[chbot] CHCH Robotics Group, meeting notes Mon 16 Oct 2017

[Mark Atherton]

Hello everyone,

Good turnout with 21 attendees, and lots of huddles-of tech-talk. $29 
collected and transferred to BR05 account. This includes a $4 
electric-car-charging donation by Peter Harris, for his Nissan Leaf.

The recently prompted email regarding equipment donations to the trading 
table has resulted in quite a pile of ‘new’ equipment. Just to 
reiterate; yes donations are welcome, but not CRT, printers or toner.

With thanks on behalf of the group,

Mark Atherton

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William talked about his latest updates to his home-made 8 bit machine. 
New peripherals include the new ‘paper tape’ reader (actually a thermal 
printed paper strip). This project is moving along quite nicely.

Brindsley brought in his (very) portable spectrum analyser with tracking 
generator (9kHz – 2100MHz). Lots of interest in this machine, given its 
price point of around NZ$2550.

Mark B brought in a test meter and some micro-probes (home-made based on 
a bur (similar to commercial pogo-pin test points); a very easy to 
method measure corroded-lead components, and to penetrate conformal 
coating etc.

A Raspberry Pi Zero-W processor board was passed around. Quite small, 
and rather inexpensive (free with annual subscription to the Pi 
magazine) [apologies, forgotten the name of the person who did this].

Robin talked about the ESP32 WiFi Mogoose OS, and associated ecosystem 
which has sprouted from this project. This is looking like yet another 
game-changer in terms of price, performance, and power.

Ian talked about his experience making a magnetic gearbox.