It was great to see some new faces from Busselton and a member we haven't seen for a few years.

Phillip's printer was busy printing again:

A new batch of SMD Display Boards have been made at home.  Solder paste applied via a laser cut Mylar stencil:

Li-ion battery charger board on a breakout PCB adaptor board:

More on this butterfly project in a few months time:

Still yet to have a play with the Arduino Grove kit:

A great turnout for the first meeting of 2019.  We had a few new people showing up with projects to talk about and work on.  Below are some links on products and things that where discussed.

https://www.mosaicmfg.com/products/palette-2   Palette Pro 2 splicing kit

https://www.catphones.com/en-us/features/integrated-thermal-imaging/   Phone based FLIR camera

https://www.melexis.com/en/product/MLX90640/Far-Infrared-Thermal-Sensor-Array  Cheep MLX90640 32x24 pixel long-IR sensor
https://au.mouser.com/Search/Refine?Keyword=MLX90640

https://bsidesperth.com.au/  Annual Perth Security Conference

https://www.instructables.com/id/WIFI-CONTROLLED-RC-PLANE/   Build your own WiFi RC controlled plane

https://jeelabs.org/2018/retrocomputing-on-f407/  Z80 and CP/M OS emulation on a STM32 board.

https://www.freetronics.com.au/   supplier of Arduino kits and other electronics

https://papersignals.withgoogle.com/  Google Paper Signals

https://www.flightradar24.com/build-your-own   Build your own Raspberry Pi based plane tracker

A new member brought along some conference badges that he and  some other people have created and hand soldered together:

A work in progress...

These colour LCD's are very nifty:

WeMOS with CNC routed out acrylic base - with RGB LED:

Phillip brought along his 3D printer to do some test prints and re-calibrate:

Andrew brought along a nifty CAT Android FLIR phone.  Yes, it has a built in FLIR long wave Infra-red camera permanently built in - very cool.  Here we are discussing some 3D printer issues:

and a close up of the Felix ver: 3.1 3D Printer in action:

I like how there is a suitable mix of normal photography  + edge detection, all over layed onto the FLIR photo.  Below, is a HP monitor 19V PSU lying on the floor:

unfortunately a member copped a bee sting in a finger while outside.  Even after applying an ice pack, it's kind of easy to see which finger was bitten::

Stephen's just picked up a Mosaic - Palette Pro 2 a four filament in-line splicer unit for his Felix 3D Printer.  We are all looking forward to seeing it in action and the results:

Rob's been designing up a car monitoring PCB:

all in KiCAD:

There was some colourful bead work going on as well:

Stacy has had a 19" dead HP LCD monitor re-purposed as a light table for her bead work.  Here it is with the light off:

This iPhone photo doesn't do it justice.  It's quite bright:

Stephen brought along an $80 drone.  It has a built in HD fixed camera and can record video and fly for 7-8 minutes and comes in a nifty carry case AND includes a controller:

of course we had to flash it up and check out the video feed:

He is also working on building a RC WiFi based cheap plane:

The SW Maker SMD Soldering Challenge kit was doing the rounds:

some work is going on a butterfly release mechanism:

lastly there is a STM32 based board that's going to be used as a Z-80 emulator, to run the CP/M OS:

There where no photos or notes taken from the October and November meetings, however we are back on track for the December meeting.  This was the final meeting for 2018 and it was great to see a new person come along and introduce themselves.  There were lots of discussions around CNC machines and processes, wireless sensors, travelling China and more.

For those interested in Open Source Software and Open Hardware, there are two interesting conferences coming up:

• https://linux.conf.au/  it's a yearly conference that is held in a different location each year. Lots of hardware and software talks.  You can check out the past videos of most talks.
• https://2019.fossasia.org/   two of us recently attended a three day event in Shenzhen China.  I will be going to the Singapore event in March as well.

Rob has been busy practising his SMD soldering techniques with this Banggood PCB:

Stewart brought along a few projects he's been working on - A small wireless sensor transmitter board:

 

and a WEMOS based wireless receiver:

Diane has created a scarf that has embeded reflective tape woven into it.  It only shows up when it's under a strong light like a camera flash:

My simple Li-ion battery charger break-out PCB has arrived back from China.  Three panels of 7 PCB's (five shown), cost only A$14.57, which includes shipping.  This was made by Seeed:

While in China I helped teach soldering at the November Beijing 'Hack-in-The-Box' security conference. I was fortunate to be given a conference badge:

Diane and I attended the Shenzhen 'FOSS Asia' conference, where I purchased a Open Source/Hardware Pocket Science Lab board that comes in a Arduino Mega format - https://pslab.io/:

 

One thing I was looking for in Shenzhen was some 0201 sized LED's, but they turned out to be expensive, and came with a 30 day waiting time as everyone was out of stock!  Instead I purchased some 0603 and 0805 sized Pink LED's, here is a 0805 one lit up:

Then there are the general bunch of other goodies that one buys when in China:

I missed taking some photos of some other peoples projects and work.

