Meeting Minutes

Meeting Minutes

December 1st, 2009

Rex worked on his X-Y stepper motor rig. Discussed having a surface mount class with Nick, need to acquire some hardware first. Rex offered his place up for a future meeting location, discussed having this early 2010 on a Friday evening.

November 24th, 2009

Nathan assisted Will on the fringe detector circuit, tested out different photo-transistors. Barry got his CD-R laser operational (removed from the drive).

November 17th, 2009

Met at Barry & Jenn's house while Jenett was away at SC09. Rex and Will got the Laser_Interferometer fringe detector circuit operational. Steve tested an RFID reader on his Arduino. Jenn worked on her LED bracelet. Barry extracted a high power laser from a CD burner.

November 10th, 2009

Will brought his Laser_Interferometer gear and set it up with Nathan's green laser pointer. Started working on building a detector to count fringes. Rex worked on an old Oscilloscope.

November 3rd, 2009

General topics covered.

October 27th, 2009

10th meeting. General topics covered. Nathan setup a laptop to run Graffiti Research Lab's Laser Tag projector/laser tracking program for use at Phreaknic 13. Jenett disassembled a VCR to get a motor as well as worked on a costume. Also worked on her laser harp project.

October 20th, 2009

9th meeting. General topics covered.

October 13th, 2009

No meeting

October 6th, 2009

8th meeting, 10 attendees. Jenett tested out Will's telescope CCD with the microscope. Will brought his Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and showed off his new ability to control the X-Y axis control through Scheme.

September 29th, 2009

7th meeting, 9 attendees. Started off by making speakers out of wire coils attached to the bottom of plastic cups. Jenett tested out a microscope. Nathan demoed his Arduino kiosk input device he's working on. Several of us debugged a few of the AVR programmers and got them back into working condition again.

September 22nd, 2009

Sixth meeting, 9 attendees. Started off by reconfiguring WiFi for easier access of attendees. Next 1.5 hours was a formal discussion about the direction of the space, what projects people are working on, and about continued use of Jenett's basement. At the end, Rex showed us the complete process of how he etches circuit boards, creating 6 ATiny programmer boards in the process.

Discussion points:

• We may continue using Jenett's basement for another 6 months (until Apr 2010), at that time we will re-evaluate if use of the basement is still acceptable or meeting our needs. If we have enough interest we may begin discussing becoming more formal as a group and finding a space to rent.
• If we get to a point that we have shared tools stored in the space then unattended use of the basement can be accommodated by installing an outside door lock and a door at the top of the stairs.
• All agreed that we need to have our weekly meeting even if the basement is configured to allow unattended access, a large part of this group is sharing knowledge while we are all together at the same time.
• All agreed that for now, while meeting in Jenett's basement, the space will be invite only (read: we are not advertising the group or otherwise publicly seeking more attendees. However, if you found us and are interested ask us if you can attend a meeting and you will more than likely be invited). Unattended access to the basement, if configured, would only be provided to attendees that have been to several meetings and are in good standing.
• The issue of a more formal name for our group and moving the wiki/mailing list to a new name was raised, it was decided it was not a critical issue at this point. At the 6 month mark we can revisit the issue if/when a more formal entity is started.
• Mark discussed the makerbot and how he intends to buy one in the near future; also that if we where interested he could bring it in to a meeting so we can try using it
• Discussed the idea of having regular presentations on our own areas of expertise, Nathan volunteered to do this first on a small Arduino program he wrote at the next meeting
• Round table discussion of what projects each of us wants to work on and accomplish

September 15th, 2009

Fifth meeting, 9 attendees. General AVR and Arduino free-for-all.

September 8th, 2009

Fourth meeting, 6 attendees. More AVR programming, discussed microcontroller projects for True Dungeon. N64 power cord repairs. Nathan setup his 5V 20A regulated power supply so each person can power their breadboard without having to find an outlet to plug-in a power brick. Uploaded more AVR code to the wiki for easy access. At 9:16pm we watched the International Space Station and the shuttle Discovery fly over Bloomington together, quite fantastic!

September 1st, 2009

Third meeting (Jenett's basement - all future meetings will be here unless otherwise specified), 9 attendees. Setup tables and chairs in the basement, moved in mini fridge from the garage. Everyone setup proto boards with AVR/ATMega chips, worked out problems with ATTiny USB programmers and avr_dude/gcc software. Uploaded AVR blinky test code to the wiki (AVR). Looked at Jupiter with Jenett's 8" telescope at the end of the evening.

August 19th, 2009

Second meeting (Max's Place), 9 attendees. Discussed what it is we want to accomplish with this group and what people want to get out of it. Agreed to meet at Jenett's house for our next meeting to learn AVR programming and discuss using her basement as a future meeting location and potential hacker space.

June 6th, 2009

First meeting (Bakehouse), 4 attendees. Discussed forming a group of people before moving forwards with the space. Also discussed having an informal "group tool sharing" program.