24 mar

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HAL9k; now with awesome electrical and network installation

Af

The local hacker space here in Aalborg (HAL9k) has moved from Rapsgade 1 to a permanent location at Sofiendalsvej 80. For a number of weeks we he been moving boxes of all our stuff, painting walls and other tasks related to the move. One of the things that I was involved in was the electricity installation and the computer network.

We have been so lucky to inherit a large number of metal and plastic cable trays including a number of Ethernet jacks and power outlets reducing the budget for establishing a new infrastructure at the new place.

After a lot of work, 50 m metal, 20 m plastic cable tray and 1,2 km Ethernet cable later we now have 74 ethernet jacks connected to our distribution frame with our two 48 port gigabit Dell switches connected to an OpenBSD firewall in VMware on our Dell R710 server, routing IPv4 and IPv6 (through a SIXXS tunnel). Thank you to Xena for the switches and the server.

The wireless network is handled by a 802.11a/b/g access point. The access point and the directional antennas are actually meant for outdoor usage, so we mounted it on an IKEA table leg to give it a touch of the rustic outdoor life on a large pole…
If you are curious about the details of the network setup check out the hal9k wiki here.

Besides the network installation we have also installed a new distribution board and a lot of power outlets. We have a dedicated power meter for the server room besides the three other power meters (which according to our plan will be monitored by our LIAB) and relays for the groups used in the workshops making integration with the physical access control system and emergency buttons easily done.

 

IMG_3762 IMG_4140 IMG_4145 IMG_4155 IMG_4156 IMG_4159 IMG_4171 IMG_4174 IMG_4180

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gemt under: Extern, HAL9k

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24 jan

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Facebook Status Update

Af

For dem der ikke har opdaget det endnu, så er vi ved at flytte. Hal9k har fået lokaler på Sofiendalsvej 80, som er ved at blive sat i stand og flyttet ind i. Derfor skal man nok ikke forvente de almindelige aktiviter kører som normalt, men at flytning og istandsættelser er på dagsordnen.

via Hal9k http://www.facebook.com/pages/p/177100675635789

Gemt under: Facebook

30 okt

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POS printers and Python

Af

I had this old POS (Point Of Sale) receipt printer laying around for some time and thought it could be fun to play a bit with it. Printing plain text is simply done by sending it as characters via a serial connection. Cutting the paper is some ESC code which i found in a manual online. Printing images was a bit more tricky, since it is requires some specific codes, depending on how the dots in a vertical bar, equal to the height of a character, must be composed. I wrote a small Python module integrating the ability to print images, text etc.  since I could not find anything online simliar to what i wanted.

At the local hacker space (HAL9k) we have now received a large box full of used receipt printers, VFDs etc. and some of the members have asked for the module for printing images so I have uploaded pyPOSprinter to GitHub. It makes use of pySerial for communicating with the printer and Python Image Library for reading image files. The included example also shows how to use pyQRNative to print QR-codes (bar codes are soo last centory :-)  ).

from pyqrnative import PyQRNative
qr = PyQRNative.QRCode(5, PyQRNative.QRErrorCorrectLevel.Q)
qr.addData(“http://www.sman.dk”)
qr.make()
im = qr.makeImage()
ims = im.resize((525,525))
from POSprinter import POSprinter
printer = POSprinter.POSprinter()
printer.write(“Hello Puffy\n”, align=”center”)
printer.lineFeed(2)
printer.printImgFromFile(“puffy.gif”, resolution=”low”, scale=1.0)
printer.write(“Friske agurker paa glas”, rcolStr=”200 DKK”)
printer.lineFeed(2)
printer.printImgFromPILObject(ims, scale=0.5)
printer.lineFeedCut()

27 aug

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Nyt værksteds-bord og -tavle.

Af

I uge 20, havde vi en fantastik arbejdsweekend. På dagsordenen var der to primære mål. Nye værkstedsborde, og en værktøjstavle til alt vores lækre værktøj.

Og som altid kan vi godt lide en god udfordring, derfor besluttede vis os for at tage kampen op, og lave bordene udelukkende med tapsamlinger og dyvler. Ingen af os havde nogen erfaring, men vi er selv blevet ret tilfredse med resultatet.