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Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!
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Mike Pountney  
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 More options Nov 13 2012, 10:21 am
From: Mike Pountney <Mike.Pount...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:21:15 +0000
Local: Tues, Nov 13 2012 10:21 am
Subject: Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!

Hey all,

We need to get our thinking caps on -- we need to get copy over to the BSF folks for inclusion in the print brochure.

This is a major event for us - we've done workshops every year we've been BB, and every workshop has sold out. It's a great time for us to get our name out there, and of course also helps the bank balance a lot!

It works really well for us if we run a series of workshops (each Sat of the festival usually), ideally with each one building upon the last.

Anyone got any ideas? Things that they would like to cover?


 
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Justin Nel  
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 More options Nov 13 2012, 10:32 am
From: Justin Nel <dogbertuk2...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:32:35 +0000
Local: Tues, Nov 13 2012 10:32 am
Subject: Re: [brighton-hacker-space] Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!

I'll send a couple suggestions next week... snowed under with a couple
other bits right now.

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 3:21 PM, Mike Pountney <Mike.Pount...@gmail.com>wrote:


 
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Mike Pountney  
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 More options Nov 13 2012, 10:34 am
From: Mike Pountney <Mike.Pount...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:34:50 +0000
Local: Tues, Nov 13 2012 10:34 am
Subject: Re: [brighton-hacker-space] Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!

Urk, I really need to get some copy to them by the end of the week.

We can be pretty vague, it's mostly about having an event listed in the brochure.

On 13 Nov 2012, at 15:32, Justin Nel <dogbertuk2...@gmail.com> wrote:


 
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Justin Nel  
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 More options Nov 13 2012, 10:36 am
From: Justin Nel <dogbertuk2...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:36:53 +0000
Local: Tues, Nov 13 2012 10:36 am
Subject: Re: [brighton-hacker-space] Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!

In which case, I'll try throw together something this evening, but I can't
make any prototypes until next week...

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 3:34 PM, Mike Pountney <Mike.Pount...@gmail.com>wrote:


 
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Chris  
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 More options Nov 13 2012, 10:57 am
From: Chris <chris.hol...@multiedge-net.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:57:11 +0000
Local: Tues, Nov 13 2012 10:57 am
Subject: Re: [brighton-hacker-space] Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!

At the risk of being repetitive, we've done a few workshops which were
already successful (but don't necessarily lead onto each other).
There are always people interested in being introduced to basic electronics.
Likewise, introduction to Arudino always generates lots of excitement
amongst people who attend.
The guitar pedal workshop was really good and there were a few people
who said they were sorry they missed out.
Introduction to soldering (to make drawdio pencils) is always a
quick-and-easy workshop - taking just a few hours each time, we could
run this two or three times in a day and everyone loves taking away a
squeaky pencil.

All that said, it's not very exciting for returning customers who have
maybe attended a few workshops in the past.

What about an introduction to surface mount soldering?
I got this sd card audio player thing working and it uses just two
through hole components (I may yet turn these in to SMT or replace them
with another IC) but the main board is just a microcontroller and sd
card socket - both of which are easy SMT components.
I'm looking into getting a load of pcbs made up (these are so much easy
to smt solder than homebrew boards) and Justin is using some in his Xmas
kits, so if it's planned properly now, we could make a nice,
easy-to-smt-solder module that could be used in a lot of things.

On 13/11/2012 15:21, Mike Pountney wrote:


 
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Mike Pountney  
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 More options Nov 13 2012, 11:31 am
From: Mike Pountney <Mike.Pount...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 16:31:01 +0000
Local: Tues, Nov 13 2012 11:31 am
Subject: Re: [brighton-hacker-space] Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!

On 13 Nov 2012, at 15:57, Chris <chris.hol...@multiedge-net.co.uk> wrote:

> At the risk of being repetitive, we've done a few workshops which were already successful (but don't necessarily lead onto each other).
> There are always people interested in being introduced to basic electronics.
> Likewise, introduction to Arudino always generates lots of excitement amongst people who attend.
> The guitar pedal workshop was really good and there were a few people who said they were sorry they missed out.
> Introduction to soldering (to make drawdio pencils) is always a quick-and-easy workshop - taking just a few hours each time, we could run this two or three times in a day and everyone loves taking away a squeaky pencil.

> All that said, it's not very exciting for returning customers who have maybe attended a few workshops in the past.

Yeah, I think a balance of new workshops and old workshops will be good. I know there are loads of Drawdio's left, but we did do that in BSF'12, so maybe we have a different soldering project this year.

I'm happy to run Introduction to Arduino again.

Anyone want to own another workshop? Guitar Pedals maybe?

> What about an introduction to surface mount soldering?

I'd love it if we did this. It's like the soldering we've done before, but different!

We could potentially have a basic soldering workshop (Drawdio?) in the morning, and then SMT in the afternoon?

> I got this sd card audio player thing working and it uses just two through hole components (I may yet turn these in to SMT or replace them with another IC) but the main board is just a microcontroller and sd card socket - both of which are easy SMT components.
> I'm looking into getting a load of pcbs made up (these are so much easy to smt solder than homebrew boards) and Justin is using some in his Xmas kits, so if it's planned properly now, we could make a nice, easy-to-smt-solder module that could be used in a lot of things.

Superb, sounds great.

 
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Matthew Edwards  
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 More options Nov 13 2012, 12:23 pm
From: Matthew Edwards <talkingj...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 17:23:05 +0000
Local: Tues, Nov 13 2012 12:23 pm
Subject: Re: [brighton-hacker-space] Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!

Doing some Drawdio workshops would be awesome... I still have ~380 of them
left!

