[chbot] Robotics Group meeting, Monday 21 June 2021, 6:30pm, 5 Idris Road

[Mark Atherton]

Hello everyone,

Good turnout with 24 attendees, and lots of huddles-of-tech-talk. $52 + 
change (in gold and flat-money) collected and transferred into the 
Robotics loose-change jar (for later banking).

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.

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.

With thanks on behalf of the group,

Mark Atherton

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

Mark started the evening describing the High Resistance Meter he has 
borrowed. Unit has a basic current sensitivity of around 50fA (50 x 
10E-15 Amps) with a potential source up to 1000V. Unit can apparently 
measure up to around 2 x 10E+16 ohms.

Mark then went on to discuss a brand new (NOS) VCR97, with original 
packaging from 1940, an 81 year old Cathode Ray Tube; all part of the 
upcoming bell-jar based electron-gun and deflection assembly.

Andrew passed around a 1990s vintage, production, wire-wrapped timecode 
reader. Most unusual to see this connection-technology used outside of a 
prototype environment.

Bevin gave us an update on his highly-optimized 3D edge-searching 
algorithm (amongst others) used in one of his medical-related projects. 
He also included a partial 3D human anatomy course (based on a CT scan) 
as part of the talk. Most interesting.

William has packaged the Monster Clock. Full smoke, with all segments 
on, the unit consumes around 15W. Quite Bright. Next part of the 
project: Network Time updates.

Charles talked about his home-cooked Arduino/ESP32 programmable 
thermostat, as well as some of the associated 3D printed, and laser cut 
fabrication.