Update – YLab

Finally! An Open House! May 5 2022

Written on April 19, 2022.

YES! OUR FIRST OPEN HOUSE SINCE THE COVID LOCKDOWN! We’ve finally mustered up the courage to let more people in. Our first post-COVID open house is scheduled for Thursday May 5, 2022 in our home at the David Dunlap Observatory. If you’ve been before, you still want to come out. We have lots of new tools, and we’ll...

CNC: Great progress and more materials

Written on April 12, 2022.

What else did you think we would test with? The bad news: back to the drawing board Easel We made more progress this week with our Shapeoko2 CNC machine. But first the bad news: we can’t use the Carbide Command software to run it. Carbide is the manufacturer of the Shapeoko machines. Their software doesn’t support anything...

Getting ready for CNC at ylab

Written on April 8, 2022.

When a laser cutter won’t cut it Our latest equipment donation is a Shapeoko CNC machine. Thank you Jedi Jay! After an initial shake-town and successful testing by ylab member Craig and his accomplice Shari, they came in and gave us a quick overview of its operation. After some test use, we came up with some improvements. The...

We are open again!

Written on October 4, 2021.

Finally! 18 long months. That’s how long we’ve been out of our home at the DDO – Richmond Hill’s David Dunlap Observatory. Mostly, it’s been COVID. But the DDO has not been idle during that time, undergoing a major restoration. We’ll post more about that later. The DDO is officially a community center...

DDO Black Hole Bigger Than Expected

Written on February 27, 2021.

Not a DDO construction update. Cygnus X-1, the first X-ray source accepted to be a black hole, is bigger than expected. Possibly the biggest astronomical claim to fame for the giant telescope of the David Dunlap Observatory is its role in the first observations confirming Cygnus X-1 as a black hole. We haven’t checked lately to see...

Free ham radio class! On-line! But why?

Written on December 22, 2020.

Free ham radio class! On-line! But why? Stuck in your house during COVID? Want to talk to people but don’t want them to see your sequestration hair-do or lack thereof? Wishing you had done more to properly learn electronics? Too much dust on your voltmeter and soldering iron – if you can find them? Think a ham radio license would...

COVID Closure Extended

Written on December 22, 2020.

COVID CLOSURE EXTENDED – WE’RE GOING ON-LINE The City of Richmond Hill, our hosts at the David Dunlap Observatory, are anticipating keeping all community centres closed until June 2021. The DDO is managed as a community centre, so that puts our activities there on hold until then. Ylab members have been meeting on-line, including our...

Ylab and A.I. North team up: Python crash course on Sept 20

Written on September 8, 2018.

Ylab member Lucian has been running the Artificial Intelligence North meetups for the last couple of years at Markham Public Libraries’ Angus Glen branch. He’s had an incredible variety of quality speakers and topics – machine learning, neural networks and more. Click on the link to see for yourself. The meetups have...

What’s been going on: Light sabre tune-ups!

Written on August 27, 2018.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been performing surgery on the light sabres people made in our class several months ago. All our light sabres can do single or multiple colours. Those multiple colours are way more impressive than the picture shows. Our light sabres were designed by ylab member Richard. We have a custom circuit...

Radio non-silence. Background non-noise.

Written on April 9, 2018.

Ylab has run some amateur radio events and classes with our friends from the York Region Amateur Radio Club (YRARC). We like radio stuff because there’s a history of it at the DDO, and there’s some fascinating new activity and technology that’s clearly not your grandfather’s old ham rig. Some ylab members are also Scout leaders, and we’ve been helping...

YLab

Located inside the Richmond Hill David Dunlap Observatory
123 Hillsview Dr, Richmond Hill, ON L4C 1T3