[chbot] Robotics Group meeting, Monday 15 Oct 2018, 630pm, 5 Idris Road

[Mark Atherton]

Hello everyone,

Enthusiastic turnout with 23 attendees, and lots of huddles-of 
tech-talk. $31 + change (in gold, and flat-money) collected and 
transferred into the robotics loose-change jar (for later banking). NB 
The group deposited over $150 into the brown box, $10 of the gold-coin 
box was used for associated change.

Quick reminder: equipment donations are welcome for the trading table, 
but no CRT based product, printers, toner or items that are likely to be 
a disposal burden. All sales from the trading table should go into the 
brown box on the wall, and are directly for the benefit of our host 
club, NZART Branch 05.

With thanks on behalf of the group,

Mark Atherton

PS Lots of interest in having Dave Jagger back if possible, and for him 
to talk about almost any aspect of his technical contribution to ARM; he 
was a great speaker.

============

William gave a demo of his latest audio-machine, the “blipper-4000p”. An 
agile audio generator based on the 555, along with some analogue switches.

Andrew E brought along his completely home-made (MDF) CNC machine. Final 
unit will have plastic-cutting-board central guides, and PET plastic 
runners. Position is resolved using a home-made tincan opto-chopper. 
Apparently based on a design by the German engineer ‘Homofaciens’, this 
is quite an ingenious design.

Andrew D brought along his scope-atron-9000; a 1960s vintage 
oscilloscope with the CRT replaced by a huge lens and a 320x200 LCD 
driven by an Arduino. Coloured display patterns form a fascinating a 
puzzle to the user; very creative piece of kit.

Russel was helped into the club room with his 48VDC to 220VAC 
multi-kilowatt invertor, based on a Chinese series of pre-built modules 
(complete with semiconductors, and heatsinks). He talked about some of 
the issues of building and testing his unit.

Graeme brought in more of his spark-eroded work, including a 6mm mild 
steel plate with a series of test cuts. The unit appears to be cutting 
about 3mm per hour. Quite impressive progress with this project.

Steven talked about one of his recent purchases; a time-of-flight 
optical distance sensor.