Favorite hangouts

Gordon McComb

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Jan 5, 2010, 4:53:01 PM1/5/10

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Okay, so I recall TMT asked this question a while back, but I wanted to
pose it again:

Obviously, CRM is no longer the hotbed of activity it once was ten years
ago. Well, things change, and more and more ISPs are blocking newsgroups
anyway.

So where do people hang out? Are there any non-vendor specific forums or
groups (that is, not forums/groups connected with a retailer or
manufacturer) that stand out?

How about blogs? Who's got the hot blogs these days?

-- Gordon

waynegramlich

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Jan 5, 2010, 8:05:40 PM1/5/10

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Gordon:

In my biased opinion, I think the top 5 hobby robotics lists are:

1. Seattle Robotics Society (Seattle, WA)
2. Dallas Personal Robotics Group (Dallas, TX)
3. Home Brew Robotics Club (San Jose, CA)
4. Front Range Robotics (Denver, CO)
5. Twin Cities Robotics (Minn/St. Paul, MN)

(Disclaimer, I'm president of #3, so I'm more than a little bit
biased there. ;-)

Here is my current robotics RSS feed list:

Alas, to the best of my knowledge, DPRG does not have an RSS feed.

The nice thing about RSS feeds is that it is easy to lurk.
It takes a bit more effort to participate, since you have to figure
out how to post. The outfits that use Yahoo and Google groups
are fairly easy to post on. The other groups are a grab
bag to post on.

If anybody has some other RSS feeds to suggest, please let
us know, by posting a response here.

Lastly, our club, HBRC, has been making a concerted effort to
video record our meetings and post them to the net:

<http://www.hbrobotics.org/wiki/index.php5/Presentations>

There is always a lag of several months from the time the
meeting is recorded until it is posted to then net.

-Wayne

Too_Many_Tools

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Jan 23, 2010, 4:07:31 AM1/23/10

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On Jan 5, 3:53 pm, Gordon McComb <NOSPAMg...@NOrobotoidSPAM.com>
wrote:

Thanks for raising the question Gordon....I too have been wondering
the same thing.

Thanks to any leads anyone will post.

TMT

steamer

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Jan 23, 2010, 1:23:01 PM1/23/10

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--Well FWIW I started a Stamp tribe on tribe.net There's virtually
no traffic there so I wouldn't mind if this gang would hijack it and make it
a new home. Direct link: http://tribes.tribe.net/basicstamp

--
"Steamboat Ed" Haas : To help the helpless
Hacking the Trailing Edge! : To comfort the fearful...
www.nmpproducts.com
---Decks a-wash in a sea of words---

Colin Durrans

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Jan 26, 2010, 3:55:05 AM1/26/10

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Gordon McComb wrote:

> So where do people hang out? Are there any non-vendor specific forums or
> groups (that is, not forums/groups connected with a retailer or
> manufacturer) that stand out?

I've noted a few forums go quite recently but these are the ones I still
check regularly

http://www.robotbuilder.co.uk/forum/
http://www.minisumo.org.uk/forum/
http://www.micromouseonline.com/forum/

regards,
colin

Ben Bradley

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Jan 26, 2010, 10:04:24 PM1/26/10

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Perhaps robot club blogs and mailing lists are The Thing nowadays.
There's pretty low traffic on the AHRC mailing list with the
occasional tech question and meeting announcements, but perhaps lists
of other clubs are more active.

There's also the emergence of "hacker spaces" in recent years. These
physical places are ideal for working on long-term large collaborative
projects, whereas robot clubs generally have one room for a couple
hours a month. Just the websites/blogs can be interesting enough.
Here's my "local" one I visited last month, but as far away as I live,
it's hard to justify going there often and becoming a member:

http://freesideatlanta.org

It's of course not strictly robotics, but there's a lot of overlap in
interest, and I did see a "robot making class" mentioned on the
mailing list, being started up as a day-long once-per-month event.

Here's a couple of sites for the latest robot-and-related news as well
as general inspiration:
http://singularityhub.com/
http://www.robots.net/
The last site, getting back to the original question, also appears to
have many amateur/hobby robot builders on it (looks like you get a
free blog by signing up), as shown in the left column and in the
"robot of the day" pic. I haven't explored that part much, I usually
just read the news in the middle column, but I just signed up. A neat
advertiser for the site is http://hobbypartz.com (with a Z), they have
great prices on servos.

>-- Gordon