Category Archives: Hackerspace

Team FamiLAB has been hard at work planning, shopping, and prototyping their interactive game for the Maker Effect Foundation’s Makeathon 0.0. The event is a charity ‘makeathon’ much like a walkathon but with making, caffeine, and friendly competition. We’ve already raised the minimum to compete, but if you’d like to help support the foundation’s efforts in the maker community please donate to our team at: https://www.classy.org/team/240126 We made a video introducing the team, and posted our plan — granted, the plan was a thumb dancing to the Commander Keen theme. […]

For Mother’s Day this year I decided to design a mantel-piece gift for my mum with embedded electronics. With the right tools, going from design to finished product can be quick and fun!

Another year has come and gone, we are another year older and hopefully wiser. This past Saturday, FamiLAB held its annual meeting in our classroom, where we discussed the current state of the lab, its history, and we selected the new members of our board of directors. We replaced three members of our board at the meeting, and I would like to thank the departing board members, Mike King, Jamie Szafran, and Jackie Jeffrey, for their service to the lab. If and when you see them around the LAB, please […]

One of the benefits of having such a diverse and vibrant community as you can find at a decently sized Hackerspace like Familab is access to a wide variety of people with different skills and different levels of proficiency. I came into the lab enthusiastic to learn more about electronics and mechanics for prop design, and brought with me a background in VFX 3D Modelling which I have been applying to 3D Printed prop design that I could pass onto others… or so I thought… My first class today as […]

The local chapter for Gliding Stars is having a annual show May 2019. Using a Space Theme we needed an astronaut, Saturn, Moon, the sun, a satellite, and a rocket. Using foam board, the outlines were cut using a ¼ drill bit. Thanks to Mechalich, I was schooled once again on the Wood CNC machine.  This project had me ready to throw the CNC out the door! Side note, keep using machine regularly to retain skills. V Carve Settings: One problem I had was that it was not cutting into […]

It’s that time of year again! As the post-Thanksgiving food coma fades and we all realize that the holiday season is upon us, everyone turns to picking out the perfect holiday presents for friends, family, and white elephant gift exchanges. As you do, we’d love to remind you that if you shop at https://smile.amazon.com/ch/27-3490023 , Amazon donates a portion of eligible purchases to FamiLAB. It’s an easy way to help support our community this winter season (and especially on Cyber Monday)! It’s also almost #GivingTuesday , a global day of giving […]

Every since the movie ‘Honey I shrunk the Kids’ I’ve wanted a remote control lawnmower. Even more so during July in Florida when the temperature and humidity compete for the high point. I always thought about it but never moved on it until a friend gave me a half finished project before he moved out of state. I’m not sure what he was going to build but he kept all the suspension for from the Jazzy mobility scooter (that’s my best guess as to where these parts came from). Since […]

For this year’s Maker Faire Orlando, I decided to make a power wheels racer. It was an amazing adventure that anyone who can, should absolutely participate in! Keep scrolling to see a photo log of how it was made and photos from the event! If you have any questions about what was done or how it was done, feel free to ask in the comment section at the end of the post.

This year, the MIT Media Lab organized a global summit on community biotechnology.  It was a great opportunity to meet in person, some of the people from all over the planet that FamiLAB members have been interacting with online for years, and to catch up with some old friends who were crucial in getting our biolab up and running.   A post shared by MIT Media Lab (@mitmedialab) on Sep 25, 2017 at 3:07pm PDT The pre-conference activities included visits to the Novartis community lab, a tour of Artisan’s asylum, […]

Hurricane Irma is now posing an imminent threat to the state of Florida this weekend. It is very important that we remind you, FamiLAB is NOT a storm shelter location. As of Thursday, 09/07/2017 at 10:00PM EST, FamiLAB will go into lock down mode for the remainder of the storm. During this time, keycards will not work and power will be turned off to all non-essential equipment. Once the storm has passed, we will assess any damage and re-open hopefully soon after. I repeat, FamiLAB is NOT a registered storm shelter. […]