[chbot] Robotics Group meeting, 5 Idris Rd, 6-30pm, Monday 15 Apr 2024 report

[Mark Atherton]

Hello everyone,

Good turnout with 22 attendees, and lots of huddles-of tech-talk. $28 + 
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, 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 progress with the home-made CPU assembler, and some of 
the issues adding a Reverse Polish Notation expression evaluator. Next 
step may be to add an Algebraic expression evaluator using The Shunting 
Yard Algorithm which he discussed.

He also talked about a very positive experience with Digikey and a 
poorly specified product they sold.

Russell brought along part of a Tesla Power Wall and explained how the 
system worked.

Peter Harris talked us through the History of the micro-invertor.

Andrew talked about next-gen escape room ideas, and associated special 
effects.

Andy talked about his latest acquisition, which advances his home-made 
EV tractor project.

For the Tektronix 7000 nuts out there, the amazing book written by 
Giovanni Becattini. 660-pages of mainframes, and plugins. 
www.k100.biz/e-Books.html Also an 880 page review of many classic HP 
instruments from the fifties to the nineties.

Is it scary when ESP32s turn up in a toothbrush ? 
hackaday.com/2024/03/05/hacking-an-actual-wifi-toothbrush-with-an-esp32-c3/

Interesting homemade underwater drone project 
youtube.com/watch?v=SVaSq2Ud8eg

A very well documented open source drone project including 2D Kalman 
filter. Uses FPU onboard a Teensy 4.1 which significantly reduces 
software complexity, youtube.com/@carbonaeronautics