Artikkelit

SATS Rocket Club launches Arduinos on rockets

2024-01-09 admin

Guest content provided by our friends at SATS-SAFF ry.

Blast from 2023 (apologies from blog editor for publishing this guest feature late!)

The SATS Rocket Boys go Vaasa, again!

Our team of five rocket enthusiasts (2 x Matti, Timo, Vesa and me, Mika) participated again in organising the Finnish CanSat event from 30 March to 2 April 2023. CanSat is a competition run by ESERO, the European Space Education Resource Office, coordinated in Finland by Heureka Science Centre.

And what a Hacklab’ish competition it is! 4-5 person teams composed of pupils in middle school and secondary education (yläaste ja toisen asteen oppilaitokset) build cansats, soda can sized “satellites” with Arduino-based electronics that make simple environmental measurements. The mandatory measurements are air pressure and temperature, but all teams also choose their own extra task. There we saw sensors such as a muon detector, geiger counter as well as visible light and infrared cameras. Below, an example of the internals of a cansat by the team Kvanttikala, “Quantum Fish” from the Finnish Secondary High School in Estonia. Note the heavy duty internal structure protecting the electronics from the stresses of the flight and landing!

The cansats are flown hundreds of metres in the air using various methods. Quite obviously, we think the only correct way to fly satellites is using ROCKETS!

The Hacklab members have probably seen quite a lot of rocket building activity during the winter. Many of those rockets were for this event. Fins and bulkheads were cut with the laser cutter, the airfoils formed with belt sanders, motor holders machined with Lotta. One day we may also see better paint jobs, when the painting room gets finalised. Hacklab is the perfect place for this kind of craft, too!

And of course, everyone wants to see a rocket launch. The one below is team TAIGASAT’s extra flight with a bit bigger than standard motor, H225-WT, shoved into the back end of Timo’s rocket “Kuituhirviö”. Flames, hot exhaust plume and happy faces at the beginning of a fully successful launch!

All photos Ⓒ Jan Holmgård

The competition was again a great experience. More wonderful photography by Jan Holmgård here and videos compiled by Matti Lepomäki:

May Contain Hackers 2022 – a photo album

2022-09-13 jssmk

MCH2022 camp is now over and the Finnish village empty in the scouting field of Flevoland, the Netherlands. Helsinki Hacklab was represented alongside with Hacklab.fi, HelSec, TurkuSec etc. other groups and individuals, plus joining forces with other Nordic villages forming the Cold North cluster in “the noisy corner”.

Originally the camp was supposed to be in 2021 but got postponed to 2022. In total the participant count was about 3 500 hackers, many of volunteering as well. If you want to get a glimpse of the atmosphere, get to know what the event is all about, most of the streamed talks are already archived online.

The village cluster got lucky the rental sauna, after a competing reservation for a different event got canceled and the idea was greenlighted from the organizers. Just like last time, the awesome new conference badge also got an app for the temperature tracking, though this time our village managed to release it quickly on day zero. As usual, our party tent was full of salmiakki in all shapes and forms except for salmiakki ice cream.

The villagers pushed maybe three or more apps in the badge app store, took volunteering tasks, competed in the CTF and arranged workshops or talks. Helsinki Hacklab provided laser cutted deco for the area. Our machine works great for this type of job because the the working area enables cutting large banners with a single run.

Kohtaaminen kaupungin kulttuuritoimen kanssa

2019-06-09 jssmk

Torstaina 6. kesäkuuta kaupungintalolla järjestettyyn kulttuuri- ja vapaa-ajan olosuhteiden kehittäminen Helsingissä ^(video)-tapahtumaan saapui kutsu myös Helsinki Hacklabille. Tilaisuudessa käsiteltiin kaupungin uusia olosuhdekehittämisen periaatteita, joihin kuuluu myös erilaisten tukimuotojen uudistus ja niitä ohjaavat arviointikriteerit. Vaikka emme olekaan kaupungin tuen piirissä, emmekä käytä kaupugin tarjoamia tiloja, oli mielenkiintoista pohtia, mitä yhteistä voisimme löytää kaupungin ja siinä toimivien muiden ryhmien kanssa. Helsinki Hacklab pyrkii toiminnassaan itsenäisyyteen ja ulkoisesta taloudellisesta tuesta riippumattomuuteen, jotta toiminnan jatkuvuus ei ole sidoksissa sellaisen rahavirran jatkuvuuteen, josta on vastuussa muu kuin yhdistys itse. Tämä rahoitusmalli on ollut käytössä nyt jo yhdeksän vuotta, joten se on vähintäänkin osoittanut toimivuutensa. Avainjäsenten maksut vastaavat tällä hetkellä noin kaksi kolmasosaa itse kerätyistä tuloista, joilla vuokra ja muut säännöliset kulut maksetaan. Toisaalta vähäinen kontakti kaupungin kanssa on johtanut siihen, että toimintaamme ei välttämättä siellä tunneta, tai käsitys sen luonteesta ei ole yhteinen. Tapahtuman työryhmäkeskustelut olivatkin siksi kiinnostavia tästä tilanteesta lähtien.

