TinkerSoc

Our next event is Soldering 101/Wearable Electronics #2, which will take place in the Jennison Building (Electronics) Project Labs this Monday (16th) at 18:00.

Soldering 101 is kinda like our early Christmas celebration as we will teach you how to solder a circuit that looks like a christmas tree and has flashing LEDs! Come along if you’d like to learn how to use a soldering iron and/or if you are feeling festive, although it is a bit early… Photos from last years event available at: http://bit.ly/G4p5N

We will also continue playing with conductive thread and the bits and pieces from the previous wearable electronics workshop so come along if you want to finish your wearable projects.

As you will be taking these kits back home with you, we will have to charge you 2 pounds for the christmas tree and a battery. Normally you would have to pay around 4 quid for the bundle if you got it straight from Rapid but we will be taking care of the difference from our Union budget. Kit fees can be paid to Em on the day.

We have limited kit available so we kindly ask you to sign up for a spot here if you would like to attend the event: http://tinkersoc.eventwax.com/soldering-101-christmas-edition

YOU DO NOT NEED TO BOOK A TICKET IF YOU ARE GOING TO CONTINUE WORKING ON YOUR WEARABLE ELECTRONICS PROJECT! (And it won’t cost you a penny to attend this session!)

Now that you’ve been to our practical electronics workshop (or maybe you knew enough already ), you should come along to our wearable electronics workshop and put those skills to use.

We’re going to combine your new found electronics skills with a little bit of sewing to make your clothes look flash and amazingly awesome/geeky. So, if you want to make your clothes look cool come along to our workshop next Monday at 6pm in the electronics laboratory (in the Jennison building, H3 on the second page of the campus map), and make sure you bring a spare t-shirt or a hat!

The doors of the building lock at 5. Fear not though, we will be able to let you in if you knock on the windows of the lab or if you give us a quick ring at 07873339597.

Of course, as we are a society that heavily relies on membership fees we now have to insist that to attend our workshops you are a fully paid up member. To become a fully paid up member see the instructions on our membership page and pray that OnCampus is willing.

The first TinkerSoc meeting of this year has now occurred!  It was held in KLSR4, in Keynes, and it was quite packed!  We hope that all of you that attended enjoyed it, and want to come back next week (same time, same place) for more Tinkering.

Omer did a presentation on what TinkerSoc is all about: we have the slideshow on the TinkerSoc slideshare.

Summary: TinkerSoc is a group of people that like to tinker; pulling things appart, putting them back together, inventing, creating, and all the while having FUN!

If you’re interested in joining, then have a look at our membership page for instructions.

If you’re not on the mailing list yet, email subscribe [at] tinkersoc.org from the address you want to subscribe from.

Upcoming Events and Things

Open Mic: Next week, same time, same place, we’re going to be holding an open mic evening, with quick talks from any of the members about anything they feel like talking about!  You can sign up for next Monday on the open mic page on the wiki, or just turn up and put your name down on the board.

Junk Trading: We’ve all got plenty of excess electronic junk that we don’t want, don’t need or simply do not have any space for.  Some people have more than others.  On the wiki you will find the junk trading page, where people have been putting up some of the junk that they have, and some of the junk they’d like.  You never know, you might see something and get inspired!

More workshops and talks! Watch this space for info on upcoming talks and workshops!  You can take a look at the calendar too, if you fancy seeing what sort of thing we have planned!

Intro to Processing

Matt and Chris also presented a basic introduction to Processing, a programming language that allows us to build graphical programs very quickly and simply.  We dissected the spiroID project, went on a tour of all the processing code (as well as the Arduino code that runs on the hardware), and how it essentially works together.

We also presented a couple of programs which Chris has written as an example of a fairly basic Processing project, which you can hack with and make your own!  The programs, called PiGen, approximate the value of Pi using the Monte Carlo method (see the handout for more details).  One program used a 2D representation to show the calculation taking place, and the other used a 3D representation.  The fantastic thing is, both of them too less than 4 hours to complete each.

During the workshop we did some lightning fast live debugging to get rid of a bug that we discovered in the PiGen3d program.

You can download the source code for yourself on the wiki page.

We presented a little challenge: make something cool with Processing.  You can use our code as a starting point, or you can do something completely different!  Come and share it at an open mic night or email it to us to showcase on the blog.

So, hope to see you all next week!

Everyone had a great time Friday evening, and there were many LEDs and glow sticks to be found. Hopefully everyone who wants to be is now signed up to the mailing list.  If not, you can always email subscribe @ tinkersoc.org and we’ll add you to the mailing list straight away!

See more photos of what we’ve been up to on the Tinkersoc Flickr Pool

Chris just uploaded a video of the spiroID project we have been working on, check it out!

spiroID Demo from Chris Roberts on Vimeo.

Come and find us in the Societies Fayre (24th, around Elliot) and get your unique spiroID!