Week 757 - STAR, Noodles, Synths, and 3DS Repairs

[Jackie Pease]

Each week we'll endeavour to publish some details of the interesting things that members of DoES Liverpool have been up to over the past seven days. You can find out a bit more about them in our introductory post.

And remember, if you're involved with DoES Liverpool at all, let us know what you get up to so we can include it here!

🥳🎉🤶Xmas Party – Friday 12th December 6pm until late 🎄🍾🍰

It's our Xmas party this Friday. Please come along if you can, and get in touch with Terry or Neil if you'd like to “do a turn”.  See Neil’s post here for more details.

Things of Note

• michael:Weeknotes o'clock! https://digitalflapjack.com/weeknotes/2025-12-01/
  #weeknotes
• A brief overview of the 2 day mini STAR workshop I took part in with folks from Newcastle University and the IUCN.
• How I had to redo the fundamentals of Yirgacheffe, and a little on how I have made this complex geospatial library specifically because I'm bad at it.
• 
  
• MCQN Ltd:Noodling with noodles; playing with projectors; confusion with codes... the latest #weeknotes
  https://mcqn.com/posts/week-1052-little-bit-of-politics/
• Chris Huffee:As seasons become less predictable we're seeing some @museuminabox boxes nest very early this year.
  #weeknotes

  

• matthewcroughan: Found a free Nintendo 3DS with a very damaged charging port at @DoESLiverpool and replaced it with USB C on their #makernight that happens every week on Thursday.
  We added a red LED in-line because it makes it look cooler. The battery power circuit was beyond saving, so we just allowed it to be directly driven using any 5V source via USB C by hard wiring the thermistor. Maybe the next step is to add magsafe coil so it can be powered wirelessly with any magsafe power banks, which far exceed the battery capacity of the original battery that lived inside of the DS anyway.
  My main laptop (GPD Pocket 4) ran out of juice on the night whilst researching and I couldn't find a PSU for it, so had to switch to the Shiftphone 8 which is running Linux, so I was able to use it as a desktop/laptop replacement for the rest of the night, which worked quite nicely.
  By the way, does anybody know how to make homebrew apps for the 3DS using a modern toolchain that is fun? Let me know! I want to make an MQTT dashboard that runs on here.
  #weeknotes

  

  

  

  

• Adrian McEwen:At @DoESLiverpool for the Liverpool #Synth Meetup.
  There are many, many synths of all sorts.
  #Liverpool #weeknotes

  

  

  

  

• Adrian McEwen:My plan for the day is to see if I can turn these components into something that makes noise, following @todbot's CircuitPython synthio tutorials
  https://github.com/todbot/CircuitPython_Synthio_Tutorial/tree/main?tab=readme-ov-file
  #CircuitPython #synthio #ESP32C3 #weeknotes

  

• michael:I had a play with OpenSCAD, as I thought it might combine my love of building with my fondness for functional programming, but in the end I realised that it's not quite for me. I wrote some notes as to why for my use case it doesn't work, but I hope that it continues to evolve as I'd love to use it more with some of the rough edges sorted.
  https://mwdales-guitars.uk/blog/2025/12/07/openscad/
  #maker #weeknotes #cad

Coming Up in the Next Week

These are the events booked in for this week. Click the link or contact the event organiser for more details. Want to run something yourself? Check the host your own events page on our website.

Monday 08 December, 7:00pm-9:00pm	Socialist Alternative discussion group
Tuesday 09 December, 7:00pm-9:00pm	Liverpool Revolutionary Communist Party
Wednesday 10 December, 7:00pm-9:00pm	DoES Salon
Thursday 11 December, 9:00am-6:00pm	Jelly Liverpool
Thursday 11 December, 6:00pm-9:30pm	Goodgym Liverpool
Thursday 11 December, 7:00pm-9:30pm	Maker Night Our free weekly evening meeting, where you can find out about our space and all the making equipment in it, get a laser cutter or CNC embroidery machine induction, and work on projects from physical computing and electronics to 3d printing, CNC routing and sewing. Just pay for materials used.
Friday 12 December, 6:00pm-Saturday 13 December, 12:00am	DoES Liverpool Xmas Party! (Dongo's Dingo) - Please come along We’re promising an evening full of entertainment and joy with music, dance, magic, fun, entertainment and BINGO Food: After the Birthday celebrations this year where everyone brought their own food we decided we would operate like that again as it was so successful. Please bring something to share and something for yourself. Bring your own Drinks too. 6pm – Community Meal 7pm – Entertainment starts This will be everything that we had last year except it will be better as we have practiced more. We have Bingo cards, so expect a Bingo Extravaganza, with entertainment, singing, dancing and participatory entertainment. This will be a high energy event so wear your dancing shoes – if you feel like dressing up or wearing fancy dress then please do. We’re keen to welcome everyone who has come along to DoES this year, that may be you have attended a Maker night, Repair cafe or are a member. It’s your turn Would you like to do a turn? That’s theatre speak for getting up and giving it a go. If you would like to sing, do a bit of prestidigitation, read a poem etc then let us know and we will put you on the list of performers. Please let Jackie or Terry know. We’re looking for prizes If you have an item left over from the laser cutter, made too many badges or embroidered one thing too many. Then please put it aside and drop it off to Jackie or Terry. See you on the 12th!!! 12 December, 2025 6:00 pm - 11:00 pm
Saturday 13 December, 12:00pm-6:00pm	Maker Day Our monthly daytime meeting, where you can find out about our space and all the making equipment in it, get a laser cutter or CNC embroidery machine induction, and work on projects from physical computing and electronics to 3d printing, CNC routing and sewing. Just pay for materials used.
Sunday 14 December, 2:00pm-5:00pm	Plastic Playground In a world with mountains of plastic and molehills of play, let’s get our spades out and shift the balance. Make new things from abandoned plastic with us. Plantpots, purses … pedalos? Shred plastic. Blend it. Meld scraps together with a heat gun. Make sheets. Laser cut it. CNC it. Stitch potato bags together with soldering iron? Make fabrics with a regular iron? What have we got, what can we make? We don’t know – let’s figure it out! Facilitated by Plastic Tactics – follow on social for the latest updates, and to see what we make if you can’t be here in person: http://instagram.com/plastacs http://facebook.com/plastictacticsliverpool

Somebody Should

The DoES Liverpool to-do list is stored in the issues of our Somebody Should repository on github. Head over there if there's something you'd like to report, or if you want to help out fixing things.

See all the issues...

Issue counts: 414 open, 1701 closed

3 new issues:

• Label sewing machine/overlocker feet
• Add names/labels to the sewing machines
• DoES membership options and prices not that easy to find

Featured issue: Tony apparently not cutting square. Can we move this on or close it?

2 issues closed:

• REAR FIRE DOOR
• Harry Plotter needs new transfer sheet and cutting blades.

Thanks amcewen!