Step Inside a Hackerspace

By Maryland Today Staff Oct 05, 2014

The HCIL Hackerspace, started by Computer Science Assistant Professor Jon Froehlich in 2012, is a space to inspire creativity and excitement, attract a diverse set of students, and allow students to experiment, play, learn, and invent through rapid prototyping and collaboration. He says the environment “encourages serendipitous interaction.”

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The HCIL Hackerspace, started by Computer Science Assistant Professor Jon Froehlich (left) in 2012, is a space to inspire creativity and excitement, attract a diverse set of students, and allow students to experiment, play, learn, and invent through rapid prototyping and collaboration. He says the environment "encourages serendipitous interaction." Credit: John T. Consoli

Computer science doctoral student Matt Mauriello demonstrates the Hackerspace's thermal camera, which uses infrared imaging to pick up heat signatures from objects. In the background are Kotaro Hara and Jon Froehlich (as seen through the Flir thermal camera as well). Credit: John T. Consoli

One key theme of the HCIL Hackerspace is the intermixing of materials from lo-fi (textiles, clay, foam) to high-fi (embedded electronics, sensors, LEDs). In the words of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Hiroshi Ishii, Hackerspace users seek to explore and build interactive experiences that "couple the dual worlds of bits and atoms." Credit: John T. Consoli

The HCIL Hackerspace craft station has fabrics, pipe cleaners, toothpicks, markers, clay, Popsicle sticks, glues, thread, a sewing machine and more. Credit: John T. Consoli

The Hackerspace was designed to support playful experiences, which Froehlich believes inspires innovation. Here, the HCIL Hackerspace logo was remixed with a cookie replacing the gear and "hackerspace" replaced with "snackerspace." In the background are Froehlich and student Kotaro Hara. Credit: John T. Consoli

To allow quick access to the Hackerspace and to make it easy for new students to request access, Jon Froehlich along with undergraduate student Victor Chen and five high school students (Jamie Gilkeson, Benjamin Holland, Ji Hyuk Bae, Sean Bae and Michael Holachek) made a custom electromechanical door strike system. Shown: the tablet interface that provides feedback on a card swipe, allows new students to request access, and also serves as a digital photo frame. Credit: John T. Consoli

iSchool master's student Michael Gubbels works on his thesis project called Pixel, which is a creative-support tool for rapidly mixing materials and computation. Credit: John T. Consoli

iSchool PhD student Leyla Norooz works on BodyVis, an e-textile shirt that combines biometric sensing and wearable visualizations to help children learn about otherwise invisible body parts and functions. Credit: John T. Consoli

Architecture undergraduate student Mandy Wang reaching for some supplies. Mandy is working on HandSight, with a focus on physical design of prototypes. Also pictured are, from left, computer science doctoral students Kotaro Hara and Matt Mauriello. Credit: John T. Consoli

The ShopBot Desktop is a programmable router for carving wood, plastic, aluminum and other materials and is just one of a number of HCIL Hackerspace tools that allow students, staff and faculty to rapidly prototype designs. Credit: John T. Consoli

Computer science master's student Ladan Najafizadeh works on her ILikeThisShirt.com project, which explores the translation of social dynamics in the virtual world into physical experiences. In this case, a T-shirt tracks how often it has been "liked"—a provocation around what it means to "like" something in the physical world and have that compliment sustain over time. Credit: John T. Consoli