Sign up for the April 2nd LAN Party

Come have dinner and help support MidsouthMakers! Just mention “we’re here for MidsouthMakers” between 4pm-9pm Jan 29th!

Happy October!

Can you believe it’s October, already? Time to start getting into the Halloween spirit. And what better way to do that than with lots of spooky treats? That’s right, the Midsouth Makers are gonna have a Halloween themed bake sale! We’re gonna have lots of sweets – cookies, brownies, homemade marshmallows, a few whole cakes; there’s even a couple of sugar free goodies. But, wait! That’s not all! We’ll also have a few non-food items, such as hand sewn pumpkins and decorated paper bats.

Sounds like it’s gonna be loads of fun, doesn’t it? Well, the more people we have helping and coming to the bake sale, the more fun it will be. So, we will need all types of help – people passing out flyers, donations of many types (food, non-food, monetary), volunteers for the bake sale, someone taking pictures, people showing off projects to potential victims… I mean, potential customers. Costumes, especially homemade, are GREATLY encouraged.

Here’s the specifics – The bake sale will be held on Saturday, October 30. Set-up time will start at 9 am. The bake sale will go from 10 am to 1 pm. The location is Kevin and Brandi’s front yard, at 850 Avon in Memphis. Here is a file containing the sign up sheet, a set of guidelines for food donations/ingredients list and the flyer. If you have any questions or want to virtually ‘sign’ the sign up sheet, send it to board@midsouthmakers.org and it will be forwarded to Brandi.

Let’s make this an AWESOME bake sale! Be there or beware!

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.