[chbot] Robotics meeting 18 Jan 2016, notes

[Mark Atherton]

Despite being a wet and windy night:

22 people attended, including some younger members. Henry brought a 
friend along.

$25 cash collected, which has been deposited into the BR05 account. 
Loose change is in the collection box for next meeting.

Car park was very close to capacity.

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Corey gave a show-and-tell about the CHIP processor board - this is 
advertised as a $9 machine which runs Debian. Briefly, the machine has a 
1GHz processor, 512MB RAM, and 4GB FLASH. Also USB, video, WiFi and 
Bluetooth. Funded by kickstarter, it isn't often that a project with a 
US$50k pledge target lands up with over US$2M in the piggy bank.

Ivo made an interesting presentation about his Arduino powered/PWM 
controlled electric cooktop. Quite a feat of engineering, as well as a 
well documented set of photos with commentary.

Andrew gave a demo of his T1 transistor computer which appears to be 
making good progress. Masses of LEDs indicating internal state (at 
transistor level) of a string of counters clocked from an external 
source. Most interesting, and dazzling demonstration.

I am sorry if I missed other talks, I arrived late due to prior commitments.

It was great to be part of this wonderfully lively meeting.

Mark Atherton
18 Jan 2016