Category: Meetings

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Monday August 23 meeting: another solder party

I was hoping to demo a laser engraver for this week’s meeting, in addition to assembling the last of the preordered Tree of Life badges and prepping the rest for stocking and immediate sale. But Amazon sent me a BabyTrend mini nursery instead of the laser engraver I asked for.

So the agenda for tomorrow evening is: meet at the usual space, work out a minor assembly line, and knock those out. It will be far easier than last time — I should have most of the front boards already assembled before then; and the castellated edge solder method is much, much faster than using pin headers, and leaves the back side of the badge much smoother.

There will also be some discussion of prototyping to try out a feature for next year’s badge. I ordered some Space Dust, but I’m low on other beers, so if Space Dust isn’t for you, and you’re not into Malört, Skrewball or Woodford, consider bringing something.

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Meeting ON this evening

Meeting at the usual place this evening. Sorry for the late notice. Was traveling, got in late last night, really wasn’t sure what I was up for. But I got hot tweezers and I’m dying to try them out. And some folks who didn’t go to vegas might be interested in badge&stickers show&tell. Also there may be some front-side badge soldering.

Meeting will be hybrid on Discord as well. But you can’t taste Malört through a screen.

Or maybe you can.

If you’re new to the group, hit me up via DM on the Discord or on Twitter if you’re interested in attending. If I met you in LV, mention that. Otherwise, generally we like to get to know people a little bit before inviting them to the private space.

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Monday evening Discord meetup is up to YOU.

Baab will be in the air during this evening’s weekly meetup, returning from LV. But nothing at all is stopping the rest of you from holding a Discord meetup. We’ve picked up a bunch of new friends recently, both from Kevin’s RE courses and from our many, many in-person Defcon interactions.

The normal time is 1830 Eastern. The Discord perma-invite is on the dc540.org website.

We meet in the Monday Meetup voice channel. We are welcoming to new members, we like to get to know people this way before attending an in-person gathering with us.

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Monday 6/14 Meeting is In-Person

OK, Actually it will be Hybrid. We want to be inclusive to those who can’t make it out. We’ll be talking about badge planning, and I’ll give a demo of PCB design and how to build a badge in KiCad, from a blank slate to fabrication. You can put your filthy grubby hands on the early prototypes of the badge we hope to release at “summer camp” this year.

Weather looks good for a backyard meetup. I’ll see if I can bring a large-ish screen out to the table so everybody doesn’t have to crowd around my laptop. And I’ll stream the screen in the Discord so everyone can see it.

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Prepping for 2021’s first in-person meetup

Next week’s meetup is slated to be DC540’s first in-person meetup this year. We decided to schedule the in-person meetup in the backyard. Since we made that decision, the CDC advised that vaccinated people should be able to gather indoors maskless. But we’re fine with outdoors. Especially since, when we scheduled it, it was looking like it might rain Monday evening, but since then the probability has decreased steadily. Looking very promising now.

We’ll have enough Raspberry Pi Pico microcontrollers to go around, I’m trying to pre-solder a bunch of headers so you don’t have to waste time soldering and you can get started right on deploying programs onto it. I’ll also have some breadboards and LEDs to play with if you’re so inclined. If you want to be prepared to play with that, install Thonny on your laptop and consider bringing a standard MicroUSB cable. MicroPython is WAY easier to get started with on the Pico than C. Plug it in with Thonny running, Thonny will prompt you to flash MicroPython firmware onto it, and then you can just save your python programs straight to the USB-connected Pico and run them. Easy as Pi.

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March Meeting Cancelled

It’s not even an abundance of caution. After reading the latest from WHO and CDC, it’s just common sense. Stay safe, y’all. We’ll get together when thing settles down.

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February Meeting cancelled!

Sorry folks, I had to cancel hosting the February meetup. Heading out to Vegas (I know, not even Defcon season!) to help my mom recover from cancer surgery. You’re welcome to meetup on your own at Glory Days or wherever if you like. Please talk amongst yourselves. 🙂