At last Friday’s meeting Sonny brought and demonstrated his Doppler Direction Finder Kit. Here’s the video of the demonstration and some questions / answers about it.

MidsouthMakers Doppler Direction Finder Kit Demonstration from Midsouth Makers on Vimeo.

MidsouthMakers Doppler Direction Finder Kit Demonstration by Sonny Mounicou on 8/6/10. www.midsouthmakers.org

The HAM Radio Technician License is the entry level licensing for Ham Radio operators to get their call sign and the ability to talk over the air. On August 13th (after an abbreviated regular meeting) we’re going to hold our very own study group to prepare to take the Technician’s License test. We won’t be administering a test, but we will be covering where and when you can take the test and we’ll be covering topics covered on the test. If you’re interested in learning about HAM radio please join us at 7pm in the Nolan Building at Christian Brothers University. There is no cost involved. (Donations are welcome)

Since we have a lot of tech members among our group I wanted to pass along (in case you aren’t already on the GOLUM mailing list) that some people are looking to revive the Group of Linux Users Memphis. GOLUM was started in the mid 90s and in the past years has faded away. There has been a lot of buzz on the mailing list the past two days about getting something started again. So If you’re into Linux in any capacity from absolute beginner or advanced professional, check out the GOLUM mailing list and see what the buzz is all about.

Also Thursday 7/22 is the July meeting for the Memphis PHP Group. I know we have a couple of members planning on checking out the meeting. The meeting is being hosted at Lunaweb on Park Avenue.  See the site for more info and if you’re interested come check it out with us. digital accessibility is available for new users interested in learning software from linux too!

With all this happening don’t forget about us! We’re meeting every Friday night at 7pm at Christian Brothers University on Central. We’ll be in the Nolan Building room 241. We hope to see you there and bring you’re friends! The group has quite a bit of diversity, we’re not just a bunch of techies so anyone interested in making something is more than welcome!

Planted Raised Flower Bed

The goal of this project was a cheap and easy design of a do it yourself raised flower bed. The benefits of a raised flower bed are better soil drainage so that the plant’s roots aren’t in compacted, water logged soil, better control of soil mixture, and extended growing seasons since raised beds warm up sooner in the spring, and stay warmer longer in the fall than traditional flower beds. This was a very quick project to set up, I think we spent more time wandering around Lowe’s than we did actually putting the container together. You can easily go buy a prefab raised flower bed for about $100. The frame itself, plus the landscape fabric to put under it to keep weeds out, cost us less than $60. We haven’t bought any soil or plants to put in it yet, those are coming in a few weeks. This was much more of a spontaneous idea. 

MidsouthMakers Teaches Class On Learning How to Solder

Want to learn how to solder? The Midsouth Makers group will be hosting a beginners’ soldering workshop on Friday, May 14th at 7pm in Room 241 in Nolan Hall at Christian Brothers University campus, 650 East Parkway South, Memphis, TN 38104. If you wish to buy a soldering iron it will be $10, but only $5 if you bring your own soldering iron or just want to borrow one. We are a newly founded non-profit group looking to meet, teach, and work with others on DIY projects.

We will have a kit that includes a 555 timing chip and everything you need to build a small circuit that lights an LED when you press the button. All parts including batteries are included. Each kit contains the timing chip, 3 resistors, a button, 2 batteries, a LED, a capacitor, and perf board to solder everything to.