*Matt*

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Mike Pountney <Mike.Pount...@gmail.com>wrote:


 
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Emma O'Sullivan  
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 More options Nov 13 2012, 5:09 pm
From: "Emma O'Sullivan" <e...@ejosullivan.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 22:09:35 +0000
Local: Tues, Nov 13 2012 5:09 pm
Subject: Re: [brighton-hacker-space] Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!

A quick note that it looks like the Brighton Mini Mini Maker Faire is going
to be happening at some point during the Brighton Science Festival too! Not
sure if there's any dates set yet but this will likely take up a weekend if
we have a stall at it.

Em

On 13 November 2012 17:23, Matthew Edwards <talkingj...@gmail.com> wrote:

--
*Emma O'Sullivan*
*
*
*07810 442044*
*e...@ejosullivan.com*
*Twitter: @ejosully*

 
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Justin Nel  
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 More options Nov 14 2012, 6:02 am
From: Justin Nel <dogbertuk2...@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2012 11:02:07 +0000
Local: Wed, Nov 14 2012 6:02 am
Subject: Re: [brighton-hacker-space] Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!

Chris and I are putting together a proposal, once we've finished putting
the words together, one of us will post it up here (feel free to forward it
to whomever needs it).

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Emma O'Sullivan <e...@ejosullivan.com>wrote:


 
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Justin Nel  
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 More options Nov 15 2012, 6:15 am
From: Justin Nel <dogbertuk2...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 11:15:30 +0000
Local: Thurs, Nov 15 2012 6:15 am
Subject: Re: [brighton-hacker-space] Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!

You may find our proposal here :
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15ABrCCpNUDOxhPGwxqtxudz7CzwrJFQJC...

- Justin

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Justin Nel <dogbertuk2...@gmail.com>wrote:


 
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Mike Pountney  
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 More options Nov 15 2012, 6:21 am
From: Mike Pountney <Mike.Pount...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 11:21:43 +0000
Local: Thurs, Nov 15 2012 6:21 am
Subject: Re: [brighton-hacker-space] Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!

Some quick logistical questions:

* Two parts on the same day? Or two separate days?

* How many hours per part?

The science festival workshops will inevitably have a bunch of eager kids on them -- will this be suitable? Can it be made suitable?

On 15 Nov 2012, at 11:15, Justin Nel <dogbertuk2...@gmail.com> wrote:


 
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Justin Nel  
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 More options Nov 15 2012, 6:53 am
From: Justin Nel <dogbertuk2...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 11:53:34 +0000
Local: Thurs, Nov 15 2012 6:53 am
Subject: Re: [brighton-hacker-space] Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!

I'll speak to Chris to confirm on his side of things, but I am pretty sure
we can do this in one day very easily.

For the programming session, I have pre-made libraries to do all the
communication with the displays and the newly created board so really all
people would be doing on the second part of the workshop is hooking up some
basic events for button presses to perform actions such as Play/Pause/Stop
and scrolling through a list of songs. I thought it was best to embrace the
whole Arduino mindset of people using pre-made libraries to just get stuff
up and running, and if people are curious how it all works, they can either
dive into the code, or I will have a number of blog posts up that they can
read for explanations of the code used.

I will get back to you about how many hours per part, but I am pretty sure
we can structure it in such a way that anybody can just jump in and have
some fun. I will make up some micro Arduino boards to sell with the kits
(at cost) for anybody who does not already own an Arduino (micro because
it's cheaper and because it would fit in a nice tin much easier, making
your portable mp3 player even more awesome).

- Justin

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 11:21 AM, Mike Pountney <Mike.Pount...@gmail.com>wrote:


 
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Chris  
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 More options Nov 15 2012, 7:12 am
From: Chris <chris.hol...@multiedge-net.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 12:12:14 +0000
Local: Thurs, Nov 15 2012 7:12 am
Subject: Re: [brighton-hacker-space] Brighton Science Festival Workshops - deadline looming!

I'm tempted to say run it as two workshops, each just two-to-three hours
long (I've done 6-8 hour workshops and although they're great for
getting stuff done, but they are also very long days for everyone
running them, including a couple of hours at the front to set up, and an
hour or so to clean down at the end).

Workshop one: SMT soldering - make an audio player/mp3 board.
Although the boards are essentially serial devices (send serial data to
them to play tracks) we could always put a "trigger" button on the
device to play the next track on the sd card and that's it. Everyone
takes away a working project.

Workshop two: Getting the Arduino "off the board"
Use the Arduino IDE to get a working prototype on the blue board then
ICSP program some dedicated AVR chips to add to a separate PCB with
screen and buttons and put the whole lot in a tin.

The problem is if we run the Arduino workshop as a follow-on to the SMT
one, some people may want to attend but not have the audio board from a
previous workshop. If we make this a requirement, we'll always have
fewer people (a subset of the earlier group) attend the second workshop.
Unless, of course, we have some of the audio boards ready-made for
anyone wanting to do the Arduino course only.

As for making it child-friendly we could make the first part more about
the audio player than actual SMT soldering?
We could provide kits of entirely through-hole mounted components to
keep them easy-to-assemble (but they'd be wav players rather than mp3
players). There's basically a PIC, a transistor and a capacitor on the
board! Then battery and speakers attach on wires. The surface mount sd
card socket could be replaced with a 7-way 90 degree pin header and you
just push the sd card under it and hold in place with a piece of sponge,
pushing it up against the pins (that's how I made my first prototype).

I'm not sure we can make the second part/second workshop very
child-friendly, since there'll be boring coding ;-) and hacking tins and
enclosures.

I'm also thinking that perhaps we could just made audio player boards as
through-hole kits for a simple soldering workshop.....

On 15/11/2012 11:21, Mike Pountney wrote:

...

read more »


 
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