[chbot] Robotics Group meeting, Monday 20 Sept 2021, 630pm, 5 Idris Road

[Mark Atherton]

Hello everyone,

Good turnout with 22 attendees, and lots of huddles-of tech-talk. $38 + 
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 a variable, regulated 2kV power 
supply he had designed, based on a 1300V/6W backlight transformer 
intended for powering CCFL tubes.

William talked about his 30-year-old 286 laptop refurbishment project. 
Work included replacing the RTC/RAM module with embedded power cell, 
fitting an SSD (heresy!), and adding network connectivity. All in all, a 
splendid hernia-portable compute-unit.

Graham Christie presented a puzzle on behalf of his son who is looking 
for a (some ?) Arduino mentor(s). Several members present put their 
hands up offering assistance.

Russell showed his PCB based implementation of a gray-coded disk. He 
also talked about a BLDC conversion of his previous brushed-motor driven 
solar-tracking system. He passed around some low-cost high torque BLDC 
motors, with and without onboard controllers.

Andrew brought in his multi-user location-sensitive interactive game he 
has been working on (along with an amazing promo-video). He also gave a 
demo of some of his latest smart LED products and components.