<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tr><td valign="top"><p dir="ltr"><font size ="2"><font size ="2">These open work sessions at Tux-Lab are quite fun because you just come for as long as you like and you work on whatever you want in the company of other people who like to tinker. HAK is not just about tinkering with electronics and hardware. It's about making things and experimenting. </font></font></p>
<p dir="ltr"><font size ="2"><font size ="2">We roasted coffee and cacao beans. We used the Hot Top coffee roaster. 8 oz of cacao beans yield 6.4 oz of roasted cacao nibs, which is a pretty good yield. </font></font></p>
<p dir="ltr"><font size ="2"><font size ="2"> Cacao nibs are sold at health food stores for about $13 per pound. A pound of cacao beans is about $5 from Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles. There are various applications for cacao nibs aside from the obvious one of making chocolate. </font></font></p>
<p dir="ltr"><font size ="2"><font size ="2">We decided to try making cocoa tea, which required grinding the nibs to a coarse powder. This required three passes with a burr grinder. When we got to a fine grind, things started clogging up due to moisture and oils in the nibs. We discussed the difficulty of grinding cacao finely enough to make a smooth chocolate. You can't get it done with a coffee grinder. Maybe a flour mill. Or a rock tumbler using stainless steel balls? </font></font></p>
<p dir="ltr"><font size ="2"><font size ="2">We tried to brew it like coffee using both a drip filter and a vacuum pot. we also tried putting it in a tea bag and steeping it. we also tried making a hot chocolate mix by adding two spoonfuls of ground cocoa to two spoonfuls of sugar to about 4 oz of hot water and a dash of cream. It was pretty good in all its incarnation, though you ended up chewing on the grounds with the last method. </font></font></p>
<p dir="ltr"><font size ="2"><font size ="2">Other things people worked on were circuit boards, arduinos, and web application. I learned how to use my Singer sewing machine. We broke down a cardboard box that used to hold paper and used it to laser cut two sets of Google Cardboard vr goggles. The template requires a minimum cardboard size of 9 in X 22 in. It needs some adjusting to account for eyeglasses and phone cases. It would be nice if we could programmatically change the </font></font><u><font size ="2"><font size ="2">cardboard</font></font></u><font size ="2"><font size ="2"> template depending on head and phone measurements. It may also need a little adjustment if the material is of a different thickness. It worked okay for our cardboard, which had a thickness of 0.13in. </font></font></p>
<p dir="ltr"><font size ="2"><font size ="2">Since we were playing with cardboard, we thought it might be cool to figure out other things we could laser cut and fold. Or maybe we could laser cut a jigsaw puzzle. </font></font><br></p>
<p dir="ltr"><font size ="2"><font size ="2">Lan</font></font><br>
</p>
</td></tr></table> <div id="_origMsg_">
<div>
<br />
<div>
<div style="font-size:0.9em">
<hr size="1">
<b>
<span style="font-weight:bold">From:</span>
</b>
Lan Dang <l.dang@ymail.com>; <br>
<b>
<span style="font-weight:bold">To:</span>
</b>
Hardware Hacking Special Interest Group <hak@sgvhak.net>; <br>
<b>
<span style="font-weight:bold">Subject:</span>
</b>
[SGVHAK] Tux-Lab open work session on Saturday afternoon, 1/17 <br>
<b>
<span style="font-weight:bold">Sent:</span>
</b>
Fri, Jan 16, 2015 8:29:12 PM <br>
</div>
<br>
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td valign="top"><div style="color:#000;background-color:#fff;font-family:HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:16px;"><div id="yiv1925991203"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2543" style="color:#000;background-color:#fff;font-family:HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:16px;"><div id="yiv1925991203yui_3_16_0_1_1421439780222_2451">Hi all,</div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv1925991203yui_3_16_0_1_1421439780222_2453"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2639"><br></div>John is kind enough to host an open work session at Tux-Lab this Saturday afternoon. We just gather at Tux-Lab to hang out and work on our own projects. Please come by if you want to work on something. The gate will be open between 2 and 4pm, and you are welcome to stay as long as you like.</div><div
id="yiv1925991203yui_3_16_0_1_1421439780222_2484" dir="ltr"><br></div><div id="yiv1925991203yui_3_16_0_1_1421439780222_2466" dir="ltr">Some of us will be making soap and roasting coffee. I have a project that involves finally learning how to use the Singer sewing machine I appropriated from my sister. I'm sure others will be working on small electronics or coding projects.</div><div id="yiv1925991203yui_3_16_0_1_1421439780222_2483" dir="ltr"><br></div><div id="yiv1925991203yui_3_16_0_1_1421439780222_2482" dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv1925991203yui_3_16_0_1_1421439780222_2461">Tux-Lab <br></div><div id="yiv1925991203yui_3_16_0_1_1421439780222_2535" dir="ltr">58 West Live Oak, <span style="" class="yiv1925991203">Arcadia</span>, <span style="" class="yiv1925991203">CA. </span><br><em style="" class="yiv1925991203"></em></div><div id="yiv1925991203yui_3_16_0_1_1421439780222_2537" dir="ltr"><em
id="yiv1925991203yui_3_16_0_1_1421439780222_2536" style="" class="yiv1925991203">The address is Live Oak Ave, but the parking lot entrance is from
Welland. Once you enter the parking lot, 58 is the building to the
left.</em></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2548" dir="ltr"><br><em id="yiv1925991203yui_3_16_0_1_1421439780222_2536" style="" class="yiv1925991203"></em></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2546" dir="ltr"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2578" dir="ltr"><span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2600" class="yiv1925991203" style="">The street intersection is weird around here, so I suggest you check out a map to see how to get on Welland.<br></span></div></div><div id="yiv1925991203yui_3_16_0_1_1421439780222_2538" dir="ltr"><span style="" class="yiv1925991203"><br></span></div><div style="" class="yiv1925991203" dir="ltr" id="yiv1925991203yui_3_16_0_1_1421439780222_2461"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2641" dir="ltr">Let me know if you have any questions. <br></div></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2598" style="" class="yiv1925991203" dir="ltr"><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2597" style=""
class="yiv1925991203" dir="ltr"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2643">Lan</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2644"><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2645" dir="ltr">PS The joint SGVHAK/Hackaday Projects meetup was great. I will try to do a recap tonight. There were some pictures retweeted on @sgvlug</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2726" dir="ltr"><a rel="nofollow" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2725" target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/sgvlug">https://twitter.com/sgvlug</a></div><br><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421440224934_2692" dir="ltr"><br></div></div></div></div></div></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>