Our meetup (and first public event in the new space!) for Arduino Day 2015 went brilliantly, thanks to all who came. Lots of new faces and old friends called in through the day, for a series of talks about getting started with Arduino, and to check out each others’ projects. A good time — and some really great discussions — were had.
After our talks and demos had finished, the day became a hackathon for the space. Lots of useful work went into setting up our network infrastructure:
…and, en route to getting our sensor network up and running, I (Bugs) was responsible for the first release of Magic Smoke in the space when I got my +12V and +3.3V lines confused. You can just about see the scorch marks on top of the large chip on my ESP8266:
(A replacement ESP8266-03 was soldered in place, and now sends out information about ambient light levels and motion detection using MQTT over our network. It’s the first step in our lighting control and security system)
We got our Station Clock working properly (generously donated by the excellent folks at Nottinghack), and saw in the change of hour with no sign of weakness or fatigue:
Eventually, dawn came and brought with it Janine, who supplied us all with life-giving toast and tea. A fun day, and a productive night!
It was great to see you all there, old members and new! We’re looking forward to seeing you all at our regular Monday and Saturday meetups (see the calendar in the left column for times), and can’t wait to hear what sort of events or workshops you’re interested in!