Happy New Year! Foulabers are organizing some fresh new events - come join us!
Macintosh Day Trivia Night - Wednesday January 24th @ 19:00 - 22:00
Macintosh Day is right around the corner. And not just any Macintosh day - 24th of this January marks a 40-year birthday of the system itself, the original Apple Macintosh!
Come join us for a special trivia night celebrating the device’s history, hosted by none other than our very own kida - with the potential help of a fellow Macintosh historian kattheborg no less! Last time was a blast - we think swinging by the lab for this one is a very good idea.
FOULAB Monthly Meeting - Saturday January 27th @ 15:00 - 17:00
Our monthly organizational meeting - the first in 2024! Foulab business will be decided, members will be sworn in.
Interested in demystifying a little of the lab for yourself? Want to coordinate a gathering of your own? It’s the secret society event to be at.
Killed by Dice Presents: Cyberpunk - Sunday January 28th @ 15:00 - 19:00
der_moderne_man’s Killed by Dice, a regular organizer of our staple tabletop gaming events, returns for another exciting sci-fi one shot. We are going to be playing the original Cyberpunk tabletop RPG - and you are invited!
Click here to RSVP. Slots are limited.
The last month of the year is here! Work winds down, people start working on projects, and with it, a whole stack of interesting things to do appears around the lab. Here are just some of them:
Tuesday December 12th @ 18:30 - 23:00
You may have heard of our last unofficial Project Night - an informal gathering where people demo cool stuff they have worked on lately. Good news - our member noi is hosting another one just next week! Drop by to see our community’s work from professional to casual, or even demo something of your own! See you there.
Sunday December 17th @ 15:00 - 19:00
The last event by Killed by Dice has unfortunately been canceled due to a COVID scare. Foulaber der_moderne_man’s tabletop RPG community returns to invite guests to an afternoon of Mothership once again. Join us in a thriller RPG set in the far off future. Fight off cosmic horrors on a Sunday? Sounds good to us. RSVP here if you want to join us - be wary, slots are limited!
Thursday December 21st @ 18:30 - 23:00
A Christmas party? A New Year’s party? A weighted average of all the winter-related parties in one convenient Foulab package? Yo!
If there are any events around Foulab to visit this month, this is definitely the one you should show up to. Enjoy a festive mood with fellow hackers and grab a slice of pizza as we send this old year off together 🎉
Saturday December 30th @ 15:00 - 17:00
Another organizational meeting. We’ll tally up 2023, and discuss how we plan to go forward with the things that transpired. Spoiler alert - it’s looking pretty good. Join us to see the internal workings of this space, and maybe even make your voice heard on an issue you care about!
Tickets are for sale on eventbrite Each event alone is 30$, or 50$ to attend both.
The workshop presentations will be in English, but we are more than happy to provide support and answer questions in French.
INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER VISION WITH OPENCV
Do you want to make your computer react to light, movement and gestures? Do you want to capture and process images and video as part of your project? Do you wonder: whats wrong with these lazy AI programmers, why can’t my computer recognize me yet? Get answers to all these questions and more at the Foulab Workshop “Introduction to computer vision with OpenCV”!
The workshop is aimed at people with some programming knowledge, but not necessarily any computer vision knowledge. We will cover:
- how to install and set up the Open Computer Vision toolkit,
- an introduction to computer vision algorithms,
- a couple interactive OpenCV demonstrations that you can use as a starting point for your own projects.
The primary programming language for the workshop will be Python. The workshop has been updated from previous workshops to cover OpenCV 2.4.6, and the latest version of OpenCV’s python interface.
Time: Saturday, November 2, 1-5pm Postponed
Required materials: laptop, webcam
While this workshop will be limited in scope to OpenCV itself, people are encouraged to stay after the workshop and discuss more advanced topics, such as the interfacing of openCV with other libraries and languages. If you have projects in mind or in progress, please do stick around and chat with us!
