[chbot] Robotics Group meeting, Monday 20 July 2020, 630pm, 5 Idris Road

[Mark Atherton]

Hello everyone,

Several new faces this evening; welcome.

Good turnout with 20 attendees, and lots of huddles-of tech-talk. $24 + 
change (in gold, and flat-money) collected and transferred into the 
robotics loose-change jar (for later banking).

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

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

William showed off the latest enhancements to the huge 7-segment display 
project. Each 7-segment display is roughly A5 size, and quite bright. 
PWM brightness now implemented with input control from a pot and ADC.

David Bourke talked about his home-made rocket project, as well as 
associated adventures. Quite a learning experience for all concerned, 
and significant progress has been made. Great presentation with photos 
and videos.

Andy talked about his latest adventures running CodeBreakers in 
Christchurch (formerly The Crate Escape). Lots of development making the 
next generation of escape rooms, and puzzles. Also discussed various VR 
development environments including Unity, and GDevelop.

David Closey (new member) gave us an interesting talk about 
instrumenting a 1970s manual mill, in preparation for automation. 
Technique involved attaching a magnetically encoded strip to each axis, 
and displaying displacement on a suitably large and readable display.

Henry Allison talked about the upcoming meeting of 
Aerospace-Christchurch tomorrow. See the web for further details. He 
also mentioned an open source CNC mill project he has been following.