Kaupungin uudistetussa mallissa palvelujen tuotantoa ja tukea ohjaa käsitys palvelujen tarpeesta, riippumatta siitä, mikä toimija palvelut lopulta tuottaa. Kulttuurin tuottaminen tarvitsee tuekseen esityspaikkojen lisäksi muunlaisia tiloja, joissa voidaan edistää produktioiden vaatimaa rakentamista ja teknistä toteutusta. Tänä kesänä Helsinki Hacklabilla esimerkiksi toteutetaan suuren larp-tapahtuman lavasteiden rakentamista. Toisena tärkeänä teemana käsiteltiin tietoyhteistyötä, jotta esimerkiksi ymmärrys tarpeista lähestyisi paremmin tosiasiallista tilaa. Tietopohjan kehittämisessä uusien ja vähemmän tunnetuiksi jääneiden yhteisöjen kannalta jäikin vielä käsittelemättä, miten kaupunki kerää tai käsittelee tietoa erilaisista toimijoista alueellaan. Onko Hacklab kaupungin näkökulmasta kulttuurialan toimija vai jotain muuta? Hacklabin kannalta oli kiinnostavia yhteneväisyyksiä muiden kaupungissa toimivien järjestöjen kanssa, ja yhteisiä intressejä esimerkiksi Oranssi ry:n kanssa oli helppo löytää. Tarpeet, joihin Helsinki Hacklab pyrkii vastaamaan, sisältävät hyvin sekalaisen joukon erilaisia teemoja, joista tärkeimpänä voisi olla ahtaan kaupunkiasumisen rajoitteet tilaa vaativaan kädentaitotyöskentelyyn, sekä hack-kulttuurin ympärille syntyneen yhteisöllisyyden paikallinen tukeminen.

Olosuhteet Hacklab-toiminnalle

2020-luvun alkupuolella valmistuva Raide-Jokeri tulee kulkemaan “lähes läbirakennuksen takapihalla”, joten kaupunkisuunnittelu on tässä tehnyt meistä entistä saavutettavamman. Entuudestaan naapurustossamme on jo ollut Pitäjänmäen ja Mäkkylän rautatieasemat, sekä runkolinja 550:n pysäkki. Pitäjänmäki on kuitenkin ison muutoksen edessä: vuoteen 2030 mennessä on tarkoitus rakentaa jopa 1700 uutta asuntoa. Samalla Espoo rakentaa Vermon/Perkkaan alueelle uusia asuntoja. Läbin muutto Vallilasta 2014 tehtiin sillä perusteella, mistä päin Helsinkiä edelleen löytyy pienteollista aluetta, jossa onnistuu sotkuisempi ja meteliä tuottava työskentely ilman ympäröivälle alueelle siitä aiheutuvaa haittaa. Vaihtoehdot olivat pääasiassa Herttoniemi/Roihupelto, sekä Pitäjänmäki, joista jälkimmäinen valikoitui sijainniksi osin siksi, että meillä on paljon Espoossa asuvia jäseniä. Sijaintimme on niitä harvoja nurkkia kaupungissa, joista löytyy meidän tarpeisiin soveltuvia tiloja. Kaupungin julkaisemissa tiedoissa linjataan, että Takkatien tontinvuokraussuunnitelma pysyy paikoin nykymuotoisena vielä 40-luvulle asti, myös omassa korttelissamme:

“Elinvoimainen kaupunki tarvitsee teollista tuotantoa harjoittavia ja teollisia palveluita tarjoavia yrityksiä. Takkatie – Arinatien alue on merkittävimpiä enää jäljellä olevia teollisuusalueita Helsingissä.” ^{(kaupungin asiakirja)}

