This month’s meeting will have a highly focused theme: Tools and techniques for teaching middle school age children without spending a wad on hardware. There will be two speakers:
Alan Smith will bring examples of the boards related to his Wizarding 101 and 102 classes for middle schoolers and will focus on what he’s learned teaching introduction to microcontrollers from these classes as well as a full course.
Jon Wolfe of Anibit will talk about a graphical programmer he’s been developing.
Join other Raspberry Pi enthusiasts at the new Splatspace location in downtown durham this Thursday night starting at 6:30. Meetup details here. More info about Splatspace and their new 800 N Mangum location in Durham is available here.
This Monday the 12th at 7pm there will be the first meeting of the new year. We’re returning to a totally casual format this time, but if you have something worth sharing via video recording please send a note to the mailing list. Bring your physical and virtual show and tell items and any announcements, comments or questions that feel right.
For January and February the meetings will be in EBIII on the opposite side of the engineering campus from the parking and past meeting locations. Be sure to look at the meeting details page here to orient yourself. There will be signs on some of the doors of the other buildings but the local teleportation devices are down for software upgrades, so expect a good hike in any event.
Craig Cook recorded the most recent TriEmbed meeting’s presentations about C Preprocessing with the Arduino IDE, custom tools for laser-cut acrylic enclosures, getting results from the T962/T962A reflow ovens, and a tool being developed to allow easy bicycle wheel truing.
After being crunched through Handbrake they’ve been put on Youtube. Details of these and past meeting archives are on the TriEmbed Meetings/Archives page.
(By the way: smart phones don’t appear to render the menu bar of the TriEmbed web site’s main page, turning the whole thing into a set of three parallel lines near the upper right corner of the page. Clicking on that drops the nested menus for meeting, email, project info, etc, that is more obviously available with a desktop browser).
This Monday’s meeting will feature short (5-10 minute) talks/demos aimed at giving us ideas for future, in depth treatments as well as things to chat about during the latter portion of the meeting. If you have something you think would be interesting and can bring *the nub of it* to convey with 1-2 slides or demo gear and a few minutes, please expect to take part in this. If we can queue up/aggregate slide files or come up with other tricks to avoid the A/V equipment being a bottleneck that would be good. Send a line or two to the email list or comments here so the meeting details can be updated.
Join Fred Ebeling at the NCSU Triembed meeting on the 13th as he shares a short pictorial history of breadboarding and gives us an overview of his workbench and prototyping tools. Details here.
SPARKcon is an interdisciplinary creativity, art & design festival produced by the non-profit creativity incubator, Visual Art Exchange, in Raleigh NC. SPARKcon 2014 will be the 9th annual event and happens Sept. 11-14 in downtown Raleigh.
geekSPARK is a showcase for the creative use of new and interactive media and technology in the local community. Whether in the form of a large video game studio, or a solitary multidisciplinary genius, The Triangle is filled with people blending art with technology, creative ideas with technical know-how. Our goal is to bring more of these people together, and to provide a venue to promote their emerging work. There will also be 3D printers and other fun stuff.
This week on The Amp Hour Chris Gammel’s guests are Michael Ossman, the guy behind a (cheaper, simpler than previous, highly capable) software defined radio system and Greg Charvat, the guy behind a coffee can-based synthetic aperture radar system that uses your PC’s “sound card”. One of the most easy on the ears, friendly and interesting sharing between techies I’ve listened to in a good while. For those interested in learning about SDR Michael has started a tutorial series.
The annual Cary Swapfest was held at Ritter Park this year.
I was late getting to the ‘Fest and a change of plans kept me from taking my stuff to put up for sale. But I had a nice chat with Jon Wolfe of Anibit and got the dual H-drive chip I desperately needed to move the hdd motor project forward. At least one kindred spirit dropped by to chat and take a TriEmbed info sheet home with him. Hopefully we’ll be seeing him at a future meeting. The ‘Fest was much, much larger than the last time I went, but that was eons ago. I guestimate 40-50 distinct tables of interesting stuff for sale, including lots of electronic components and devices. They had snacks and drinks and held test sessions for those interested in getting or upgrading their amateur radio license.
I saw two other TriEmbed folks who appeared to have great success finding parts for their project. I would definitely recommend this event as being worth the $4 admission just for the fun of looking at the large collection of familiar and very unusual gizmos, not to mention the chance to yack with interesting people.
Scott Hall will be hosting the TriEmbed meeting at Splatspace this Saturday afternoon the 19th starting at 2pm. Two things to notice about meetings at Splatspace:
1) It’s full of tools. If you want to solder something together or ask a Splatspace member to drill some holes, you’re at the right place.
2) It’s full of tools that require respect. Kids are welcome but keep them close to you.
