My last few weeks with TONIBUNG ended up being pretty hectic so these posts are definitely overdue. Although they're a bit late now, I still think it's worth a few back-dated posts to fill you in... I’m back in the UK with a cup of tea, a
free morning and no excuses so here’s the first of a few posts to wrap up my
placement…
Having now returned to the UK, it’s a good time to let you
know where the ELC project got to and where it’s going next. Working with the Kinabalu
Coders at the Smart Space in Kota Kinabalu (KK), we finished manufacture of the ELC
V2.5 prototype.
I promised before to tell you more about the Smart Space in
KK, so keep reading… It is a very similar model to other Maker Spaces around
the world and allows anyone to have free access to space and tools for collaborative
projects. The Smart Space in KK has been
open for a couple of years as the host space for the Kinabalu Coders. The Kinabalu Coders includes communities which collaborate on software projects, 3-D printing
projects, gaming and much more. The space is filled with various ongoing projects…
…including this one to upgrade the mechanical door handles so
that they can be operated remotely ( they assured me that this was just to let
people IN to the space!)
The Kinabalu Coders also organise regular public events. These
include the annual RoBorneo event and Raspberry Pi Jams. Raspberry Jams are
meetups for people interested in projects using Raspberry Pis (low-cost,
high-performance computers, designed to be easy for anyone to learn to use).
The Kinabalu Coders run these events like informal mini conferences with workshops
on using Pis and showcasing of Raspberry Pi projects.
The annual RoBorneo event is a subsidised team robotics competition. It has events like robot dualing (think
Robot Wars) and is held
in a big mall in Kota Kinabalu so it’s easy for anyone to watch and get
involved.
As for the TONIBUNG ELC project, we have another EWB-UK
volunteer going out to TONIBUNG in July, Dan. Dan has been on a placement in
the Phillipines working with SIBAT to develop a load controller there (see my
post from our visit to SIBAT in October last year here) so is the perfect candidate
to review the design. He will be comparing both designs and testing them
further on the rig set-up at TONIBUNG. If all goes well with that then we could
be able to put a pilot system in place for field testing in September.
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