Pelinkehitystä labilla

2018-04-24 joonamo

Toiminta hacklabilla ei ole aina puutyötä, metallin jyrsintää tai elektroniikan kolvausta. Viime viikonloppuna labilla järjestettiin pienimuotoiset gamejamit osana maailmanlaajuista Ludum Dare -tapahtumaa. Gamejameissa osallistujat tekevät pelin hyvin rajatussa ajassa, yleensä viikonlopussa. Ludum Daressa on kaksi kategoriaa, Jam ja Compo. Jamiin voi osallistua tiimillä, aikaa on kolme vuorokautta ja pelin tekemiseen saa käyttää kaikkia taide- ja audiomateriaaleja joihin tiimeillä on käyttöoikeus. Compoa sen sijaan kutsutaan myös Hard Modeksi, siihen osallistutaan yksilönä, aikaa on vain 48 tuntia ja kaikki pelin taide, koodi ja audio tulee tehdä tapahtuman aikana.

Tapahtuman aikana valmistuneet pelit julkaistaan tapahtuman sivuilla ja muut osallistujat antavat peleille arvosanoja. Lopuksi peleistä julkistetaan voittajat muutamassa kategoriassa, mutta kaikki rajatussa ajassa pelin valmiiksi saanet ovat jo voittajia sinänsä. Labilla tapahtumaan osallistuneet olivat kaikki kokeneita pelinkehittäjiä ja halusivat haastaa itseään osallistumalla Compoon.

Tämänkertaisen ludum daren aiheena oli “Combine 2 Incompatible Genres” ja päätin että oman pelini toinen genre olisi “Twin-stick shooter“. Koska aikaa oli hyvin rajallisesti, tein pelin tutulla Unity 3D pelimoottorilla. Aloitin tekemällä yksinkertaisen prototyypin jossa yksiväristä sylinteriä pystyi liikuttamaan ohjaimen vasemmalla tikulla ja ampumaan oikealla tikulla. Kun sain tämän osan pelistä toimimaan tyydyttävällä tavalla, aloin miettimään toista genreä. Olen pitkään jo suunnitellut tekeväni yksinkertaisen jalkapallopelin käyttäen laumakäytöstä, joten toiseksi genreksi valitsin jalkapallopelin. Aloitin tekemällä peliin pallon, joka liikkuu maailmassa käyttäen fysiikkasimulaatiota ja joka pomppii ympäriinsä kun pelaajan ampumat “lasersäteet” osuvat siihen. Tämä yksissään oli jo melko hauskaa, pallo pomppi hauskalla ja odottamattomalla tavalla ympäri pientä pelimaailmaa!

Seuraavaksi loin peliin vastapelaajat, eli punaiset sylinterit. Niiden yksinkertaiset käyttäytymissäännöt olivat “liiku palloja kohti”, välttele toisia pelaajia” ja “potkaise palloa jos olet tarpeeksi lähellä”. Näillä säännöillä yksinkertaiset sylinterit tekivät yllättäviä liikkeita ja koska he välttelivät toisiaan, näytti melkein että pelaajat tekivät älyllistä yhteistyötä keskenään. Tässä vaiheessa olin varma että pelini tulisi onnistumaan, mutta oli jo myöhä, joten päätin jatkaa seuraavana päivänä.

Koska pelini oli korkealla tasolla jo toimiva, toisena päivänä päätin keskittyä sen audiovisuaaliseen puoleen. Pelaajahahmo sai pupumaiset korvat, opettelin käyttämään rumpukonetta ja tein peliin yksinkertaisen musiikin, tein peliin muutaman ikea-tyylisen sanattoman ohjekuvan ja katsomoon yleisötekstuurin. Tämän lisäksi paransin peliä entisestään ja taistelin Unityn selainversion ohjaimen käsittelyn outouden kanssa: jostain syystä natiiviversiossa ja selainversiossa ohjaimen oikean tikun X- ja Y-akselit olivat eri päin. Tein peliin tunnistuksen missä versiossa peli pyörii ja vaihdan akselit sen mukaan. Sain tämän toimimaan melkein kaikissa selaimissa, mutta tein peliini tuen myös pelaamiselle pelkällä näppäimistöllä tai näppäimistöllä ja hiirellä. Lopuksi suunnittelin pelille vielä hienon logon ja sitten oli aika julkaista peli Ludum Daren sivuilla kaikkien kokeiltavaksi.

