Hey everyone!

We’re making big waves at hack.rva lately. I want to share with you the changes you can expect to see in the future.

1) New space! We’re moving (again) to a much larger industrial space in Scott’s Addition, about ½ mile from the current space. It’s much more suited to the type of work that we actually do, and it’s about 2.5x as large. We’ll be in touch with more details, but here are some teaser pictures of the new space.

2) We’re moving to auto-billing. We know that it is hard to remember to log on and manually pay your dues each month, and we haven’t been the best about keeping you in the know about how much you owe. Auto-billing will solve those issues, and allow us to keep our cash flow more consistent to make sure that we can provide you with the amenities you need to make the space work best for you.

3) More classes! We’ve heard it for a long time, and now we’re finally making it happen. We’re revamping our system for teaching classes. We’re always going to keep classes in the queue. As usual, members get discounted rates for the classes we teach. In addition, we want YOU to teach classes on the things you’re passionate about. In exchange for your time and hard work, we are going to apply a portion of the revenue from any class you teach directly to your membership dues. If you’re a prolific teacher, you may never have to pay dues again. E-mail your ideas for classes you want to teach to Erica Absetz at absetzel@gmail.com.

We’re committed to learning and growing with you as a continued supporter. Looking forward to a growth filled future. Hope you’re ready for it!

-Luke Libraro and Skylar Roebuck

An Introduction to Soldering class will be offered on Saturday February 4, 2012 from 1:30 – 3:30.  The class will be taught by Luke Libraro and held at Hack.rva. Soldering kits will be supplied and participants will be able to take the kit home with them after the class.  After practicing your soldering techniques on the special area of the board, which is included in the kit, you’ll be ready to assemble a European style siren with flashing LED’s.  Each kit will also include wire cutters, solder, and a soldering iron.  The class will cost $20 for non-members and $15 for members.

Sign up here.

The rebooted HackRVA Noise Night will have its second  meeting tomorrow night at the HackRVA space at 7:30.  Bring your noise hardware and software projects both complete and in-progress for sharing, conversation, and loud action.

Several month’s ago,

hack.rva held a weekly, month long, class on the drawdio. This class was taught to three middle school students at Sabot School in Stony Point. During the class, basics of soldering and electrical circuits were taught while also slowly assembling the drawdio circuit. At the end of the class, the students made a movie teaching what they learned and showing off a little bit. These wonderful kids are proof that nobody should be scared of electronics–a healthy dose of science is good for ya!

At last night’s weekly hack.rva meeting things were progressing as usual. There were some folks in the workroom, soldering irons in hand putting the final touches on their SpokePOV kits in preparation for the class coming up. Other people were in the conference room checking out some new hardware a member brought in. Out of nowhere the call came. “Hey everyone? You might wanna come in here. There’s something cool about to happen.” At a place like the hackspace where something cool is always happening this sort of announcement gets a lot of raised eyebrows. Interests piqued, all rooms cleared out to the ante room. There stood a new face and lots of RedBull.

The newcomer introduced himself as a representative of RedBull who wanted to formally invite hackrva to participate in the RedBull Creation contest. He told us about RedBull working with the hacker / maker community and gave us some, not much detail on the background of the contest. Having delivered his message he had one more thing to give us; a gift. He alluded to the gift being a mystery challenge unto itself.

Armed with this knowledge we eagerly dug into the gift; a small rectangular box wrapped in heavy paper similar to a grocery bag. Inside we found an ornate laser cut wooden box. The top interlocked with the sides like square key teeth in a lock. There was an inscription on top. A grand welcome to a challenge of technical prowess, problem solving, sleuthiness,  as well as trivial knowledge.

We removed the contents of the box and after some soldering, connecting it to a TV,  a computers USB port, and even an original Nintendo Entertainment System controller the gift had us firmly within it’s geeky little grasp.

What secrets did the box hold? What mysteries would we defeat? Come to the next hack.rva weekly meeting to find out. You’ll be amazed.

I’d say, “Pimp your bike” but it should be “Geek your bike.”

Spoke POV  (Persistance Of Vision) is a device to attach to a bike wheel to display graphics as the wheel spins. It has a row of LED’s running parallel to the spokes, and they are pulsed in sync with the rotation of the wheel to create graphics. You define the graphics. People have made Pacman chasing a ghost, and lots of cool stuff. See it in action here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-kQdN4EoHQ

Hack.rva will have a class where you will build a Spoke POV for your bike. We will help with the assembly and soldering. The price includes the kit. There are three levels. Details can be found here:

http://hackrvaspokepov.eventbrite.com/

Join us and build your own Spoke POV!

Hack.rva has moved to 1906 North Hamilton street, Suite E. We are in the back left corner of the courtyard. We have an open meeting every Thursday night from around 7:30 to 10PM. There is no formal meeting. It is just a bunch of people building, destroying, coding, talking about technology, computers, programming, or anything that comes to mind. Sometimes people bring their latest cool project, like a Dirod electrostatic generator, or a Spoke POV. People bring junk they don’t want, and other people grab the junk for a project. Come by and hang out any Thursday night.

Everybody needs some class, and hackers are no exception. That’s why we’re calling upon you, blogreading community, to contrive and develop and teach any and all that tickles your inspiration.

Be it knitting, quilting, cooking or making of any sort, a class can be made of it. We’d be interested in seeing new and interesting API’s highlighted. Come and shed light on any developments that have enlightened or inspired you recently. These can occur in an official capacity, with tickets sold and red carpets rolled out, or they can be in the form of five to fifteen minute lighting talks or developer sprints.

Please visit our wiki, become a wiki contributor, and drop a line in the classes section. Or, join our mailing list and provide the information there. As a wiki mod, I’ll be happy to post it to the wiki for any and all to see.