Our lack of clear direction is hampering our progress. We have lots of cool thoughts and ideas but we haven't mapped out what we need to do to make them happen. We need to develop a clear and concise strategic plan and document it on the website. I have planned; and will be running; a brainstorming session at this coming meeting to get the big picture mapped out. I will be providing all the materials needed for this session. Including a stack of bright happy textas! I'll be running a pretty strict time line and there will be no bikeshedding. If you need to know more, jump into IRC and I may answer your questions if I feel they wont give too much away. Your best bet is to show up at the meeting, all will be answered then. If you can't make it or you know your going to be late let me know here, in IRC, on the committee mailing list or my email.

We'll be in the Braddon Club's cottage again and I'll try to stick to our regular meeting schedule (Meeting Details). Get there as close to 6:15 as you can so we can get through the action items from the previous meeting, get started on the stategic planning session and hopefully we won't eat into the project show and tell time. It should be a fun night.

(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

Feel free to come to either or both parts of the meeting. First timers welcome.

Our official business this week will be focused on writing objectives and goals.

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

I, like many people, was excited to learn of the Sure Electronics LED Matrix displays going for cheap on ebay. Sure' makes several different LED displays, the most common being the 0832; in red (DE-DP104) or green (DE-DP105) and the 2416; also in red (DE-DP016) or green (DE-DP017).

This is the story of why I wrote my HT1632-AVR library. If that's of interest to you; read on, if you're just after the code; it's in devdsp/HT1632-AVR on GitHub.

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

Feel free to come to either or both parts of the meeting. First timers welcome.

Our official business this week will be focused on completing our ANCA application, and possibly more web site cleanup.

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

If you can read this, then we have successfully brought up our exciting new site layout!

To get started, look at the big navigation links at the top-right. Feel free to add comments with feedback and suggestions, or any bugs that might be lurking around.

One of my ongoing projects (I started it when I was about 15 years old with an aluminium one) has been a robot hand but only recently have I been able to easily make something that will control multiple hobby servos. Hooray Arduinos!

The Make Hack Void IRC channel is busy almost every day. #makehackvoid on irc.freenode.net

Direct Webchat Link

Direct link for IRC clients

6:15-7:15pm Official group & committee business 
7:15-8:30pm "Maker's Meetup", show & tell (bring projects!), project talk, fun stuff

Our official business this week will be focused addressing the concerns with the website:

At Make, Hack, Void we have started working on refitting an Emiglio/Scooter robot with new control systems. He was bought as a gift for one of our members from a market stall and is missing his controller. The hope to be able to extend his functionality beyond the standard factory controls while still maintaining as much of his appearance as possible.

Recently we spent an afternoon taking it apart to see what we can fit inside...

At our last meeting one of our members raised the issue of our web presence. The concerns raised include a number of user interaction problems. For example: the currently deployed theme is somewhat unattractive; the plethora of categories makes navigation a pain; the reverse chronological ordering of sibling comments is counter intuitive and a barrier to finding the newest comments. Another major concern on of communication. We aren't spending time keeping this site up to date with our progress as a group.