Pelin virallinen entry ja muita tietoja löytyy osoitteesta https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/shootball ja peliä voi käydä pelaamassa osoitteessa http://joonamo.kapsi.fi/ld41/ . Pelin lähdekoodit ovat myös saatavilla, mutta ne ovat juuri niin siistit kuin 48 tunnin projektilta voi odottaa: https://github.com/joonamo/ld41 . Ylipäänsä olen hyvin tyytyväinen peliin. Sitä on hauska pelata, se näyttää ja kuulostaa hyvältä (kooderin tekemäksi) ja onnistuin mielestäni saamaan peliin hyvän asteittain nousevan vaikeusasteen. Monet peliä testanneet ovat olleet samaa mieltä ja raportoineet paljon parempia tuloksia kuin olen itse saanut.

Finnish hackerspaces meet in Jyväskylä

2018-03-05 jssmk

Ten participating hackerspaces must be a record for the biannual gathering of Finnish hacklabs! Hacklab Summit Finland 2018 was arranged in Jyväskylä, and despite the local hacklab was in charge of the event for the first time, they managed to make this happening one of the best in the history of HSF.

The major theme for this year was planning the way how to formalise hacklab.fi as an official organisation of hackerspaces in Finland. We now have initial idea how the organisation should work, based on opinions and votes of those, who took part in this meeting. Unanimous conclusion was, that the founding assembly is going to be the next HSF in Helsinki this summer. Hacklab.fi has a history of more or less informal co-operation between cities since 2012. The new organisation will be strictly for member-operated hackerspaces, supporting new groups to get started, offering web services, representing our local scene in events both in Finland and further away, and making all kinds of PR work to help people find their local hacklabs.

Jyväskylä Hacklab took the responsibility to arrange HSF in connection with Instanssi demoscene event. This enabled us to have more space, content and possibilities than before. As usual, the program was fixed weeks before the start, and a hourly timetable kept us on track with finishing robots ready for the competition, remembering to eat, presenting recent happenings in different hacklabs, doing something more than just sitting behind the laptop, going to a indoor trampoline park and of course, the sauna.

Helsinki participated in the robot race track competition with two robots. The robot track is a 1 × 2 m box which has copies of itself in some of the hacklab.fi member spaces. Joonamo found his robot from last summer still working, and I assembled hastily some LEGO robot that had code running just few minutes before the competition started. The program was written in Python from scratch, the robot did zero practicing on the track, and I only knew it could probably move forward when turned on. For my complete surprise, it actually managed to make one clean complete round on the track, and didn’t even finish last on the results list. Joonamo’s robot came 3rd in speed results and 4th in popular vote, and the host city Jyväskylä took the first place. Robot competition was also included in the Instanssi program, so we had a great audience supporting the bots on the racetrack.

The weekend ended in visiting Hacklab Jyväskylä, which is about to move to a larger location soon. Tampere Hacklab is expanding its place with a new metal room and textile work section. There are also plans in other cities to look for larger workspaces and Nokia just started their own lab. This HSF had a very positive athmosphere where collaboration is taken for granted.

Definitely looking good for hacklab scene in Finland right now. A big thanks to Jyväskylä for hosting us!

Photos from weekend:
Helsinki Hacklab flickr
Tampere Hacklab flickr

Robot competition:
Twitch video

Blog posts in Finnish:
Jyväskylä Hacklab
Tampere Hacklab

Next time:
HSF18½ in Helsinki, 8.—10.6.2018

This was 2017

2017-12-30 jssmk

Year 2017 at Helsinki Hacklab had some remarkable moments. Most importantly, we made a major expansion in the workspace, adding more room space from 215 m² to somewhere around 370 m² effectively, when excluding rented out areas. We also got a grant from Arts Promotion Finland (Taike) for our yearly children’s event and other expenses. The unfortunate piping leak, which happened closer to the end of the year, meant that some areas had to be rebuilt completely. While this is still ongoing issue and the floors waiting for a new coat of paint, we can hopefully now say that the end result might become something way better than the original ever was. Next year we have a usable separate workroom for chemistry.

