I made some progress on the Emiglio build tonight. I've had the mounting plates that fit in the collars at the top of his torso and the bottom of his head ready since the weekend. The Lazy Susan bearing I ordered off ebay arrived yesterday and I was planning on heading to the hardware store today for some nuts and bolts to fit them all together.

I had a moment of inspiration when I was collection up the parts to take to the hardware store (so I would get the right sizes). I didn't need nuts and bolts I just needed a way to get a screw driver to the second mounting plate. A drill took care of that. I used some wood screws I had laying around to fit the bearing to the mounting plates and reinstalled the whole system into Emiglio.

The motion's smooth and quiet. I posted a quick video on Vimeo which you can see here. I hope to motorise it in the next fortnight, but I'm still considering my options. I think I'll take a trip to Bunnings on the weekend and soak up some inspiration.

I wrote most of this post in an email to one of of members who couldn't make it to the meeting this week. It seemed appropriate to post it as a news item so people can get an idea of what we've been talking about.

The discussions this week were quite technical, some of which were well over my head. While we didn't managed to provide any solid solutions to the all the problems presented. I'm hoping that we can turn the Maker Meet ups into problem solving sessions for all kinds of problems facing Canberra makers from the experienced to the novice. If you have a problem, no mater how trivial or complex, I'd encourage you to come along to our next Maker Meetup in a fortnight (there will be an update here to remind you) and present it to the group. We might not be able to solve it right away, but we might be able to give you some stimulating ideas that help you get you project moving again.

Click on to see what we've been up to.

6:15-8:45pm "Maker's Meetup", show & tell (bring projects!), project talk, fun stuff.

First timer's welcome. If you are bringing anything really exciting, please post up in the comments!

See here for complete details, including location and a map.
(From next week, Maker's Meetups will be happening every fortnight at 6:15.)

6:15-7:15pm Official group & committee business 
7:15-8:45pm "Maker's Meetup", show & tell (bring projects!), project talk, fun stuff

Tentative official agenda:

• Strategic Plan review
• Meeting format proposal
• Committee membership & size

See here for complete details, including location and a map.

I have finally posted a video of my HT1632-AVR library in action. There's not a lot to the video but I am sick of trying to get Adobe Premiere to play nice with my (possibly lack of supported) CODECS.

One thing I find myself doing time and time again is dropping a microcontroller into a schematic, then wiring up a crystal, serial port, power filtering, etc.

To save myself (and you!) time, I'm saving schematics with the initial parts already hooked up. To get your project going, grab one of the schematics and delete the parts you don't need for your project.

Download

You can grab the schematics from out GIT repository:

More progress has been made on MHVlib - I just added support for passive LED matrices and gamma correction. A/D & PWM support were added last week.

Check it out on the MHVlib project page.

(Sorry for the late notice on this one, folks.)

6:15-7:15pm Official group & committee business 
7:15-8:45pm "Maker's Meetup", show & tell (bring projects!), project talk, fun stuff

This week it seems like we have a lot of official business again, so we may run over the one hour limit.

Another (Completed!!) project is a DDR (Dance dance revolution) board for the Dreamcast.

I will let the pictures speak for themselves but it is made of MDF with thin aluminium sheet contact cemented down over the top, L-brackets and polycarbonate squares for the pads. Wiring it up was as easy as soldering to the correct buttons on the control pad.

Show & Tell, Maker's Meetup

No formal committee part to this meeting, just bring your projects to show and tell, or just bring yourself.

DIFFERENT LOCATION: In the Canberra Centre upstairs food court, next to the escalators to Dendy.