Meeting/Open Hours/Moving tonight 2/21/2017 7pm

[Sam Harmon]

As Bob posted earlier, we will be definitely doing some brainstorming/planning for the Shaker Makers event in April. If you have input as to activities that could be done, please attend tonight and/or reply to this email thread. Details on the event are here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1090466697730008/

Move-related tasks:
-Sometime between Tuesday & Saturday, Tunnel Vision moved a fair quantity of our stuff from the old space to temporary areas near the new space.
-The pallet rack & gate still need to be moved, as well as a number of other things.
-If you are the owner of some very large things that need to be taken away, please come and take them away. We don’t have room for them.

Sam

[Ross Bochnek]

My idea for a Shaker Makers activity/show & tell is the Auduino: a synth made with just an Arduino and five linear taper potentiometers rated at 4.7K or 5K. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LKmtJHSLF0

http://www.notesandvolts.com/2014/07/build-auduino-granular-synth-part-1.html

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/auduino

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwV-SKpQAak

 

Perhaps we make one and show it at Shaker Makers as an example of a class we could do.  Another simple hardware synth I'd LOVE to build and do a class on would be a Teensy Synth.

[Ross Bochnek]

A quick aliexpress.com search reveals 5K ohm pots (with mounting nuts) are $10 for 50 (free shipping in 12-20 days) $2.16 for 10 or $1.30 for 5 (free shipping in 20-39 days) 

The minimum cost of the parts for one Auduino Synth, not including the Arduino, are about $1 for the five pots, when bought in lots of 50 (each $10 order makes 10 Auduinos).  Plus wire and solder.

What would really transform this type of project into something valuable to the public would be some sort of Arduino shield.  Otherwise, even after people solder wires to 5 pots, they still have to find some solution to connect them all to power pins on the Arduino, and they'd still be left with a messy project whose wires could easily pop out of the Arduino in transit.  If people could solder 5 pots to a board (doesn't have to be a PCB- it could just be perfboard or stripboard) we layout ahead of time, using a few jumpers and a few pins to Analog ins and power, they could easily get an Arduino later and program it with the code.  So, designing some sort of shield for the pots would be a way to offer a class/workshop, whereby people don't even need to have an Arduino there with them, with the option to come back with one on a Tuesday and program it.  We could pre-program some Diavolinos and sell some of our stock of Arduinos, without feeling like we'd need to stock up on more for an Auduino project.  We could just design a shield layout, get some perfboards/stripboards, maybe design a PCB, and order some bulk pots.  Separate them into kits, make printout with a wiring diagram and the code download link, and offer to help them solder their kits up.