The expansion and our new woodworking area

The expansion plans – including figuring out how to finance everything – had to start quickly because our behind-the-wall neighbor was leaving the building, and letting anyone else seize this opportunity would stall our hopes of any expansion for years to come if staying in this address. A quick draft showed that with some active keyholder member recruiting and finding subtenants would make this a feasible plan. The old woodworking room was in pressure to grow larger, as it could not fit more users to meet the demand. It had no room for table saw or any other new tools. The quickly negotiated expansion plan reserved most of the new free space for woodworking alone, one third for a subtenant woodworker with his separate workshop, and the remaining part mostly for storage. The new areas include a back door, a lifting garage door and a second WC. At the end of this year, we seem to be doing okay and call it a success.

Robots in Strömberg Park, a family event organized by the hacklab.fi co-op network in Helsinki, was organized for the second time and is very very likely to happen in 2018 too. (How soon we can call it a tradition?). We had competitors from at least five other hackerspaces and a large new tent bought with Taike’s grant. The competition was preceded by weekly robot meetings, to prep the bots to be ready enough for the big day.

The sauna we brought to SHA2017 hacker camp turned out to be a wildly popular, at least in number of photograph attention it got. Let’s say this was our contribution to Finland’s 100th year of independence festives. Greetings to all who were brave enough to try out the sauna and to all our Nordic fellow camping neighbors! We fear we have no other option but to try to bring a sauna for the next hacker camp too.

In organizational stuff: we started to have so much diverse discussion and many users on our IRC channel, that we tried using Slack and so far got stuck to it. The old IRC channel is available too, but many topics have now their own places in our Slack group. In the workspace, the layout of things got shuffled again. We switched all our tables for folding ones in the classroom – thanks to Stockholm Makerspace for the idea!

The FPGA course continues our many year long continuous tradition of digital technology Thursdays, which started sometime while still in our previous address. We again collaborated with visual artists and also helped a samba group building their costumes in our workspace.

Some memorable member projects:
– steam powered maze robot, with Lego mechanics
– synced clock displays for broadcasts and event audiovisuals
– experiments with woodturning using our new lathe
– towable grill for bicycle
– large LED display matrix

2017 in numbers
– 2500 new uploaded Flickr photos
– 100% increase in rented floor area
– 128 member applications received
– 6 events visited and one organized by ourselves

Bringing a sauna to a hacker camp #SHA2017

2017-08-14 jssmk

Photos now in Flickr album: SHA2017 pictures

The outdoor hacker camp SHA2017 is now over and we want to thank you the organizers of the awesome event. This time the Finnish Embassy came to the camp with an electric barrel sauna. Initial negotiations with different organizing teams suggested that there was enough power to choose an electric sauna and reasons not to take a wood heated model, and we gratefully received help finding one. The popularity struck us with surprise and the sauna was occasionally not enough large for the masses. For those who might be interested, the sauna was rented from NL, not far from the event site. If you plan to bring an outdoor sauna to an hacker camp in the future, it might be easier to arrange than you think! We’ve heard there are already plans elsewhere to bring a sauna to Chaos Communication Congress 34C3.

As soon as we received our event badges, we decided to make something sauna related with it. The sauna temperature app was soon prototyped and launched on camp day one. We used RuuviTags and other sensors for monitoring the heat and informing everyone when the sauna was ready to use. The app even got mentioned in badge presentation highlights.

The sauna was still going strong after 2 am when music started to fade out on the field. We only have vague hearsay that the sauna or nudity at the camp caused some disapproval, but everything we witnessed ourselves at the sauna was only positive.

See some of the sauna reactions in Twitter: Twitter search sauna and sha2017

Planning

This time everyone from Finland took a plane for this event, so to keep us properly equipped for all the flashiness and coziness, we had to think another ways to bring our stuff other than distributing it in multiple luggage bags. Tarlab and other campers from Oulu, Burner in lead, packed (video) and delivered a cargo pallet full of materials such as lights, camping equipment, Finnish salmiakki candies, power cords, a small fridge and loads of other stuff. Arranging a shipment like this to a hacker camp is doable and we managed to get it on site nicely and in time – also not too early. Just make sure with logistics and villages teams know about your plans beforehand. Our delivery had a GPS transmitter inside, so we could follow the shipment arriving to SHA camp field live.