It was a small lively meeting, but not many photos.

Stephen brought along the excellent results of etching a stainless steel kitchen pan on his 80W Laser and eBay Molybdenum disulphide.  The product seems to have etched into the metal and is scratch and dishwasher proof:

Phillip was doming some development on his Raspberry Pi:

My Resistance Decade boards have arrived back from manufacturing at Seeed:

as well as the latest version of the SMD Display Board:

There was too much talking going on, my apologies for missing photos of other peoples gear.

A lot going on at the August meeting.

Some things discussed:

• http://bitsavers.org/   old computer software and manuals.  There has been a few discussions of how we could host a retro computer display.
  
• https://pi-top.com/   you buy a laptop frame and install your own Raspberry pi brains
  
• http://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/events.html   Ardupilot conference in Suzhou, China in Oct.
  
• https://lightburnsoftware.com/   Light Burn Laser cutter software
  
• https://www.felixprinters.com/   Felix 3D Printers
  

Stephen brought along his 3D printer to work on and do some test printing:

Although small, it's a very cute vase:

MDF laser cut storage boxes that utilise a living hinge:

and a laser cut crank powered marble tower:

Stacy was working on a unicorn card:

Steve brought along a lot of different electronic projects, including the nifty Pi-Top laptop:

experimenting with Bluetooth communications:

Arduino based breadboard:

240V AC Mains voltage monitoring via a wireless connection:

Diane continued on with her micro-mosaics:

Rob's been working on updating his home built laser cutter.  It's too big to bring in, but he brought along some interesting books:

more info on the above books:

My Soldering Skill Test PCB recently arrived, so I cracked out the trusty soldering iron and got to work:

The morning passed quickly, with some new visitors popping in and catching up with other members - and a birthday:

and work has started on another card:

Stewart is building a RGB graphic equaliser based on a MSGEQ7 chip:

and a computerised fairy light dimmer

Diane was trying her hand a micro-mosaics:

A Christmas tree stand broke, so a new one in day-glo-yellow was designed up and 3D printed out:

A Surface Mount Device Component Display Reference PCB was soldered up the night before:

and lots of other things:

It was great to catch up with everyone and see their current projects.

Rob is now into the software stage of his automated Cat feeder:

A close-up of the main board - Arduino Nano at top, bottom LH: a DF Player Mini - MP3 Player, bottom RH: Tiny RTC

Every Cat feeder needs an OLED display:

Stacy has been experimenting with embossing thin aluminium sheet:

and onto cardstock, filled in with hand painting:

At the Sydney Linux Conference, Diane found someone with a sample of reflective ribbon, so she ordered her own roll of it.  She had a go at quickly knitting up a test patch:

But hang on, I thought this was meant to be reflective?  For that you need a light source behind you.  Here it is with a flash turned on:

I now have four PCB's back from Shenzhen:

and have been experimenting with some new Laser cutting software:  Light Burn   This is under active development.  Here I have been playing around with some example packaging for a PCB:

Some example RGB LED boards have been made up:

and the Reflow Oven controller board has been assembled:

It was great to catch up with people again.  Phillip brought along his 3D printer, which was busy printing out a set of tweezer holders, while he investigated designing up a LED light bar holder for his printer:

Diane finished off photographing the last 300 odd Shenzhen quilt block drawings:

We now have a 130 in 1 Electronics kit for people interested in experimenting with it during the meetings:

As well as an Arduino kit:

I have had a number of PCB designs sent off to Shenzhen to be manufactured, and the LED Driver board arrived back in time for this meeting:

And I am nearly finished designing up a PCB for my Camera-Pi camera:

This was a spread out meeting, with people coming and going through out the morning.  Three new people popped in to say hello.

This meeting had people testing their multimeter's against a voltage reference board, based on a AD584LH chip:

and once again comparing two milli-ohm meters (Chinese Anbai AT2511 and a ?? Kit), this time with ten resistors over a range  of 0.01 to 3.0 ohm resistors:

Stacy has been busy making more beautiful 3D cards:

A quiet meeting.

Diane brought along some dresses she has made:

Diane wanted to scan in all her fabric squares that people had drawn and written on at the 2017 Shenzhen Makers Faire:

To do this, she used the Doc-Pi camera rig:

And by closing the glass lid, automaticly kicked off the LEDs and photography process:

Doc-Pi is a Raspberry Pi 2, Raspberry Pi Camera and Display  based system.  Below is a view of the electronics board and 3D printed stands from behind the RPi:

Once the photo has been taken, a OpenCV based Python script locates the block edge:

this can then be applied to the photo:

Then the internal edges can be excluded:

From the rough block edge outline, you can find each of the four corners (green box):

Next the block image can be cut out, auto-rotated horizontal, resized and saved to a USB flash drive:

A special voltage reference board was used to compare different multimeter's, across four different voltages.  The worst meter, was the $7.00 yellow meter, at 0.3%, with the best at 0.05% out.  Both are not too bad.