I took a vacation up to Folsom California for my birthday. My wife thoughtfully planned in a trip to The Folsom Powerhouse.

Abstract
The Folsom Powerhouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (1981) as being significant in the areas of engineering and industry on the national level. It has been said that it represented a momentous advance in the science of generating and transmitting electricity. In 1895 the facility brought high-voltage alternating current over long distance transmission lines for the first time. It is also a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark (1975), a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark (1976) and is designated as California Registered Historical Landmark No. 633 (1958).

You could really see how it was made and how it works… I suppose it was back before they everything in a metal box.

Control panel

It was pretty neat to see, and a great Makation!

I took a few photos

Have suggestions for other Makations? Send them to “meetings at make sf dot org” or click the link above.

There is so much going that I don’t want anything to get bumped down the page.

Make:SF Meetings in October:

10/6 at TechLiminal… we are joining them for Electroween stop by every Tuesday night to continue work on your projects.

10/13 at reMake Lounge… this months meet up.

BONUS

10/10 at reMake Lounge Soft Circuitry workshop. Participation requires signup, more details on their calendar

Soft circuitry is a great way to take your crafting to another level! Whether you’re coming at it as a craftster who wants to add a little extra spark to their creations, or as someone who’s handy with a soldering iron and circuitry, but wants to learn more about wearable crafts, this workshop is for you.

We take simple circuits and LEDS, and replace the solder and iron with conductive thread. Using simple hand-stitches, you’ll learn how to integrate LEDs into your sewing projects. The final results are lightweight, flexible, washable and wearable. The techniques you learn here will open up your crafting to a world of possibility.

This workshop will cover the very basics of using conductive thread, and creating a simple circuit between a battery and an LED. $20 includes all materials and refreshments. Registration Required. (Free parking and right next to BART/Muni!)

TechShop seem too far away? Are you strictly “East Bay?” Two Make meetings in a month is just not enough?

Well, now there is a Make:SF location for you!

We will be meeting the 1st Tuesday of the month at
Tech Liminal
268 14th Street
Oakland, CA 94612

(As always upcoming meetings are posted in the upper right of the Make:SF home page.)
Too soon for you? (It is tomorrow…) Well this is just a one hour kick off, we’ll have more meetings the 1st Tuesday of the month (and workshops too!) at this location in the future.

See you there!

-Make:SF

reMake Lounge Opening Party August 27th

reMake Lounge, our new downtown hosts are having a Launch Party… See you there!

Thanks to the generosity of reMake Lounge we now have an easy to access place to have our meetings!

The next meeting will be:

6:30 PM on August 18th
reMake Lounge
Crocker Galleria
50 Post St. Ground level Suite 9

(Towards the end, next door to SoGreen Frozen Yogurt)

After this meeting we’re back on the First Tuesday schedule, so the next one is Sept 8th. We’re on the reMake Calendar which you can subscribe to.

My friend Federico turned me on to these great videos that show how things work by taking them apart and building working models of them.

They are a bit dated, and very British… but what Maker could resist Tim Hunkin’s The Secret Lives of Machines? They are made available via the Exploratorium web site.

The thumbnails are of the intro cartoon, but they are live action videos.

Here is the first episode:
The Secret Lives of Machines – The Vacuum Cleaner

Enjoy!

The Tech Shop meetings are still on…

Same place, new time:
11:00AM to 1:00PM – still the first Sunday of the month (may shift due to MakerFaire, Superbowls and other such conflicts.)

We had a great run with Instructables for which we are eternally grateful… however they had to move out of their terrific space and in to a smaller one.

Anyone have a conference room or studio space they can spot the group?

Unfortunately we’ll have to postpone the meetings until we have a space.

AND membership is now $10 per 6 months (click meetings on the right to sign up) and meetings are FREE!!! Now our loyal attendees can save $30 a year, and the 400+ other members will either participate more frequently or help sponsor the group.

Thanks!

A Wordpress 2.8.1 upgrade-gone-bad brought the site down for a few days, but I was able to revert to a working backup and everything seems to be back in order now.

I just upgraded the site to 2.8.1 manually (with less surprising results). If you notice any problems with the site under WP 2.8, please let me know!

We had a great meeting on Sunday. We gave away 5 pair of tickets to Maker Faire and had a mellow conversational meeting. More discussion of future projects and trends in prototyping tools and education than showing projects. Mentioned links are on the Wiki.

Here are a couple of photos

More details in the Make:SF Wiki

These just launched in New York April 30th (Sorry could not find a decent photo)

“littleBits is an opensource library of discrete electronic components pre-assembled in tiny circuit boards. Just as Legos allow you to create complex structures with very little engineering knowledge, littleBits are simple, intuitive, space-sensitive blocks that make prototyping with sophisticated electronics a matter of snapping small magnets together. With a growing number of available modules, littleBits aims to move electronics from late stages of the design process to its earliest ones, and from the hands of experts, to those of artists, makers and designers.”

More info on the littleBits web site.

The Smart Design web site.

And Eyebeam’s web site.