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Equipping a Small Hackerspace?
andy writes "After gentle prodding for about a year, my company actually agreed to include an electronics/robotics lab in the current build-out of our new office space. As I never really expected this to happen, I was at a bit of a loss when they asked me what sort of workbenches, equipment, etc. I wanted for the lab. The lab will only be approximately 9'x15' but there is a decent amount of vertical space to work with. I was thinking of having 2 workbenches side-by-side, one for 'hardware' and the other for 'software' with a floor-standing cabinet for storage. Semi-mobile workbenches might be a plus. Those of you that work in these sorts of environments, what do you recommend in the way of workbenches, storage, organization, and electronics?"
You will already have the core things you need 90% of the time. Go install your desks in an ergo way, then give your core tools a nice spot to live. Don't worry, they will get lost, borrowed, and misplaced quickly. Soon you'll have three of each, and you'll always know where one is.
The rest will evolve organically. Let it flow in as each project evolves. The most clever configuration will be the one that is flexed from the inside out, as your frustrations permanently solve yet another configuration issue. In a few years, people will wonder how your tech feng shui is so strong.
Eventually people who visit your hackerspace will coo at the random junk bottles of parts, odd CAD lamp lighting, and floor stains, completely oblivious to the purpose, but envious to their shallow cores at the shininess. You will be envied in your organic nerd pile.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
If you have a lot of vertical space, you could utilize some good pegboard and hangar brackets to store most of your tools. Also, I always find myself in want of a drill press and, to a lesser extent, a lathe and a mill. Welding equipment is also a plus. But all of those (minus a drill press, those can be pretty small) take up space. Fans and heaters are a nice convenience, if there isn't already some sort of environmental control. Finally, if other people than yourself are going to be working there regularly (I think that's kind of the definition of a hackerspace) then you might want to get a really nice label-maker/gun so that things stay relatively organized.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Make the most of the vertical space if it's against a wall. You will want to have several pieces of reasonably heavy equipment semipermanently present above the workbench - so build a couple of deep, sturdy shelves that can hold your benchtop PSUs, oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, etc. The probes and wires dangle down from the front. The lowest shelf should be as low as possible while still clearing the top of the tallest PC monitor you intend to put on that bench. Support those shelves with at least 1.5x the manufacturer-recommended number of pegs. The back of the shelf should have enough room to the wall, or cutouts, to fit - comfortably - an AC plug so that you don't have to move heaven and earth in order to add or remove an AC-powered piece of equipment from amongst the stuff on either side of it. As well as outlets at floor level, you need an outlet strip running down the back of the bench, or on the wall behind the bench at chest level to a seated person, with a minimum of 8-10 outlets per workbench. The outlets should be spaced far enough apart that they can hold a plugpack. DO NOT think that 6-way adapters are "good enough". It is a royal pain in the ass to deal with them, and they add to cable clutter. You will probably want a local Ethernet network for testing net-booting appliances, as well as wiring into your regular Internet connection. So make room for a small Ethernet switch. Use some more of the wall space for component drawers of the type people use to store nails, screws, etc. You cannot have too many of these. Since you will probably be using many SMD components (I know I do!) make a rack for the reels. A regular piece of wooden dowel with a sturdy chain attached to each end, suspended from the center of the chain, works OK. Having loose reels around the place is another pain in the ass - if you have them on a dowel then you can put R/C/L values in neat order, separate diodes from transistors, etc. These are a few of my suggestions based on my own workspace (I do this sort of thing on a contract basis)... I personally have also ditched all my desktop PCs and use netbooks and notebooks exclusively - much of the hardware you'll be using has to be tethered to the dev system by a short USB cable, and having a desktop PC up close enough really wastes desktop real estate.
Monitor arms and wireless keyboards/mice, or a keyboard drawer. This frees up valuable desk space for working on stuff.
Also useful:
USB port replicator - used for laptops, gets legacy and USB ports up on the desk from the tower, so you can get at them.
Variable power supply - get good ones with a couple of voltage options. +/- 5V, +/- 12V rails along with a variable output is very handy
Plenty of outlets on the desks or, better yet, built into the desks
Grounding - if you can't get grounded desks, get antistatic pads or, at least, antistatic wrist straps, and ground everything you can
The three things you shouldn't scrimp on - power supply, soldering station with adjustable temperature, multimeter
Get a cheap desktop for the hardware station - interfacing with hardware doesn't take much horsepower.
Buy a monster for the software station so you can run multiple OSes in virtual machines - get the free VMWare player that lets you create virtual machines and you can run Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, etc...
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
- Cover the wall in network and power-points - you might well make use of 12 ethernet ports and 50 mains sockets.
- Have deep, load-bearing shelves above the workbench, (again, with power), and under-shelf lighting.
- Consider the ergonomics: workbench height for standing (and some tall stools), a/c, bright light, silent computers. LCD monitor on a swing-arm?
- If money is limited, you're probably better off with a larger variety of stock and tools than with fewer expensive ones.
- Do you need the ability to make it dark? Plumbing? Dust/Fume extraction?
- Ensure the floor is easy to clean, not static-prone, and easy to see where you dropped things.
Sincerely,
Person with a Ph.D. in EE who has worked with hardware development for 15 years.
Aw, that's rough buddy! Hit me up and I'll teach you how to create a login. It's not that bad!
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Never attribute to bad grammar that which can be explained by Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all.
Which is sadly under utilized these days (too much real work unfortunately)
Several voltmeters - I like the old Fluke bench units... LED displays you can see across the room, and the batteries are never dead because there are none.
Several scopes - tek is king here.
Drill press - bloody essential for anything mechanical at all.
Logic analyzer, i'm partial to the HP ones
Spectrum analyzer - pricy, but a godsend for RF work (if you'll be doing any) - HP, again.
Power supply - hp made good ones again. you can never have too many it seems. I have some homebrew ones too - ATX supplies and random ebay SMPS units can be handy and dirt cheap, but not adjustable (you can add an external reg easily though..)
Freq counter - hp, but fluke made decent ones. more for RF, but can be handy for digital, clocking and stuff...
Freq gen, whether you need a lower freq audio one or one that does RF depends on what you're planning on.
For soldering irons im partial to the hakko ones, '936' is the model, and there are plenty of knockoffs available on ebay. The genuine model isn't crazy expensive though.
Then a PC, a few programmers, depending on what you want. I'm partial to Atmel's AVR, but PIC is big, some folks are still stuck with moto 6800 derivatives for some unknown reason, likewise with 8051's... For the money ARM is really the way to go, but I havent played with them much yet. Some sort of JTAG unit will be handy for random programming also. I usually use a linux box with avr-gcc, but some tools are win32 only, so might want to have a windows box or virtualbox around - not to mention some schematic / board layout stuff is win only too.
For dev boards, I have a few from atmel, but some of them are pretty pricy. these guys make some nice dev boards, but I'm not crazy about their compiler. The IDE looks nice enough, but I'm used to gcc and my own editor. I have one of their AVR boards, and I use a GPL'd AVR based AVR programmer (chicken and egg if you dont already have one ;) ) with it, because their built in programmers (which work well, mind you) are windows only.
Sent from my PDP-11
Why do all the neat opportunities always go to the lads with the fewest clues?
by RobotRunAmok (595286)
See what happens when you don't plan your robotics lab out properly? They riot and start posting on /.
Best "String" Ever!