Attention all Oahu beer drinkers… we listened! No beer in da ear!

We know that Hawaii is the biggest beer drinking state per capita in the country. And we know nobody likes to pay $5 bucks for that green bottle, so why not learn how to make your own?

As our first Community Night, in coordination with award winning Front Yard Brews, we present:

Homebrew 101: Try make beer?

We’ve limited this event to the first 40 people.

If you would like to RSVP to this event, you’ll need to RSVP on Eventbrite.

Instructions to Oceanit:

Oceanit (http://www.oceanit.com/) has graciously provided their conference rooms for us to use for our very first meetup. They are located at 828 Fort Street in Downtown Honolulu. (Google Maps) Parking to Oceanit is on Queen St. If you’re coming down Bishop, take a right on Queen, and the entrance will be on your right after a wide crosswalk. (If you hit Harbor Court, you’ve gone too far). It’s $2 dollars for parking through Park & Pay on each floor.

I’m thirsty just writing this! Can’t wait to see you there!

Thank you everyone for showing up to Arduino Night II, I had a lot of fun! Pictures of the night are posted at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hicapacity :) I’m hoping since Tuesday night’s presentation that you have a better idea on how things work and how you may be able to make your own circuits. I have a few notes from the night that will help you along with future Arduino projects.

Last night we learned a lot, and hopefully you were able to retain all of that information. :) One thing you have to remember is that you need the correct resistor values while working on your project. Datasheets that come with your parts will usually include the necessary voltage and current requirements. If you have trouble, you can email us for help or bring the project to our next meet. The photoresistor or light dependent resistor (LDR) was slightly difficult to assemble at first but I’m glad everyone was able to complete that portion. Remember, the LDR (as with other resistors) are not polarized, so the direction the bars are facing does not matter. This only mattered when using the diodes, as the bar should be on the cathode(-) side. I mentioned briefly about “shift registers.” They’re tiny integrated circuits that allow you to expand a pin’s output. For example, a lot of shift registers include 8 outputs that only require one Arduino pin as input. Here is a video explaining the concept: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7xI-flj1Mw

Jason was having problems with his delay() function in the Arduino IDE while using Fedora. He was able to fix this by putting: #include <util/delay.h> at the beginning of the code and then using the _delay_ms(500); instead. This should resolve any issues with the delay on Fedora.

Once again, thank you for coming out and participating! Thanks to Ian and Oceanit for once again providing HI Capacity use of their facilities. I had a lot of fun and remember to keep looking here for more events in the future! If you’d like to see something presented, remember to check out our Google Moderator group! http://bit.ly/hicapacity-moderator Add an idea today! :) Stay tuned as we have Homebrew Night and Programming Night coming up in the next few weeks.

Email me if you have questions or corrections: matthew@hicapacity.org

We’re transforming dreamers into doers.

We’ve been meeting a lot of people in the community over the past few weeks. Whether it was at the Hawaii Geek Meet a few weeks ago, or our first/second electronic Arduino night, we often hear people asking what exactly is a Hackerspace? We know the name sounds extremely intimidating - shoot, it even intimidates us at times! We wanted to clear up the confusion on what exactly we are and what we’re trying to do on Oahu.

If you search on Google, a Hackerspace is often defined as

Hackerspaces are community-operated physical places, where people can meet and work on their projects. (from http://hackerspaces.org)

While you typically need some type of critical mass to get a physical space, for the past few months, we’ve been primarily focused on organizing the local communities. Initially, we focused on electronics, but we’ve quickly realized that there’s no reason to be so specialized. We’re branching out, reaching out to those passionate about fostering an environment that creates value, and forming “Community Nights”.

So what is a Community Night?

A Community Night is a meetup organized around a particular community group. So far, we’ve managed to find organizers for the following Community Nights (and we would <3 more):

• Electronic hacking with the Arduino
• Programming night
• Homebrew night
• Design night

We’re currently in the process of trying to form a Photography night, Craft night, and hopefully, a Cooking night. Why Community Nights? We want to help get those that are passionate about a topic in front of those that want to learn. We want to help reduce the friction!

At HI Capacity, we’re focusing on three things:

1. We're actively seeking a physical space to help create an environment that fosters making things.
2. We want to provide education to the community and raise the awareness of all these topics in the local community.
3. We want to be self-sustainable

If you’re passionate about a subject and would love to help organize a Community Night, we’re always looking for you.

Please get in touch with us at (maker [at] hicapacity [dot] org)!

We want to raise the bar and level of knowledge here in the islands. What better way than to teach and connect like-minded people who share the same passion?

Please follow us on this website, our Google Group, and Facebook page. If you’d rather help us figure out what the community wants to learn about, please participate in our Google Moderator series.

We’re at an exciting time… and we hope you’ll want to be a part of it, too!