Tx\Rx members constructing what looks like a baby tardis

By Alex Wukman

Houston’s one and only Hackerspace Tx\Rx Labs has announced there spring/summer class series. The two-year-old organization, headquartered at 2024 Commerce St., is composed of over 20 members with backgrounds ranging from fashion design to computer security. The physical space boasts an impressive array of workstations and tools throughout the various labs; including a fully functioning metal shop, complete with plasma torch, and a 96 blade computation cluster in the electronics lab.

According to the Tx\Rx website, the group is hard at work constructing their very own bio lab, no word on what biosafety level they will be pursuing as the lab is developed or what type of pathogens will be available. The classes that are being offered range in price and complexity; an introductory lecture on Bioninformatics, database management for molecular biology, costs $10 while an introduction to Arduino, the open source electronics prototyping platform, costs $60. Mixed in with classes on 3D open source CADD and Linux Kernel Programming are classes that are less tech heavy, like wilderness skills and survival or drawing and painting.

Tx\Rx also offers varying levels of membership ranging from $10 per month to $120 per month; surprisingly the more expensive memberships are the hardest to get; partly because those are the ones that have their own dedicated work stations.

Tx\Rx is part of a worlwide community of hackerspaces that promote projects from the silly, creating a pizza machine, to the sublime, developing open source facial recognition software that utilizes pre-existing web cams. Every Friday at 7 p.m. they hold an open house for interested parties.