This time the Nordic Villages area was somewhat more planned than in Chaos Communication Camp 2015, and we had some idea who were joining the cluster beforehand. For the next camp we could try to be even more coordinated and plan what equipment different groups could bring. For example, we had no sound system, but could use the Swedish one using their awesome Youtube playlist IRC bot – thanks! The Nordic Villages and hackerspaces mailing list is an attempt to collect interested people to join future planning for camps, happenings or maybe demoscene events and visits to other hackerspaces. Let’s see what use it might find. We need enough people in the list to keep us connected, so please join the group.

Keeping the spirit up

Hours after the closing ceremony, the leftover campers of Nordic Villages were still going strong continuing with completely new programme. The Norwegian Embassy took over the near emptied Swedish tent and spray painted a sign on a remains of a Kartent to make it “look official”. Lars from Malmö started inviting bypassers and asking them “are you here for the lightning talks?”. The spontaneous presentations were either recycled slides from other occasions, mixed topics, show-and-tell style talks and such. After 8 or 9 pm when the camp site went silent and power was shut down, we continued in the dark using flashlights. Almost everyone in the tent also gave a talk.

Nordic Villages is most likely happening also in Chaos Communication Camp 2019. Thank you for all those who visited the sauna, Taike for the grant, our neighbours, and the SHA organisation to let us make this happen!

(200th blog post on this website!)

Robots in Strömberg Park 2017

2017-06-16 jssmk

Small robots try to find their way in a maze and bump against walls. This is our annual robot race in nearby Strömberg Park, which was organized by hacklab.fi last Saturday! (Or actually biannual, if you count in the indoors winter races organized in Hackerspace Tampere Hacklab)

The idea is to build robots in Hackerspaces all over Finland, and many spaces have their own copy of the “hacklab.fi standard robot maze” at their location. The track is 1×2 meter wooden box with corners that turn left and right. Although it’s a speed race, usually the best show starts when a robot has no idea of its next move.

This is the second time we have made our previously closed doors competition into a public event here in Helsinki, especially for families and children. New this year was a large and sturdy pop-up tent in case of bad weather, better marketing, posters, website, stickers, sound system and more better general idea how we should handle building the event site. This year all our robots were autonomous, and in total eight took part in the race. Robots from previous years were on display in the table and some of them (working ones) took laps on the track as well.

Most bizarre robot this year was thjt‘s Höyry robot, which consisted of a Wilesco steam engine, rotten plywood, bunch of old Legos and IR sensor electronics. It managed to go about ⅔ of a lap before literally running out of steam or dropping a pulley belt. Because it had difficulties to turn right, we gave it a special permission to run the track counterclockwise.

The race was dominated by robots from Kuopio, which took both first and third place. Second place went to Tampere with a robot that was controlled by external computer that monitored the course with hanging camera setup over the track.

Co-operation network hacklab.fi is an attempt to have more interaction between Hackerspaces in Finland, in similar fashion as UK Hackspace Foundation etc. Robot competitions such as this one have been in our schedule once or twice a year since 2012 as a part of Hacklab Summit Finland, which gathers Finnish Hackerspaces together making the scene work more with each others. Making the robot competition a public event became more obvious as the competition became more established tradition and the number of robots started resemble a real competition. This year’s race was supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland. Participants in Hacklab Summit Finland event came from cities Helsinki, Tampere, Kuopio, Vaasa, Turku and for the first time, the small town of Virrat, which might see its own hackerspace in near future.

Photos by Helsinki Hacklab
Photos by Tampere Hacklab
Photos by Kuopio Hacklab

Results page in Finnish: http://robotit.hacklab.fi/2017

HSF 2017

2017-02-01 jssmk

Last weekend hacklab.fi got together for the biannual Hacklab Summit Finland weekend at Tampere Hacklab. We usually try to make some plans together for the following year, so this time we made an easy decision to sign up for a shared Youtube account (will be announced later), had some talk about SHA2017 and shared thoughts how things are going on in different cities since we last met face to face.

Hacklab.fi has a tradition of robot competitions, and there are replicas of the standard maze course in Helsinki, Tampere and other cities too. This winter’s competition had eight autonomous robots that had never participated before in any previous races. As usual, strategies on the track varied: ultrasound sensors, color recognition, wheels, walking with legs, laser-cut plywood, Arduinos, Legos, 3D-printed parts and recycled materials – and also a logic-less build up with motors, wheels and batteries stick together with hot glue. Piispa by Vurpo @ Turku Hacklab won the race this time with fastest lap.

