Something for the holidays? April 2016

After quite an epic hiatus, Maker School returns with some workshops for the holidays!

11-15th April 2016
10am-12:30pm at The Digital Greenhouse, St Peter Port
£25 per session.  Ages 9+  Spaces limited
Contact: marcel.lenormand@gmail.com

Monday Morning Tear-Down Disassemble.  Destroy.  Dismantle.  Discover! Taking things apart is a GREAT way to learn what goes on in the devices we use every day.  In a guided and thoughtful way we’ll be breaking the seal on a range of gear and harvesting the parts for future use. Expect motors, LEDs, circuit boards and more.  (no mains electricity!)
Wednesday:  Scuttle Robot Build Building Marcel’s cool vibrating robots from scratch.  We’ll be using motors that were harvested on Monday plus batteries and nailbrushes then soldering and hot gluing them into action! Alert: This will be fun.
Thursday: LEGO Challenge Come and play with a ton of LEGO and be challenged to do the impossible!  Expect head-scratching, brick-smashing frustration and jubilant success!
Friday: Scuttle Robot Wars™ Wild robotic action and battles.  If you came to the build session on Wednesday; GREAT!  If not, no problem.  We’ll put them together for you today and everyone will create their own combat body-shell. Note: take home your Scuttle Robot™

5 Weeks. Starting from…

Maker School will be running for 5 weeks only this term - starting Mon 8 Sept.  There may be an option to do a couple or weeks at the end of November also.

If you're new to Maker School, please register and indicate which day works for you.  Spaces are allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

Maker School is Back!

Despite the radio silence over a very busy summer, and despite the breakdown of our website hosting, Maker School is back for the Autumn Term!  Hoorah!!

We'll be meeting on Mondays, Tuesday and Wednesdays at Le Friquet Garden Centre.  4-5:30pm. Commencing Mon 8 Sep.

Watch this space for more information.

To reserve a place, please email: marcel@makerschool.net

Maker School @ The Big Geekend

STOP PRESS

You heard it here first folks… Maker School is running two afternoon workshops at Guernsey Museums' BIG GEEKEND.

From 12-4pm on Saturday 31 May and Sunday 1 June, we'll be in the Discovery Room at Candie Museum, making… JunkBots™

Motors, batteries and junk — what will you make them do?

Into the Electronics

Moving along nicely

Our latest project is a "Motion Sensing Night Light" - see below.

The design process involves lots of stages.  Without each step we run the risk of ploughing headlong into a major error that means starting again.  You know; "Measure twice: cut once!"

So far we've drawn schematic diagrams of our intended circuit, built a mockup and translated that into a circuit design that works on a type of circuit board called 'stripboard' — now we're cutting boards and cutting tracks ready for the components.

The motion sensing night light is a dandy little device that can live in a bedroom, hallway or indeed any place where you're likely to be moving around in otherwise darkness.

It uses a PIR sensor — Passive Infrared — to detect temperature changes in a room.  This low level heat (infrared light) is emitted from our bodies so when we move about it detects our movement.

A breakdown of a PIR sensor showing how the multifaceted lens creates lots of moving spots of light on the sensor.
Image: Wikipedia

Once triggered, a titchy computer called a microcontroller, will fade up some LED lights and then slowly fade them down again when no movement is sensed.  We'll be programming these microcontrollers to do exactly what we want in the weeks to come.

It certainly beats having to put the room lights on when you get up in the middle of the night!

UPDATE 20.Mar.14  We have a new option — Wednesdays!  Mondays and Tuesdays are fully booked.  Sign up to the waiting list and we will contact you on a first-come-first-served basis.