Program for the SBARC June 17, 2016 Club
Meeting
Folks, this is Mike Bales, KI6VBK,
Co-Founder of Santa Barbara Hackerspace
Mike
Bales, KI6VBK, is the CEO and
co-founder of the Santa Barbara Hackerspace, which was founded 6 years ago in
his garage. Mike moved from San Diego to Santa Barbara to attend Santa Barbara
City College to get a start on a degree in Electronic Engineering. He was
frustrated with the limited access to the labs there and couldn’t afford the
equipment that was required for an electronics project he was working on.
His life
changed when he attended the Bay Area Maker Faire in San Mateo that year and
discovered the concept of hackerspace. He thought that there must be others in a
similar situation in need of space and equipment for personal and school
projects given Santa Barbara’s many schools so he decided to try and start a
hackerspace. Hackerspaces are community-operated physical places, where people share
their interest in tinkering with technology, meet and work on their projects and
learn from each other.
SB Hackerspace
started small, about a half dozen people meeting in Mike’s apartment / garage
for the first 6 months or so. Once they built up a small core group they rented
their first space on Aero Camino in Goleta and quickly grew and acquired more
members.
Mike has a day
job as a systems administrator for a small IT company which manages networks and
equipment for 30 clients in the Santa Barbara area, in addition to running the
hackerspace, and developing open source weather balloon trackers and other neat
projects.
Two
other active members of the group are Garrett Holmstrom, AG6RQ, and Mike
Kapuscik. Garrett is fairly active and is getting involved in some of
the SBARC mesh networking projects. He is known as the network wizard at the
hackerspace as he maintains their computer network infrastructure. He has been
instrumental in building a ground crew on a number of their weather balloon
launches.
Mike Kapuscik
is a City College student who works for a startup in town developing IoT
(Internet of Things) equipment. He is well versed in electronics and embedded
programming / development. He has been the lead on the Scanning Electron
Microscope restoration project and Mike Bales says that they would never have
gotten it working without his time, knowledge and diligence in pouring over the
schematics and documentation.
If you would like to know more
about this young, exciting group of people and what they are doing, you are
invited to drop by and pay them a visit. The Santa Barbara Hackerspace is a fun
and friendly setting for makers and hackers to build, experiment and learn
together. They welcome all participants, no matter their level of skill or
experience. Their general meetings are on Saturdays from 2 pm until late, and
there are usually people there during the evenings on most weeknights. So, you
can drop by their location on Saturday after you leave the SBARC Club Station,
which closes around noon, and while you are there you can also join their
mailing list for updates!
Also, at this SBARC meeting, you will hear
from President Brian Milburn, K6BPM, about the latest progress being made on our
Mesh Network and how you can get involved with the project. He will also let us
know more about how the Club Station is evolving. Levi Maaia, K6LCM, would like
to tell us about our newly-formed Telecommunications group and what they are
doing. At this meeting we
will raffle off the latest Wouxun Model 8D dual-band duplex cross-band repeat
HT. We should sell enough tickets at this meeting to pay for the very neat
radio!
We
still have our monthly Club Meetings at the Goleta Union School District at 401
No. Fairview Ave. in Goleta, right across the street from the Goleta Library.
The meeting begins at 7:30 PM but come early and look at all the
Free-to-Good-Home stuff your friends have brought for you to see and take home
with you. Be sure to bring yours for them! Before the meeting begins is a good
time to shake a few hands and bring in those cookies and cakes you brought along
because you are such a neat person! And we all do thank you for
that.
The Satellite
Amateur Radio Club Swapfest and Barbecue is an annual event always held on a
Saturday, the day before Fathers Day, so it is the day right after our Club
meeting. This fun event is looked forward to by hams all over the South Coast.
For many years, SBARC has supported their event with our presence and by
purchasing tickets to win their great prizes. I have won my share of them. In
turn, members of the Satellite ARC have supported our events. This is the kind
of event where folks can bring their excess junque and spread it out on the
picnic tables and, with a tear in their eye, part with it for the right price!
So many bargains. Those who walked away with their hands in their pockets and
then, after some serious thought, returned to go ahead and buy it only to find
that someone beat them to it can be seen moping around. How funny. It is also
traditional to have a challenging Transmitter Hunt. This year there will be
several of them. Yours truly will be hiding one and searching for the others.
Bring your 2-meter sniffer with you. Some of us caravan up there and have
breakfast at Ellen’s Danish Pancake house in Buellton. Come along with us.
You said that
your YL loves to bake cookies? Would she let you bring some to our Club
meeting?