All Categories - South West Makers (Australia)

SW Makers September 2018 Eaton Meeting

24/9/2018

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.

SW Makers August 2018 Eaton Meeting

12/8/2018

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:

SW Makers July 2018 Eaton Meeting

15/7/2018

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:

SW Makers June 2018 Eaton Meeting

10/6/2018

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:

SW Makers May 2018 Eaton Meeting

20/5/2018

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:

SW Makers April 2018 Eaton Meeting

14/4/2018

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:

SW Makers March 2018 Busselton Meeting

25/3/2018

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.

SW Makers March 2018 Eaton Meeting

18/3/2018

It was great to see a new person swing by to ask about how to get into electronics. The Dardanup Shire President popped in for a chat and an update on the new Shire building process and possible Makespace.

Stephen showed of some new IoT LoRaWAN gear that he will be installing soon:

Stephen has also been out flying quad copters and testing out mapping and creating point clouds:

As well as 3D imagery:

Phillip was writing programs for his environmental WeMOS sensor platform:

WeMOS and a Raspberry Pi:

Rob was comparing two different milli-ohm meters:

Stacy has branched out into 3D card making:

Going Sailing? There is a card for that:

A baby girl? Yep, that too:

Diane couldn't make the meeting, but she has a story about unicorns and zebras merging to become a unizebra:

Eunny's (met at Shenzhen Maker Fair) 3D Printed unizebra:

Paul's LED cabling samples have expanded:

SW Makers February 2018 Busselton Meeting

3/3/2018

The first meeting of the year in Busselton. Lots of sewing and electronics and sometimes meshing them together.

Is this a star or a flower?

Lots of sewing to be done:

Playing around with a Lolibot:

Playing around with lighting up Dragons teeth:

A close up:

and integrated into a flower:

Now, how can I integrate the above onto a linear actuator?

SW Makers February 2018 Eaton Meeting

18/2/2018

The first meeting of the year introduced some new faces and projects to the group. It was great to see the progress people made over the Christmas break!

Below is a WiFi enabled home power meter:

A few different home designed and made WiFi sensor boards:

Matt had his rover up and running around the floor. Too fast to photograph properly:

Rob's dual power supply is nearly finished:

And has built his own milli-ohm meter from a kit:

Stacy is now experimenting with fold out 3D cards:

Below is a close-up of the garden card:

Oh, and the lighthouse does light up:

Stephen brought along a CNC jog wheel to solder up, but there was too many things going on:

Diane spent the morning heat setting some of the Shenzhen Makers Faire art quilt squares that people drew up:

But she has a LOT more to do:

Everyone attending the 2018 Sydney Linux Conference revived a Tomu USB based micro-controller. The white 3D printed enclosures are next to it. This is about the size of a 1 cent coin:

This robot was assembled during the hardware workshop day at the 2018 Sydney Linux Conference:

The LED driver board now has some single LED daughter boards:

Still have to have some colourful LEDs on display: