Author Archives: tfine

HacDC is officially a public charity under the 501(c)(3) provision of the tax code!

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HacDC has now received notification of its approval for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Hence, all donations to the organization given after March 25, 2008 can be considered charitable gifts and are tax-deductible as allowed by law. And, in celebration and if you appreciate HacDC’s workspace and programs, now would be an excellent time to donate!

HacDC’s successful 501(c)(3) application is another validation of the claim that the amateur engineering workshops in this “new wave” of hackerspaces offer educational and societal benefits worthy of their recognition as public charities. HacDC was one of the earliest of these “new wave” hackerspaces to be established, and recently KQED in California did an excellent profile of our sister hackerspace Noisebridge in San Francisco. It is an outstanding introduction to what Noisebridge, HacDC, and other hackerspaces are all about.


QUEST on KQED Public Media.

HacDC Spaceblimp Launch Planned for Saturday (Call 202-559-1100 To Follow Using Twilio)

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Once again, HacDC is planning to launch a near-space balloon this weekend (on Saturday if conditions permit) to capture pictures of the Earth’s horizon. To learn about the blimp’s behavior and to assist in the recovery, the payload sends packets of sensor data through the Automatic Packet Reporting System, a quite interesting amateur-radio-based system to distribute real-time information through a repeater network. This time, however, we are parsing this data to send it through a number of useful communication channels.

One of these includes a voice phone number, 202-559-1100, powered by Twilio’s phone application API. By calling this number during the day, people will have the opportunity to listen to the current data about the blimp’s status and location and to receive SMS messages with the same information, including direct links to Google Maps. The flight team will also have the option of recording updates into the phone menu system. And there will be a Twitter feed with the data at @hacdcspaceblimp.

Unfortunately, however, the recovery team is capped according to the “Hackerspaces in Space” contest rules, so we do have to warn against any enterprising people from taking this information and tracking the payload down themselves. However, if you are interested in being involved, there may be opportunities to observe the launch and recovery this weekend.

We also will update this blog with details on the final launch time!

XMPP Beyond Chat (Presentation by Arc Riley)

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HacDC is developing an XMPP stack to coordinate networked messages to and from microcontrollers over WiFi, serial, and radio. It will ideally enable a near plug-and-play way for people to network their microcontroller projects and display them at HacDC. XMPP is “an open, XML-based protocol originally aimed at near-real-time, extensible instant messaging (IM) and presence information (e.g., buddy lists), but now expanded into the broader realm of message-oriented middleware.” It serves as the backbone of Google Talk, for example. One of the first projects to be linked to our framework will be an ambient lighting system for the space.

On Thursday, August 12 at 7:00PM, as a part of the NARG meeting, Arc Riley will present on the some of the XMPP aspects of this endeavor and will discuss PubSub, Data Forms, and Ad-Hoc Commands. Any individuals interested in these interesting aspects of XMPP beyond chat are encouraged to attend, and, like all HacDC activities, the event is free and open to the public.

At the end of the presentation, we may do some code sprinting and ensure that those attending have access to the distributed code repository.