Hackspace of the month
REGULAR
orey Koval wrote to let us
know about Unallocated
Space, a makerspace in Severn,
Maryland, currently celebrating
seven years of making.WHEN DID YOU START?
Unallocated Space started in the summer of 2010
with two bored hackers driving home from work
looking for something to do in their free time. The
thought “let’s start a hackerspace” got floated around
and the wheels were put into motion. From there
they reached out to the community to find other
interested parties and quickly built up the group
that became the founding key holders of the space.
The group was able to raise funds and move into a
building later that year where the space still resides.
Over the past seven years the space has grown and
formed a thriving community with a wide variety of
expertise and interests.WHO IS IT FOR?
One of the unique things about UAS is that we’re
free to the public. We provide classes, tools, and
equipment to the wider community. Members of
course get perks, but really UAS is a labour of love
by people who enjoy learning and helping others
to learn. As for our membership base, we’ve got
a diverse group, but the area we’re in is the most
cybersecurity-focused region in the US. So, naturally
we have a lot of cybersecurity, electronics, and RF
people. But that’s of course not exclusive and really
we accept anyone who wants to be a part of the
space. There is something magical about watching a
senior FPGA engineer work on stained glass with our
crafts instructor, or showing a grandmother how to
program Arduino because she wants to fabricate her
own cat toys. We’re a social group of wildly different
people, each of us bringing our own specialty.WHAT EQUIPMENT DO YOU HAVE?
The usual suspects: servers, networking equipment,
bins of Bluetooth / RF hardware, three 3D printers,
power tools, a plotter, as well as radio equipment.C
Hackspace of the month:
Unallocated Space
We’ve got a decent amount of VR hardware as well.
Most recently, we just picked up an entire pallet
of lasers. We also have shelves full of electronic
components, computer parts, and a lot of other
odd stuff. Oh, and we have a tornado made of fire.
(Complete with licensed pyro-technicians, of course.)HOW DO YOU SHARE YOUR IDEAS?
Our most active communications platforms are
Slack and Google Groups. But we also frequent (and
participate in) the security conference scene. We
always have a good showing at DEFCON, BSidesDC,
BSidesCharm, and ShmooCon. We also like
partnering with other hackerspaces in the region like
our neighbours to the south, HacDC, or our friends up
north at the Baltimore Node.
Additionally, we use other social platforms such
as Facebook, Twitter, and Meetup.com to let people
know what all events are happening at the space.
We also do a lot of outreach into the community by
participating in local STEM events and information
security conferences.WHAT TRAINING DO YOU DO?
Unallocated Space offers a wide variety of classes
to the public. Some of our continuously running
classes include Information Security, Arduino and 3D
Printing. We have also hosted many other classes
in the past including Software Defined Radio, Web
Development, Electronics Fundamentals, Linux,
and a very wide variety of others. All instructors
teach on a volunteer basis, so all classes depend on
instructor availability.
To find out more about or classes, or to host one
yourself, check out hsmag.cc/hiTvUn.WHAT HAVE YOU MADE RECENTLY?
Our members are always busy working on projects,
whether it’s something for themselves or for the
space. Some of our projects are hard to capture in a
picture, such as our complex network infrastructure
or many of our members’ software projects, but there
are plenty of hardware projects to check out in the
pictures on the opposite page.Unallocated Space
unallocatedspace.org
Unallocated
info@
unallocatedspace.org