the course was anticipated to be high, so we eventually had to use lottery to choose participants. As of writing this, there are still two lessons left in this course. We cannot yet promise if there will be any repetitions of the course in near future.
Aluminium welding course going on
The welding course is not the only skill we have teached each other this September. Other tools we’ve given courses in include the metal lathe, laser cutter and various woodworking tools. If any of our members know a skill and want to share knowledge, there is always a possibility to have either small introductions, recurring lessons or even weekend long intensive workshops.
Helsinki Hacklab ja hacklab.fi Assembly Summerissa
Hacklab.fi:n maker-teltta pystytetään tänäkin vuonna Assembly Summer -tapahtumaan. Meidät löytää tällä kertaa uudesta Scene Loungesta Skrolli-lehden ständin vieressä. Tai sitten ulkoa.
Maalaustyöt ohi työtilassa
Lattian maali on kuivunut ja läbi on otettu käyttöön tavalliseen tapaan. Täysi kulutuskestävyys vie vielä joitain viikkoja, joten varo naarmujen ja kolhujen aiheuttamista (suuret tavarat, terävät osat, tuolien jalkojen raahaaminen ym.).
We are painting the floors, there is no Open Tuesday on 16th July
Start of following week the place is in very limited use
There is no Open Tuesday on 16th July
Maalattava alue on suunnilleen tämä
We paint the floors in lecture room, kitchen and 3D printing room, which means that there is either no access or no easy access to most parts of the lab (kitchen, toilets, machining room etc.) plus there is pungent paint smell everywhere. Also we need to move stuff away from painted area to other rooms, making them possibly difficult to use.
Please avoid using the lab if possible, until we can announce the place usable for working again. The job is done by our volunteers, reply in discourse forum if you can help us.
Maalaaminen tehdään viikonloppuna 12.-14. päivä, ja seuraavana viikkona avoin tiistain on peruttu. Muutoinkin alkuviikosta työtilan käyttö on vielä hyvin rajoitettua, ja esimerkiksi keittiö ja vessat eivät ole käytössä. Pyri välttämään läbillä käymistä siihen asti, kunnes paikka ilmoitetaan taas käyttökuntoiseksi ja maalin kuivumisen ohjeiden mukainen aika on kulunut.
Maali on kuivuessaan voimakkaan hajuista, joten jos sinulla on naulakkoon unohtuneita vaatteita, hae ne pois heti. Maalina käytetään samaa ainetta, millä mm. elektroniikkatila ja laserhuone ovat maalattu, ja hajuhaitta tiedetään jo ennalta voimakkaaksi ja pitkäaikaiseksi. Lisäksi joudumme siirtämään tavaroita maalattavalta alueelta muihin huoneisiin, mikä voi vaikeuttaa näiden tilojen käyttöä.
Maalaaminen tehdään omin vapaaehtoisvoimin, yksinkertaisimmillaan työ on tavaroiden siirtelyä maalattavalta alueelta pois ja lattian siivousta, joten kokemusta maalaamisesta ei tarvitse olla:
