Ok, so I don’t know how many people have heard, but we’ve been invited to Nashville to check out the Hacker Consortium’s space. The current agenda is for us to leave at 8 AM on June 5th, meet up with the guys at HC, hang out with them and checkout the shop, stay the night, and come back on Sunday morning. The Nashville hackerspace has specifically asked for a headcount, and really we need one anyhow for the logistics planning of the trip. We have a potential for some “discounted” hotel rooms courtesy of Hilton. So the one catch is that we need to know how many people are going two weeks in advance to make use of this offer on rooms.

In short it would be preferable to not turn in the request right on the two week marker. So please everyone who wants to go can, but we need to know no later than this Wednesday May 19th. We will be putting in the request on Thursday, so if you don’t let us know before then we’re terribly sorry and hope that you might join us on the trip to Huntsville a few weeks later. Feel free to send in an e-mail to the mailing list, or send in one to info@midsouthmakers.org and let us know.

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.

So last Friday we had our very first workshop. We tried our hand at soldering. Despite a couple of burns, or two, or several, we hope everyone at least enjoyed themselves and the opportunity to introduce themselves to the world of discrete electronic components. So whether you were able to get your circuit to work or not, hopefully you at least learned how to solder. And hey, don’t get too terribly discouraged as you’ll have another shot on May 14th.

The circuit that we worked on was a 555 Timer based One-Shot (see monostable multivibrator.) The purpose of this circuit is to provide a steady, constant, digital signal that goes high for a predetermined amount of time no matter what the input trigger does and then shuts off until triggered again. In other words, no matter how many times you press the button on the circuit, the output generated will remain high for the set period and go off. Once it is off you can then press the button and it will repeat the same thing again. In the electronics world this is a very important, yet simple circuit. The 555 Timer is used in almost anything that requires a simple clock. Even more important for the purposes of our workshop, the circuit has several soldering points, and involves some creativity with component placement.

If you have any other questions about the circuit, feel free to shoot me an e-mail at [dhess at midsouthmakers dot org] and I can attempt to explain (or confuse you) even more. The links for the circuit diagram and Fritzing file should be below. If you have any issues getting to the files, just leave a comment.

Circuit Diagram: here.
Fritzing File: here.

We had a great meeting last Friday. Jim and Daniel were at MidsouthCon setting up our fan table, but they managed to make it to the meeting. They had a great time at the con and spread the word about our group. We had a special guest Bryan from Makers Local 256 in Huntsville, AL. We had a great time talking about how Makers Local got their start and it was nice to talk to someone from another hackerspace. Here are the Memphis Hackerspace Pictures from the March 12th meeting.

We also discussed fund raising ideas to help out the group. We currently have vinyl decals availiable at our meetings for $5. If you are interested please let us know in the next meeting. If you have any other fund raising ideas or ideals for decals please let us know. We have our very own Google Group you can join and stay in touch with the group between meetings.

Hi folks!  Midsouth Makers will be promoting the group at Midsouthcon today, tomorrow and Sunday.  If you can stop by please do, and bring any projects to show off or work on there.  Daniel H, Mike D and I (Jim H) will be at the “Fan Table” area to hand out literature, show off projects and spread the Maker word.

MidsouthCon is being held at Whispering Woods Conference Center in Olive Branch, MS the 12th through the 14th of March.  There is a fee to get in the door, so be prepared to spend money.