Visiting Warsaw Hackerspace

I was warned on IRC that the activity would be rather low in the Warsaw Hackerspace Due to being Easter. So when I arrived in Warsaw I just monitored their member tracking site from time to time until it showed some people being present.

The entry to the space was a bit hard to find, because it's in the basement. But they later told me, that they will move their space to a different location next month anyway.

Entry to the Warsaw Hackerspace

Entry to the Warsaw Hackerspace

On arrival they showed me around their hackerspace. Of course they have a laser-cutter [1] and some 3D printers.

Laser cutter and 3D printers

Laser cutter and 3D printers

I was told, that the Warsaw Hackerspace has around 100 members consisting of a good mix of computer science, electronic engineering, mechanical engineering and other people.

What really impressed me was the equipment in their work shop! They have amongst other stuff a CNC mill and lathe, which they control using linuxcnc.

CNC mill

CNC mill

They also have equipment to produce their own PCBs, using a cheap UV nail curing lamp.

PCB manufactoring equipment

PCB manufactoring equipment

Also impressive was their retro computing collection! Amongst other devices they own a VT520 terminal which they use to print the messages posted on IRC.

VT520 terminal

VT520 terminal used to print IRC messages

When I asked for a beverage, they showed me there vending machine, which is broken and can't accept coins anymore. But stand back, they hacked it to hook up with their internal payment system! It's apparently as simple as hooking up a Raspberry Pi to the Multidrop bus to control the machine.

Hacked vending machine

Hacked vending machine

Later in the evening I had an awesome debugging session with one of their members who tried to intercept C library calls (This was part of an university assignment). Since I never looked into how dynamic linking works in Linux, this was very interesting for me! Maybe I'll write a separate blog post about that if I find time to dig a bit deeper into the topic.

I really enjoyed the time I spent with this awesome and very active hackerspace! My next stop will be Hackerspace Kraków!

[1]We should really get a laser-cutter for coredump. This will be the first thing I will do when I return!

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