Live in Ballarat and interested in learning about 3D Printing or Laser Cutting (wood/acrylic)? We run regular introductory workshops on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of every month. All skill levels welcome, tickets essential. More info:
ballarathackerspace.tidyhq.com/public/sched...
This was a genuinely massive engineering task by the member involved, who had to redesign new handlebar linkages, lower control arms, cross linkages, and more, relocating the entire steering system while keeping all the standard angles/ratios/etc. 3D printed for testing, soon to be CNC aluminium.
Continuing our work on improving the Energy Breakthrough (eb.org.au) vehicles for our local primary school, we created an entirely new custom steering system that moves all steering components and linkages underneath the chassis, instead of tangled up in the rider's legs/hands area in the stock kit.
Reminder: AI Tooling workshop is on this Wednesday 6.30pm. This is for experienced AI developers/users to discuss tooling, workflows, use cases, etc. Please get a ticket - Ballarat Hackerspace members can get a free one:
ballarathackerspace.tidyhq.com/public/sched...
Hackerspace decorated for Christmas
Ballarat Hackerspace will be closed to casual members and visitors from December 17th to January 6th. Full-time members can continue to access the space themselves as desired.
Come in for our final open session of the year on Tuesday December 16th from 2pm-9pm!
Reminder: AI Tools workshop is on tonight 6.30pm. Please get a ticket - Ballarat Hackerspace members can get a free one: thq.fyi/se/eb7dbfcc4...
Ballarat Hackerspace stall at Springfest 2025
Ballarat Springfest 2025 is over, and it went better than we ever could have expected. Despite bucketing rain and wind threatening to turn gazebos into kites, we got through it intact and had an incredible turnout. Thanks for visiting if you did, and don't forget to drop into the space and say hi.
Camera and LCD display acting as the eyes and face for our robotic vacuum cleaner
Working on giving our robot workshop-vacuum a head with some personality... as well as the ability to see. Rough draft for now, rushing prep for Ballarat Springfest, but should be operational and driving around at our stall.
Teaser for a big LED project in the works for Ballarat Springfest, where we have a stall this year showing off some of our creations. This one is 2.2m high and almost 3m wide and will certainly grab some attention.
Nyancat counter reset to 0 after a whole building power outage
Disaster! It wasn't us this time though.
#nyancat #poweroutage
Custom steel chassis that lets you put modern monitors in old arcade cabinets
Modern monitor and gaming PC inside an old Sega OutRun cabinet
Spent the last few weekends fabricating this steel bracket that connects to the factory CRT points in the Sega OutRun cabinet to mount modern monitors. The 3D printed VESA adapter lets you put any modern monitor in, and keeping the area behind empty of stands leaves plenty of space for the PC.
We now have OutRun running on our gaming-PC-powered OutRun cabinet in the most roundabout way possible… Thanks to sk1ds.itch.io/outrun-clone
Still lots of bits and pieces to fix/replace but it’s playable and loads of fun.
Original Sega OutRun gear stick mechanism
Our modified shifter mechanism using 2 switches and a Pro Micro
Over the last few days we converted the original high/low single-switch toggle shifter to a 2-switch sequential shifter so it works in modern racing games. Getting the mechanism working was a much bigger job than expected, but we finally got the right springs and switch-angles and everything sorted.
Assetto Corsa racing simulator game playing on an original Sega OutRun arcade cabinet
Still a lot to do, but it "works" and we drove our first laps today. Assetto Corsa running in a 1986 Sega Outrun arcade cabinet. Original steering and pedals are now working and calibrated in Steam via an Arduino Pro Micro. Next we'll modify the shifter to work as a sequential gearbox.
1980s Outrun arcade cabinet modified to have a gaming PC and showing Steam on the screen.
Steam and Assetto Corsa on an original Outrun arcade cabinet, using the original cabinet inputs? Don’t mind if I do…
Still lots to fix and tidy up but we officially have the gaming PC installed inside the cabinet and all the original pedals/steering inputs working in Steam.
Yes that is a giant sushi fish on top of our Christmas tree
Proud of our Blinken Lights Christmas tree this year!
Our group project #Picocade is still moving ahead. We now have an info overlay working and the ability to do a clean shutdown by holding the menu button. We can also adjust the brightness #picocade #pico8 #retrogaming
Can for scale 😂
Progress on the Pico-8 arcade cabinet. Everything “works” and now it’s just about tidying up the documentation and the software installation process to make it more user friendly, and adding all the vinyl decals.
#pico8 #ballarat #hackerspace #ballarathackerspace
PICO-8 arcade cabinet we've been working on at Ballarat Hackerspace. Far from a "Raspberry pi emulator and computer monitor" setup, this has a 1:1 native LED display suited to the PICO-8 resolution, custom graphics daemon to run PICO-8 natively and feed the LEDs, and a very slick laser cut cabinet.
