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Group Projects

Projects that involve many members of the Makerspace community.

Active projects

Past projects

Little Free Library

Built for Word on the Street, our members sourced mostly recycled material to build this Little Free Library near the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in 2016. It was a quick, fun built in three parts: a planning night, a build day, and an install day.

Rocket Pen

We built the Rocket Pen for a No Lathe Pen Challenge on YouTube. We deliberately chose this project to incorporate a bunch of different areas of making (electronics, laser cutting, sculpting, woodworking). Video here.

Little Inventors

NSERC funded a Little Inventors initiative, where they got kids across the country to draw a picture and description of their inventions. They then chose the top inventions and paired the kids up with makers local to them. We were paired with Mitchell, who had an idea for an umbrella that filtered rainwater into a bottle for drinking. Video here.

Nocturne 2016 Pavlov Lives

We were invited by Ryan Zwicker to participate in building his Nocturne project: a 10 foot tall robot sitting on a speaker wall with four smaller robot substations that would control his animations and facial expressions and capacitive touch keyboards that would control sound effects and music. We assembled most of the electronics (Raspis, Arduinos and huge DotStar panels) and etched the control panel acrylic with our laser cutter. Ryan and the rest of the team did the actual planning, building, mechanical animations (the robot kicked it's feet and wiggled it's shoulders), setup and teardown!

Nocturne 2014 Interactive Playground

Nocturne is an annual art festival that takes place on the streets of Halifax every Fall. Halifax Makerspace's project for 2014 was a playground of light and sound for adults, including a lighted seesaw and adult-sized rocking horse. An inclinometer measured the angle of the horse. The lights were adjusted based on the angle and a lighted speaker played sounds of a trot/canter/gallop based on how quickly the horse was rocking.

Nocturne 2013 Infinity Mirror

Halifax Makerspace's project for 2013 was an infinity mirror. The lights changed color if you tweeted the name of a color to our twitter account.

Infinity table - Nocturne 2013

More info coming soon!

Projects by Individuals

Here's some of what our Makers are working on:


Adam Smith

Adam is an apprentice electrician, and is learning electronics and programming on the side. Areas of focus: Household wiring, AC theory, Arduino, PHP/MySQL

Active Projects

Hockey Goal Light

Intended to be a DIY version of the commercially available Budweiser Red Light, but better. Plays sound and activates red light when a goal is scored, in real time with live NHL games. Ability to be expanded to other leagues or sports. this is being built as a gift. More

Mock traffic light

Desktop sized mock traffic light controlled with an Arduino Mega 2560. Based on demand using sensors in the 'road' instead of a fixed timing. More

Past Projects

Spark gap tesla coil

Adam built a spark gap tesla coil while in electrical trade school in 2012. More

DC high speed motor

Also created back in trade school. Has 2 interchangeable vertical armature, one with 2 poles and the other with 3. Top speed about 3500rpm. More

Maybe someday

RGB LED controller

Amtel/Arduino powered microcontroller to control RGB LED strip lights. Controlled using IR remote, maybe serial and web as well. Fairly simple to do, just need the motivation.

Singing Tesla Coil

Maybe some day in the distant future


Shawn Wilson

Shawn is a programmer by trade. His interests vastly exceed the capacity of both his calendar and wallet.

Active Projects

Photoshop Eyedropper Tool

A meatspace version of the popular Adobe tool. Sensor at the tip, lights up the “glass”, 8 segment display for the color hex code on the back. It's gone through several failed versions so far. The cheap photoresistor/RGB LED combo sensed color okay with reflective surfaces, but was crap for matte. I have higher hopes for the Flora color sensor from Adafruit. The RGB LEDs that will light up the “glass” part of the Eyedropper were too difficult to fit in the casing (made of MDF, acetate and hardboard), so I'm hoping the strips of individually addressable leds will fare better, and allow some rudimentary animation. Several false starts with this project. I will use a Nano instead of the Uno, and I'm trying to figure out a novelty light mode, which would require wall power, so it might make sense to include a recharging circuit and LiPo instead of the 9V battery I originally planned.

Laser Harp

Not sure what its final form will be, but right now, trying to use a stepper-controlled mirror to make 8 beams. Hoping to make it trigger servos to rap on wine glasses and/or have a midi jack. Stepper might need to be replaced with galvo.

Vacuum Former

Not sure whether to keep it simple, using an oven to heat the plastic in the frame, or to make it more complicated, with a heater built-in to the unit. I recently stopped using my toaster oven, so I may canabalize it to go with the latter. I built a very small, simple former, which works well, and the frames fit in my toaster oven, so I may delay building the full-size version.

Foamy plane

Delving into foam RC planes, courtesy of the Makerspace.

Past Projects

TARDIS Door

Made my workshop door into a TARDIS, with light-up windows, lantern and “Police Public Call Box” sign. Plays the Dr. Who theme and lights the lantern when the door closes. Some day I'll get around to documenting it.

Rotating 3-Marshmallow Roasting Stick

Incline-Activated Fireball Shooter

http://www.instructables.com/id/Incline-activated-Fireball-Shooter/

Kind of dangerous, but made this for a friend.

Mobile Electronics Workshop

Foldable, mobile electronics storage and bench. I've been reluctant to work at the Makerspace in case I found I needed a part from home. This mobile shop should let me keep everything together, with enough room to grow for a while. Folded, it measures about 20“ x 20” x 48“. Open, it has 34 “bays” for custom 4” x 4“ x 18” swappable cardboard trays, plus an area for common tools/soldering station/bench supply. I added a couple casters to this, but they broke on its maiden voyage. Also, though I designed it to fit in my van vertically, I must have forgot to carry a one somewhere, because I was off by a couple inches. I had to lay it on its back. Much less mobile than I'd hoped. Still works great as stationary shelves, and is mobile enough, but I might want to redesign it someday.

Mario Mushroom End Grain Cutting Board

A gift for my wife, Christmas 2014. My first cutting board, this was trickier than most end-grain boards, as they usually rely on gluing up strips of pixels. Because this didn't have a repeating pattern, each pixel needed to be glued individually. And because the glue dried too fast to do all 324 pixels, I had to work in 8 sections, then sand and plane each section into alignment. Huge PITA, but it turned out well. Used jotoba, walnut, padauk, pau amarello and birch. Finished with mineral oil and beeswax. I got this idea from somebody else on Instructables.

Pinball Playfield Rotisserie

A quick, cheap project that seems to have turned out well. Made of cheap lumber and a few plumbing pieces. This was for holding and manipulating the Makerspace's pinball playfield as we worked on it. Instructable: http://www.instructables.com/id/Pinball-Playfield-Rotisserie/.

Maybe Someday

Gingery metal lathe

CNC router

3D printer

Custom charging station for my family's devices

projects.1504027731.txt.gz · Last modified: 2017/08/29 17:28 by glassgiant