Soldering workshop
You have never been a friend of the soldering iron? This is your chance to move from zero to soldering like a professional.
- Through hole: We start from very basics, soldering copper wires. Then we will move to a more complex and fun project, making together a kit like the Game of life or Simon says.
- SMD: we will learn to solder and desolder modern chips packaged for SMD (Surface Mounted Devices), starting from a a breakout and then moving to a more complex implementation.
Soldering stations and all materials made available to all participants, contribute required only in case you to bring bring home your creation.
If you are interested in this workshop please drop an email to info+sw@syn2cat.lu (keep the + sign in the email address, it’s not a mistake)
Extend marble adder
Do you know anything about digital arithmetic? no? This is the opportunity to learn some basic principles !
The marble adder is a mechanical demonstrator of an 4 + 4 bit adder. Addition of digital numbers is at the base of each ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) which is part of each microprocessor. The current version shown in the video below has been built as monolithic, making difficult to transport and easy to damage. Here details of the project and of building.
We will together upgrade to a more modular version where:
- the machine will be split at convenient height to fit in common transporters
- easy to repair
- add an extension to be able to use 8 bit operands
- ready to implement a more complex operation like multiplication
If you are interested in this workshop please drop an email to info+ma@syn2cat.lu (keep the + sign in the email address, it’s not a mistake)
Microcontroller programming – Arduino IDE
In 2005 Massimo Banzi and David Cuartiellescreated created Arduino, an easy to use programmable device for interactive art design project, at the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy.
Arduino is programmed with the “Arduino IDE”. Nowadays the IDE has been extended to program a number of microcontrollers and IoT devices in the simplest possible way.
Skeptical ? Visit the “microcontroller programming” workshop !
- Arduino Uno – ATmega368: we will start with the classical sketch, the LED blinking, and then increase the complexity adding other LED, adding resistors to make a Digital to Analog converter, reading buttons status and using Digital Analog converter to read temperatures and other analogue data. No limits to the imagination !
- Raspberry Pico – RP2040: using the same development environment we will learn to drive 7 segments LED, to make a light controlled LED, to program a traffic light (always green if possible).
- ESP8266 – Again the same Arduino IDE but this time with WiFi available! No limits to your imagination: switch on/off an LED from your smartphone, log temperature of your room and read from your smartphone, …
If you are interested in this workshop please send an email to info+ide@syn2cat.lu (keep the + sign in the email address, it’s not a mistake)
Retrogaming
Who of you doesn’t know Donkey Kong? or Asteroids? Is possible to build one of this games? How?
- Raspberry PI: we start with an introduction of the Single Board Computer that changed the way of teaching computer science
- MAME: what is a Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator and how we can use to play arcade games?
- cabinet: if you like to work the wood this is the opportunity to build a real size cabinet for arcade games
- assemble: and at the end we assemble together all the parts and start playing !
If you are interested in this workshop please send an email to info+rg@syn2cat.lu (keep the + sign in the email address, it’s not a mistake)
Home Automation
Home Assistant, Tasmota, IoT, Sonoff, MQQT, Raspberry, ESP8266, … have you ever heard these acronyms ? Never? Well it’s time to come and start playing with Home Automation. Put your hands on the keyboards and start building your Home Automation System, that run over your server.
- how does an Home Automation work
- MQTT messages, device flashing, device configuration
- basic installation
- get some devices to work: button, light, window switch
If you are interested in this workshop please send an email to info+ha@syn2cat.lu (keep the + sign in the email address, it’s not a mistake