[chbot] Robotics Group meeting, 5 Idris Rd, 6-30pm, Monday 20 Feb 2023

[Mark Atherton]

Hello everyone,

Good turnout with 25 attendees, and lots of huddles-of tech-talk. $41 + 
change (in gold, and flat-money) collected and transferred into the 
robotics loose-change jar (for later banking).

Lots of new faces; welcome everyone.

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, Christchurch 
Amateur Radio 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 talked about an uncommitted control surface with a main-matrix of 8 
x 8 push buttons and LEDs. Unit communicates using MIDI over USB and has 
a published interface spec. Four broken units were purchased on eBay for 
roughly the same price a single working one from TradeMe. Each unit had 
a (differently) broken USB connector. All have now been repaired.

Mark also talked about a recently acquired 1080P HDMI video camera with 
C mount lens fitting. Interesting time evaluating various lenses using a 
test card and native 1080P monitor.
Zoom lenses performed the poorest, with chromatic aberrations, and poor 
resolution at corner targets. Best performing lenses were small, fixed 
focal length. There was also common left/right blue/yellow aberration 
which could be a sensor issue.

Graham brought in some custom-fabricated fiberglass front wings from a 
McClaren F5000 racing car; he talked about issues associated with their 
design and fabrication.

Robin talked about progress with his motor-controlled greenhouse 
window-opening project. Progress is being made, the new design appears 
to work.

William demonstrated his home-made dehumidifier; one of the more 
interesting looking pieces of kit we have seen for a while.

Rudy talked about a trip to an auction-house in Ashburton who were 
selling off some vintage gaming equipment.

Daren talked about the recent cyber-attack on the UK Royal Mail 
(international) group, and some of the unexpected conversations between 
attacker and victim.