Ballarat Hackerspace - Non-profit self-led community workshop in Ballarat, Australia.

Our Projects

Below is a selection of major projects developed by our members as a group, ranging from self-initiated creative and technical builds to grant-funded public art installations delivered for local community events.

We encourage members to learn-by-doing, so any/all of our members are welcome to help on these big group projects and contribute with the skills they have while also learning new skills along the way.

If any of these projects align with your interests, we welcome you to get in touch—whether you are a prospective member looking to collaborate on future builds, or an organisation seeking a capable partner to design and deliver a custom project for your event or initiative.

Sega OutRun Retromod Cabinet

A member got their hands on an original 1980s Sega Outrun arcade cabinet that was electrically non-functional but mechanically complete. He put the call out to turn it into something cool, so it became a group project to retromod the original controls to work with a modern gaming PC and allow players to use it as a modern racing sim. The original pedals, shifter, and steering wheel were spliced with modern electronics which is all fed into some Arduino Pro Micros to convert the analog inputs into digital USB signals, which then go into a gaming PC embedded in the cabinet. A new fascia was designed and laser-cut out of wood and combined with a welded steel frame it allowed a new LCD monitor to fit where the CRT was. A custom button-box was fabricated to fill in the missing buttons required for modern racing games, and at this point it's now fully functional and just needs some tidying up.

Ye Olde Telephone

Ye Olde Telephone began as a collaboration with the City of Ballarat, initially developed as a “Santa Phone” installation for the Sturt Street Christmas decorations. The project featured a restored phone box containing a period telephone, retrofitted with a Raspberry Pi that allowed members of the public to dial in and listen to recorded messages from Santa.

Energy Breakthrough

Members of the hackerspace initially volunteered to support a local primary school competing in the Energy Breakthrough human-powered vehicle challenge. The school was experiencing ongoing issues with the standard off-the-shelf kit, including excessive heat buildup inside the enclosed cabin, limited access for repairs due to the sealed body design, and a fragmented lighting and electronics setup based on individual bicycle components that were poorly suited to the operating environment.

Picocade - Native PICO-8 Arcade Cabinet

The Picocade is an arcade cabinet that natively runs the <a href="https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php">PICO-8 fantasy console</a>, a modern cross-platform game engine with retro aesthetics and limitations. We're all huge fans of PICO-8 here at the hackerspace and lots of us have developed and released games for the PICO-8 platform, so after looking around for "real hardware" that runs PICO-8 and finding it all to be either handheld consoles or very basic arcade cabinets with old computer monitors as the display, we realised we could do better.

AvB - Vote With Your Feet

AvB (“Vote With Your Feet”) is a large-scale interactive digital art installation that was fully designed, funded, and constructed by members of the hackerspace. The installation comprises two physical “doorways” and a wraparound RGB LED matrix display, supported by a welded steel substructure with a timber-clad upper enclosure. Integrated sensors within each doorway detect participants as they walk through, allowing the public to cast votes in response to questions displayed on the LED panels.