Robot Week Wales Wrexham

It's been a busy couple of weeks and while we've not managed to get much further on the multitude of projects we seem to be working on, we have been involved in some exciting developments.

The first thing is being involved with setting up HackLlan, a new hackspace for Llangollen and North Wales. At the minute it's a small community with a small space, but after less than a week, numbers are already increasing, and just as importantly, so is the interest in the group.

We're also looking to get involved with Robot Week Wales which is a week-long celebration of robotics, based at Techniquest in Wrexham's Glyndwr University. 

And as part of the build-up to the Robot Week, we're looking to put on a show-and-tell session with other members of HackLlan, to show new potential members the kinds of things they can make at their local hackspace. This will be followed up with a more formal robot-building workshop, where attendees can make their own line-following robot.

So while all this is going on, our recent x-y plotter/cnc pick-n-place machine looks like it's going on hold. But we're determined to soldier on with our miniature instruments developement. The software is almost finished now (we've been working on it over recent weeks, while the internet connection here has been a bit intermittent) so we just need to get our guitars finished and tested and we're ready to launch a new website (details to be posted here nearer the time)

Llangollen canal

Having lived aboard a narrowboat, a few of us nerdy types already knew what a beautiful place the canal can be - especially at this time of year, as the autumn leaves paint everything a red-and-gold colour. After moving to Llangollen, we took a bike ride along the canal, to the Trevor Basin.

(this was the start of our bike ride in Llangollen)

British Waterways have made an excellent job of upgrading the tow-path along the full length of the canal, and riding it was fantastic (helped, of course, because it's all absolutely level and flat). It took about an hour to meander along - rarely travelling faster than the boats on the canal!

What was so impressive were the views - so, inspired by Barney at BuildBrighton, we've decided to have a go at making a time-lapse camera that can be mounted onto a bike. The idea being that the next time we go for a bike ride, we can create a video to show everyone else what they are missing! We might even add in some GPS position recording, so that the cue points in the video can be tied in with an automatically updating Google map. But for now, we'll stick with making a camera that takes pictures every few seconds, and doesn't freak out when we ride over a few bumps (the towpath is lovely and smooth, but sometimes you have to go "off road" to cycle around obstacles such as dog walkers, moored boats, horses and woodland detritus).

Nerd Club has a new home

There's little to report on the maker front this week;
We've been pretty well tied up with firstly moving, and secondly, finding a new workshop. It's been an arduous few days but finally things are looking a bit more positive.

This is mainly because we've secured a unit (well, ok, a cupboard) in the Llangollen Malthouse. So now we've somewhere to get making again, we're hoping to run a few workshops and build up a community to support HackLlan - the new hackspace for North Wales

Nerd Club is moving

After three fantastic years down here in Brighton, we're on the move.

Hopefully it'll only be a temporary move, but with work and family commitments, we're having to decamp for a while and move up to North Wales.

It's not all doom and gloom of course!

First up, we're looking to start a hackspace/maker group up in the mountains. As members and regular visitors to BuildBrighton, we'd love to see something similar, albeit on a slightly smaller scale (BuildBrighton have just taken over a large part of the Rodhus Art Studio and arranged the 2011 Brighton Mini MakerFaire thanks to their increasing subscriber base and growing community - it'll take us quite a while to get to that level!)

And, of course, once the move is over and we've settled into our new space (wherever that may be) we're hoping to get making, blogging and video-ing all over again. With a new bunch of nerds and geeks. 

So while it may be a bit quiet on the blog for a while, it's not an indication that nothing is going on - there'll be plenty of news, when we're back up-and-nerding in a few short days...