[SGVHAK] 08/24 (Sat) meeting recap (much belated)

[Lan Dang]

Hi all,

This is going to be a short recap because it's been 10 days and my memory is fuzzy.  But much thanks to Scoops for his hard drive workshop.  It was a lot of fun and very hands-on.  

Scoops brought a box full of hard drives and various devices he'd built using said hard drives.  He also brought a power supply to power the hard drives.  He showed the gyroscopic power of the hard drive when you twist it while the platters are spinning.  He also powered up a hard drive while the cover was off, showing how very easy it is to really scratch up the disk if the heads hit the platters while they're spinning.

We learned how to take apart a hard drive and harvest bearings and platters.  You need at least a couple of Torx screwdrivers--T9 and T6, I think.  We had to be careful about the hard drive magnets because they were so strongly attracted to each other that they kept trying to snap shut on our fingers.  He also showed us the cool things one can make with hard drive components.  My favorite was the Arduino-controlled bell clock, which used the hard drive head to periodically ring a bell.  


I used my phone to take photos and videos at the Saturday HAK meeting.  I don't really want to upload the video anywhere, but I can show them off at the next HAK meeting.


I have a few photos here.  It includes the bell clock.
http://imgur.com/a/DyTFR#0


I wish I had taken a photo of the tables, which were littered with hard drive components.  Never have we looked more like a hardware hacking group.  We got a lot of curious looks from people who passed by the meeting room on the way to the restroom.  

My favorite souvenirs were the hard drive magnets.  I use them to secure papers to my fridge.

See you Thursday,

Lan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://sgvhak.net/pipermail/hak/attachments/20130903/fc1f32d8/attachment.html>