INTRODUCTION TO WEBGL
Long gone are the days of simple text tickers and epileptic shock inducing blink tags.These days we see javascript as a fast growing multimedia oriented language, and the jump to 3D is now at the cutting edge of competing with your native desktop application with WebGL.
In collaboration with Montreal’s very own demoparty, RECURSION, and it’s hackerspace, Foulab, we are happy to present an introduction to the modern OpenGL 3D processing pipeline through OpenGL.
Building off certain image processing concepts presented in the OpenCV workshop, we will give you an introduction to the following concepts so that you may start programming your own 3D demoes.
We will go over a number of small things specific to basic demo making including: setting up the rendering pipeline, in addition to explaining its internals. Simple examples of procedural rendering. As well as an overview of how this can go on to be applied to OpenGL in general.
Time: Sunday, November 3rd, 1-5pm
Required materials: laptop, chrome
Please be advised that a working knowledge of basic linear algebra will be required, in addition to that of programming.
Whether to move, turn, send a picture or change color, all fixtures and other gadgets receive their orders through the protocol ANSI E1.11 - 2008 USITT DMX512-A. I invite you to build your “DMX” interface with an Arduino controller, discover lighting control programs and discuss all issues around the DMX myths.
The invitation is for all the curious, potential users, artists, designers, stage technicians, designers and other techie!
Whether you have a possible project or the installation of your biggest life contract in lighting control, come live and discuss what DMX communication standard. Camaraderie and learning are the foundation of this meeting.
When: Saturday, March 7, 13 h 30
Where: at Foulab (999 du Collège, suite 33B, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H4C 2S3)
Reserve: Please reserve with dmx7mars (at) stephanebarbeau.com as the number of places is limited
Price: A $10 donation to the lab is suggested
-
Interface creation: Transmitter only (without programming)
- Materials:
- 1 x Arduino or USB serial interface,
- 1 x 75176 or Max485,
- 1 x 100 ohms,
- assembly plate.
- Computer to host the control program. (PC, Mac or Linux)
- Materials:
-
DMX reading (might be interesting to make a tool.)
- Materials :
- 1 x Arduino Uno or Pro mini,
- 1 x 75176 or Max485,
- 1 x 100 ohms,
- assembly plate and some wires.
- Materials :
-
Software Installation:
- Take a tour of selected software
- Q light + (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)
- Martin M-PC
- Other
- Take a tour of selected software
-
Discussion of the protocol and test with electronic equipment (scope).
- Cabling test
- Type (zipcord, micro, cat5, cat6, various, recommended)
- Length (short, long and very long)
- Type variation on same length
- Configuration test (to understand, should do or should not do)
- Y, star configuration…
- With and without terminator (100 ohms)
- With Opto-isolater
- Cabling test
If several people are interested, a group for Arduino (or copy) purchasing could be created.
I will have some parts (75176 mainly) for sale.
A list of resources (circuit, interface and program) is available on my website.
In this first edition of our new crypto anarchy series, we will talk about distributed online systems and homomorphic encryption. A key emphasis will be placed on online voting, and why it is not as hard a problem to implement securely with recent advances in crypto over the last 2 decades.
This will be a high level introduction to the subject with an emphasis on the engineering challenges of such a system. We will also show how a similar system is used at foulab to provide a reasonable degree of anonymized access control to the hackerspace.
A quick overview of a number of defensive crypto engineering design choices will also be looked at.
In accordance with Quebec government mandates, open-nights are suspended until further notice.
Android updates for any phone that isn’t a flag-ship phone is patchy at best these days. Between that and a world of benefits for those who customize android, compiling android is a useful skill. We’ll be going over some of the basics next Thursday (the 2nd) around 8pm EST.
Since the files involved are massive, and the build times are long, we recomend a bit of prep work: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/blueline/build Getting to the stage where you have downloaded the source code is a good idea.
Workshop is free, however donations are welcome. Remote atendees can tune in here: https://meet.jit.si/CompilingAndroidWorkshop
