Inverness Science Festival, May 2019

Here is one of the quieter moments at The T-Exchange stand.

This year the Festival Family Day was busier than ever with over 1,800 visitors of all ages. Perhaps one of the most popular offerings was the three Organic Orchestra instruments; The Carrotene (piano), the Percolator (drums) and the Rhubarbium (tubular bells). As full volume from the three 200Watt amplifiers was a bit much for the older adults the volume controls were regularly turned down, only to be turned up again, after a little while, by younger adults… As these instruments appear to work by magic, explaining the function was a challenge.

The more academic visitors quickly moved on to the Coder Dojo and Code Club section, where a lot of concentration went into code design, the graphical programming language ‘Scratch’ and other teaching technology.

An ‘Ender 3’ 3D printer was demonstrating how to print “Smoothies” for blowing bubbles inside bigger bubbles. These were a small part of the entertaining performance by highly skilled bubble maker Philip Noble at the next activity.

Most importantly, The T-Exchange stand was well supported by members with 11 taking part, including 3 Juniors.

What a GREAT Fun Day!

The April 2019 meeting

Founder Member, Maarten de Vries returned to render a talk on music synthesisers; with sound effects. i.e. with the support of eight or more (it was hard to tell) boxes of electronics and audio amplifiers.

This turned out to be not so much a talk as a full-bloodied tour de force, covering everything from the first Moog synthesisers via East versus West Synth Style (look it up) to the latest cutting edge devices.

We were all a bit stunned by the performance, not so much by the electronics (we’re used to that) but by Maarten’s incredible skill at twiddling the multitude of knobs and switches with microsecond timing. Wow! He even finished up with an electronic chanter, which supported by the synthesisers filled the room with a hundred pipers an’ aw’ an aw'(or was it awe)

Weel done Maarten. A brilliant exposition. Thank you.

As usual, Mark Dammer is ahead of the rest of us and provided backup to Maarten demonstrating the latest software synthesisers. For anyone who would like to follow up:- If you have a Raspberry Pi with the latest software you have Sonic Pi and you have a synthesiser to explore.

Maybe the image below gives you some idea of the impact the evening made on the members.

Who are we?

We are the T-Exchange, a registered Makerspace established eight years ago and currently specialising in a range of technologies including Raspberry Pi, Arduino micro-controllers, 3D printers and Robotics. We have held the status of a Scottish registered charity, since July 2018 with our main charitable objective being the promotion of STEM Education, particularly targeted towards the young people of Moray. For example in Autumn/ Winter 2019-20 we ran a soldering and electronics course for 8 yrs and over in Findhorn.

During the last year we supported local events such as Open Doors Day in Forres. At AJ Engineering we set up several displays and a range of practical tasks. In November 2019 T-Exchange organised a 3D printer event @St Giles Centre, Elgin, showcasing our own self-built printers, 3d animal shapes, machine parts and a range of learning materials including a DNA coding kit.

In previous years we attended several science festivals including Inverness, Strathpeffer and Orkney, providing educational displays and hands-on activities in schools. At the latter several of our members worked with local schools to provide practical age-appropriate workshops e.g. in computer coding (Scratch and Microbits).

Technical Knowledge and Skills

Many of our members possess knowledge and skills honed over many years in fields of Education, Science, Computing and Engineering. Recent examples include an extensive Covid-19 PPE Visor project involving the use of our own 3D printers and 3D Modelling software. We are also using website design tools, as we edit our website to better meet our future needs. We are happy to share our extensive experience for the benefit of others and to this end we develop targeted displays and practical activities for public events plus several computer coding clubs for young people across Moray. 

 

 

Welcome VULCA

Today we welcomed two visitors from the European makerspace movement VULCA, Alexandre (on the left) and his colleague Clemence (second from the right).

T-Exchange meets VULCA

The visitors met with our trustees and filled us in how makerspaces were growing across Europe. The Vulca Makers Mobility Program had over 100 volunteers from European makers pace who had collectively visited over 250 makerspaces in Europe. We were informed about an earlier European Commission study that had visited 28 countries and generated a report Available here.

T-Exchange gains charitable status

On the 19th of July 2017 we were infomed by OSCR (Scottish Charity Regulator) that our application for charitable status had been accepted. Consequently, The T-Exchange has become a legal entity in the form of a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO).
Our registered name is The T-Exchange. NB The definite article “The” is a formal part of the name.


Our charity number is SC047588.


The initial Board consisted of the following Trustees:
 Pam Graham – Secretary
 Claire Griffiths
 Mark Dammer
 Howie Firth
 Bill Graham – Chairman
 Les Grosvenor
 Richard Oakley – Treasurer