Here's an introduction from the host of our home base. 

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Welcome to the STEAMakers Guild of Ottawa/Gatineau

Makers running amuck on stage  😉

Do you enjoy the process of bringing your ideas to life, blending art and technology?

Do you enjoy the process of learning and putting to practice new skills?

Do you enjoy working with others, sharing your knowledge and skills?

Are you motivated by a desire to make a difference?

You've come to the right place

We're a group of creative hobbyists, apprentices, and masters who co-create at the intersection of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM). Our group harnesses such things as wearable and tech couture, innovative materials, sensor networks, virtual reality, and stage design software. We re-imagine and prototype creative stage designs, interactive theatre props, reactive artistic displays, and wearable technologies, among other, yet to be imagined applications for the performing arts. The guild fosters exploration, experimentation, and play as quintessential elements for fostering creativity and innovation. We aim to make everything we do as accessible as possible for beginners (both young and old), employing technologies that teachers across the globe use for teaching students as young as 7 years old how to program a computer and how to make the computer interact with the world around us. Through the donations that we receive, we strive to remove cost as a barrier to learning these new skills.

The STEAMakers Guild is a place to learn and share knowledge and skills in:

• Approachable computer programming that is taught to primary and secondary school aged youth globally (Arduino and C/C++, Python and Micropython, Scratch and simliar programming languages).

• Physical computing: By adding a simple, off-the-shelf "HAT" to a Raspberry Pi or a "Shield" to an Arduino UNO, you can sense and control your physical environment in cool, interesting, intriguing ways.

• Intermediate level STEAMakers, if they so choose, can make the transition from HATs and Shields to wiring together electronic components on prototyping/experimenter solderless breadboards.

• Advanced level STEAMakers can choose to piece together or design relatively simple electronic circuits and create soldered breadboards--or even design their own printed circuit boards to make circuit board replication much easier.

• STEAMakers can learn and apply crafting, woodworking, and metalworking skills.

The STEAMakers Guild also hosts a specialised branch of volunteers and pre-professionals, the STEAM-fx Collective. Members are keenly interested in hobby electronics and micro-controller programming, and are motivated to put our Maker skills to use toward developing and supporting customized special effects for greater Ottawa-Gatineau area volunteer-run, community performing arts group partners. STEAM-fx is currently focused on evolving and supporting our in-house open source hardware and software electronic ecosystem (Spark-fx) for remote controlled, on-stage, battery powered special effects. Spark-fx is freely supported by our members in order to keep stage production costs to a minimum while making that little extra 'oomph' within reach of community centred performances. We're a community non-profit organisation helping other community non-profit organisations. Though we strive to maximise reuse, we must recognise that some modestly priced electronic components will be impractical to reclaim (e.g. LED light strips or motors that are permanently affixed to a set piece); for those components, our partners are normally expected to fund that cost.

The STEAMakers Guild and STEAM-fx Collective have our home base in the "incubator13" room at the Rideau High School, now a community hub for the forseeable future.

Along with other Maker partners at the incubator13 room, we provide community centred workshops on computer programming (mainly for Arduino micro-controllers, Raspberry Pi single board computers and RPi Pico micro-controllers, and BBC micro:bit and ESP32 micro-controllers), simple electronic circuit design and construction (including printed circuit board design and soldering skills), and stage related technologies. Some examples of our workshops include:

• • • • Introduction to Stage Lighting using a DJ-style lighting board, stock DMX-512 stage lights, and in-house special effects. [Appropriate for beginners aged 12+]

      • Introduction to soldering functional electronic circuits. (Attendees solder various take-home DIY soldering kits culminating in the creation of a small 'firefly' robot that reacts to light.) [Appropriate for beginners aged 12+]

      • A taste of computer programming and electronic circuits using Arduino and experimenter breadboards. (Attendees complete a simple, functional take-home project incorporating a reusable Arduino microcontroller and small circuit on a reusable solderless breadboard.) [Appropriate for those aged 12+ who have some computer programming experience.]

      • Parent-child friendly workshops:

        • • Programming a small video game using the Scratch visual programming language. [Appropriate for ages 7 - 12+ years old]

          • Building a Scribble Bot - a simple robot that draws patterns on paper. [Appropriate for accompanied children up to 9 years old]

          • Permissively tearing down electronic equipment just to see how it's made. (Attendees may take home components that they consider cool; STEAMakers otherwise aims to maximise reuse of disassembled components.) [Appropriate for ages 8+]