This years program included a visit to the recently started Finnish Museum of Games and to meet an association that does anything related to VR tech. A nearby band surprised us with an unplugged gig next to our trailer sauna at about 3 or 4 am. Turku Hacklab has restarted the LED party hat project, which has been in hiatus for too long, so we soldered few example boards to test out the new PCB layout. We flew FPV drones and also fixed some hackerspace management software problem.

Helsinki Hacklab got a excuse to ~~dump~~ donate excess components and materials to other labs, including our extra vending machine. We shortly met with some folks from Lahti, who are thinking about forming a new Hacklab in the city. Hacklab.fi hopes it can support Lahti with this project!

Thanks to Tampere Hacklab for hosting us again, and see you all in Helsinki this summer for another HSF.

More photos in this Flickr album.

Uploading photos to Flickr from Eye-Fi card with Raspberry Pi

2016-08-31 jssmk

Helsinki Hacklab’s policy for photographing sometimes puzzles our guests which might come from other hackerspaces with limitedly allowed or strict rules for taking photos, for privacy reasons or some others. Back in 2014 we still had very scattered collection of photos by individual members, maybe hosted on their own homepage or somewhere else, until lost forever. To preserve our history better and and have more up-to-date content online, we decided to make both taking photos and publishing them as hassle-free as possible. So we bought then an Eye-Fi card along with our camera and configured it so that all photos are automatically published in Flickr anytime the shutter recloses. So far, no complaints.

But now, Eye-Fi has announced shutting down its service, which we have used for uploading over 4000 photos during the last 18 months. The X2 product line (and some other models) that are affected by this shutdown have still been sold in 2015. First card we had, a 4GB SanDisk branded version, failed this summer, but luckily one member had an unused X2 Connect somewhere, so we were soon back posting more photos of our weekly activities and blurry accidental snapshots of our feet. But, to continue using this Wi-Fi SD card after the service shutdown, we needed a replacement solution for both getting the photos from the card and sending them into our Flickr photo albums – and maybe making some improvements too.

We had just received a bunch of Raspberry Pi 3 boards and tried to figure out what we could do with them, and because model 3 had Wi-Fi capability, connecting to Eye-Fi card could be done using eyefiserver2 project. For Flickr upload, I chose using Flickraw library for Ruby, which seemed to be a well-maintained project, so that possible future changes in Flickr API should not be a problem.

First, eyefiserver2 process is started on startup, this gets the photos from the card into RasPi, then every 5 minutes a Ruby program is run, which uploads new photos and marks them published.

The project (or step by step tutorial) can be found in Github:
https://github.com/HelsinkiHacklab/eyefi_flickr_auto_upload

We previously had all our photos ordered in albums by their date. One thing I wanted to improve was to put photos taken between 0 am and 3 am in same album with photos taken on the previous day, which makes less time line discontinuation when viewing photos by start date of an event. The Ruby program also by default renames photo titles by their timestamps. See our Flickr page for results.

In our setup, the RasPi is connected to Internet using Ethernet, and only the Eye-Fi card’s internal network name and password are stored in known wireless networks. If the camera is used outside our Hackerspace, and there is an Ethernet port for the RasPi available (maybe shared from a computer), we should be able to keep publishing photos from ongoing events, happenings, fairs etc. as we usually do. This is different from Eye-Fi center we previously used, in which we configured the card to know new local Wi-Fi and its password. This task required someone (which is me) to have Eye-Fi Center program first installed, and was usually a dull and slow thing to do during ongoing event or buildup. Now we just have to remember to take the readily configured RasPi with us anywhere we go with the camera.

If you don’t have an Eye-Fi card and would like to build a similar auto-publish system, I can’t say if it’s a good idea to buy an aftermarket Eye-Fi card anymore. Configuring this setup requires user to obtain card specific information that might need Eye-Fi services to be available (you cannot login to or create a new Eye-Fi center account after Sep 16th). If you have the card, but don’t really know what to do with it after Sep 16th, go enable its internal wifi (direct mode network) and store the password and MAC address for possible later use while you still can. If I’ve understood correctly, also the current Eye-Fi product line does not offer Flickr publishing. ~~Try googling “hacking transcend wifi sd” for more ideas.~~ Check out FlashAir API guide https://flashair-developers.com/en/.

(2016-09-01) Yesterday Eye-Fi announced a new tool for older cards, which might help to get card Wifi and MAC information after Sep 16th, which are needed this for python server solution.