When I announced I would be traveling through Alabama and Georgia this summer, [Tim] from Makers Local 256 emailed me pretty quickly and asked if I’d like to swing by for a visit. Since I was planning to take my kids to the space center in Huntsville anyway, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to tour another hackerspace.

Makers Local 256 was started after being inspired by the tech shop in San Fransisco. Their first meeting was in 2006 and they’ve grown considerably since then. They started out in a space of about 900 square feet and now have a facility with over 2500 square feet.  As you can see in the video, they are very active, there are projects everywhere. It was quite difficult for me just to walk around and look, then leave. I really wanted to tear into some of the projects going on.

While we were walking around, we found [Jennifer] working in an office to construct a rather impressive looking LED cube. I asked her to explain the project in the video below. It looks like it will be pretty cool.

As I said before, there were tons of things to look at and play with there. There was a life sized Dalek, giant model rockets, a Jacob’s ladder, a couple motorized scooters welded together, gutted pinball machines. All kinds of fun. We even played frisbee with a 100% duct tape Captain America shield.

Filed under: Hackerspaces