On Saturday June 20th we held another Pi Jam with many or our regulars returning and a few new comers.

It was Philip’s birthday and to mark the occasion he brought along a Raspberry Pie, (well bakewell tart), which did not last long at all.

Steve brought along some of his Raspberry PI based robots, using the original model B, A+, PI0W and the Pico.

The meccanum robot is controllable from a website, and several of the youngsters had a go with it. As is the case with these events, Steve had tested it from his PI500 at home but used an Iphone on the day. What could go wrong, well quite a bit, some of the button presses did not work! It might be fixed for the next PI Jam and use the camera for line following, but then again…

If you are interested it uses a Pimoroni motor2040 for motor control and an ESP32-CAM for the web control. All based on one of Kevs robots at www.kevsrobots.com, Steve’s goto website for robot projects. One day Steve will either take better pictures or learn how to edit them!

Tony,

another of our regulars was here to get an oscilloscope connected to a PI5 talking over a network to his MAC. He managed to do it and will be using it to set to work EDSAC at the National Computing Museum Bletchley Park.

Dan was here getting his LIDAR to work, it is working using ROS and the plan is to put it on an autonomous robot.

What do you do with 14 original Model B PI’s, make a cluster of course! Why, because you can. Currently a work in progress.

Finally a “Maplin Robot Arm”, the very first thing Steve Controlled with his original model B back in 2013, and it still works!

Leicester Hackspace was invited back to the LCB Depot for 2026’s Create-A-Con.

Our members delivered a full day of demos and activities, showcasing a range of skills and projects,
giving visitors a taste of what goes on at the Hackspace and what it’s all about.

From robotics and electronics to textiles and digital making, visitors had the chance to explore, ask
questions, see things in action and get involved in live demos and making.

Leicester Hackspace regularly attends events, offering demos and creative activities for both children and
adults.

If you’re interested in having us at your event, please get in touch. Info@leicesterhackspace.org.uk

We finished 2025 of with a couple of events. Our regular Christmas Craft event attended by members and some non-members.

Then on a Thursday Night Tracey organised a wreath making session for members. This was another popular event and will hopefully be repeated next year.

Looking forward to 2026 we are running a few workshops for members, the use of hand tools in woodworking, Arduino Programming and an Introduction to micro python on a Pico.

The main event is going to be the building of a full size Wacky Racer.

Watch this space for details.

We’ve had a massive tidy up!

For a little while now, our 3d printing room (The one in the middle) has been a total mess. Every usable surface was covered in odd bits and bobs, rubbish, and cool hackable components that were impossible to get to:

With little free table space, this room had become quite difficult to use or to find anything (and remained so for 2+ years).

But, with a full day’s worth of effort, we have managed to tidy most of the room and bring all the desk space back!

Only most of the room though.

We have big plans for the other side though once we’ve finished sorting the CNC Milling Machines, so hopefully it will be cleared as well soon!

Regardless, we’re very happy to have all this table space back for members to use, especially since we managed it with room to walk all the way around both tables!

At the same time as this, we installed an isolator switch on our power switchboard. Previously you could only turn off the power to the hackspace via the business downstairs, so this is a huge step to allowing us to work on our electrics whenever we need!

Thank you to everyone who helped out!

We’ve updated our website again!

The last time we updated the site was just over a year ago in 2024, where we recreated the whole site from scratch using hugo to generate the whole website from some easy to write markdown files. This didn’t change the look of the site too much as we were just aiming to make the site easier to use.

This time, we’ve overhauled the whole site based on feedback from our members to make the page layout make much more sense, to make it easier for potential new members to find relevant information, and to have much more up-to-date photos.

You can find the website’s git repo here: https://github.com/leicesterhackspace/leicester-hackspace-web, where you’re welcome to bring up issues or propose contributions.
You can also find the full history of the website for your viewing convenience.

We (The Web Team) look forward to bringing more improvements to all our websites!
- Jacob