LCD and the Arduino
by Jim on Mar.10, 2010, under Projects
My LCD display from Adafruit has been staring at me for awhile now and I finally pulled it out and started tinkering with it. The hardest part about working with it out of the box is soldering headers onto the LCD board. In a convoluted and more playful fashion I used an old Cisco serial cable and a small mint tin to connect the 16 leads of the LCD to a small breadboard. Following a pinout diagram from Hacktronics I connected the arduino to the breadboard and a 1k ohm resistor. After verifying continuity with a multimeter to all leads I uploaded the code I got from Hacktronics. After the Arduino rebooted the result felt like an application of Clarke’s Law. Its really just proof of concept level implementation but it taught me about the LCD library and soldering techniques.
It kind of looks like a hack job…because it is 🙂
Memphis Hackerspace March 5th Meeting
by Joe on Mar.05, 2010, under Meetings
We had a great meeting tonight thanks again to everyone who came out and special thanks to those who brought projects to show off. Tonight we learned about using a vinyl cutter to create custom stickers and we learned how to mod a Montblanc pen refill to fit into a much cheaper pen casing. We also got a few more ideas for a space since we seem close to outgrowing Republic Coffee. A few of us showed up early to join in on the local 2600 meeting, they were a great bunch and we had a few stay for our meeting as well. The local 2600 group meet the first Friday of the month and they seem very interested in a Memphis Hackerspace. We’ll share the pictures from the meeting and of the various projects that were shown off soon.
Midsouth Makers Bylaws Discussion
by Jim on Mar.01, 2010, under Business
We have begun the formal process of discussing bylaws that are to be adopted by Midsouth Makers. Join the discussion now on the Wiki:
http://wiki.midsouthmakers.org/w/Bylaws
Zombie Walk 2010
by Dan9186 on Feb.24, 2010, under Events
You got it, we have our very own Zombie Walk here in Memphis. Who woulda thought that we would actually have something cool. For those of you who aren’t into the geeky aspect of zombies, I do seriously apologize for the fun that you will miss out on. Any who, this event has gone on since spring of 2007 and is back again for its fourth run. Maybe this will be a good chance for us to get out there, have some fun, and put ourselves in a visible light while doing so.
The general idea is this. You dress up like a zombie. You meet a Beale St. dressed like said zombie. When the walk begins, you “travel” (not exactly walk) down a predetermined path “attacking” the people that are clearly marked as “innocent bystanders.” Rinse, eat brains, repeat. Sounds like fun right? Well then let’s make sure that some of us are there. Hope there are plenty available to attend, and I hope everyone has a blast being slightly straaaaaaaaaaange.
Feb 19th Meeting
by Dan9186 on Feb.23, 2010, under Meetings
My apologies for taking so long to get a post up about our last meeting. The shortest and sweetest description of it I can give is, it was excellent. To note before anything is said, I have the pictures at home. They just aren’t put up yet. I’ll edit the post and add them as soon as I can.
[Edit] As promised, pictures are now up. Check out the Flickr and Facebook postings to see the rest.
We had a record number of people show up. Quite well more than I think any of us expected. A whole seven new people showed up, nearly doubling our attendance from the previous meetings. To top it all off, four of those that showed up knew no one in the group previously, and found us entirely based on our web presence. So welcome to all those that were brave enough to drop in. For those that have yet to come, the new people showed up and left with all limbs intact. We seriously try not to bite, and those that do are kept chained in the shed out back as pets.
In all the meetings seem to be improving as well. We spent a bit of time covering various portions of our agenda, and had quite a bit more time dedicated to goofing off. A few of us even managed to pick a lock or two this time around! There was a lot of good discussion about the non profit status of the organization. Some suggestions on places to go and people to contact about getting everything up and going. There’s still a lot of research to be done, but we are certainly well on our way! The idea was only thrown out there, but everyone definitely needs to be thinking and brainstorming about our bylaws as we’ll be working on our draft soon. So everyone please keep the ideas rolling, we need every bit of help we can get. At the end of it all, we finished what business there was to cover and really had a great time speculating what the group can accomplish and directions for it to head in. Pretty much it came down to the idea that there is little we won’t be able to do.