This Friday February 18th at Republic Coffee we’ll have members showing off their Arduino projects and answering questions about the Arduino platform. We’ve had a lot of interest in getting started with various Arduino boards so come learn more about the great things you can do with an open source platform.

What is an Arduino? Arduino is a physical computing platform and a software development environment for controlling various things like motors, sensors and even entire devices. The hardware and development environment are open source and there is a very large community of developers and hardware hackers out there working on projects. The hardware is also quite inexpensive. There are also “Getting Started” kits that are a package of items to help you hit the ground running with your Arduino.

We’ve leased a space at 2203 Freemont Rd! We’ll be handing out keys to all paid members at the 12/17 Friday meeting at Republic Coffee. Google Maps: 2203 Freemont Rd. Memphis, TN 38114. If you are not yet a full member you can become one by paying dues for December. We’ll be discussing our initial move in plans at the meeting on Friday, we look forward to seeing you there.

The LAN party last Saturday was a great success, thanks to everyone that was involved in setup / clean up and a special thanks to our host, Jeff Leath and our very own Kevin Dunn for some really tasty chilli. Thanks to everyone that showed up even if you didn’t play, was great to see everyone.

Since we have a lot of tech members among our group I wanted to pass along (in case you aren’t already on the GOLUM mailing list) that some people are looking to revive the Group of Linux Users Memphis. GOLUM was started in the mid 90s and in the past years has faded away. There has been a lot of buzz on the mailing list the past two days about getting something started again. So If you’re into Linux in any capacity from absolute beginner or advanced professional, check out the GOLUM mailing list and see what the buzz is all about.

Also Thursday 7/22 is the July meeting for the Memphis PHP Group. I know we have a couple of members planning on checking out the meeting. The meeting is being hosted at Lunaweb on Park Avenue.  See the site for more info and if you’re interested come check it out with us.

With all this happening don’t forget about us! We’re meeting every Friday night at 7pm at Christian Brothers University on Central. We’ll be in the Nolan Building room 241. We hope to see you there and bring you’re friends! The group has quite a bit of diversity, we’re not just a bunch of techies so anyone interested in making something is more than welcome!

So for those who aren’t aware, we’re still alive and looking for potential locations to call home. After our visit to Nashville’s Hacker Consortium, spirits are rekindled and the drive is on again. Earlier this week we scheduled a viewing of a space that was located at 3527 Southern Ave, Memphis, TN 38111, and I must say that it was awesome! Now I know, we don’t want to get too excited about it as we may not get it, or even better find a space that is just that much more outstanding. Even still, it really is pretty cool. It really is a shame that more of the members couldn’t make it to check it out, but in place of that we did try to document things as best as possible on the Wiki. Pictures of the space are on the Wiki if you click on the thumbnail on the previous page, or you can always checkout the pictures on the Flickr account as well. From the pictures you’ll see that it could use a little care, and does lack a garage door, but everything else about it just screams “makerspace!” With everything around it like Brother Juniper’s, RP Tracks, and the University of Memphis, we could make great use of this location and the room that it has in it.

The space is approximately 2000 square feet and used to be a TV repair shop. The great thing about that is the fact of three phase power already being run to the location! It already has workbenches on one wall, and has a storefront that we could re-purpose for other things. You can check out simulated 3D photo of the main workshop at photosynth. There is just a lot to be said for the potential of the space. From the layout of the place, we would be able to build us a server room, possibly a kitchen, a storage closet, plenty of workbench space, individual cubbyholes, a lounge, and a maybe even a learning lab. We will be discussing all of this with everyone at the next couple of meetings to get ideas for potential layouts and what we can do to make the most of what is available. The owner has even generously agreed to give us the first month for free and $800/mo for the first year before raising the rent to the requested $900/mo. If we can get enough paying members interested this it really could become a reality quite soon.

Today we have taken a step in the direction of recycling in Memphis.  Some of our makers went out and collected up scrap pipe from a deconstruction zone downtown.  After the heavy goods were relocated it was time to condense our load into much smaller, more manageable pieces.  Time for Daniel to use one of his toys, and for him to attempt setting the daisies that line our drive way on fire! Check out Flickr for more photos.

An hour and a half later and 3 metal cutting discs down, we had a pile of pipes in manageable pieces.  The discs themselves only cost about $3 for all, so I think we snagged a pretty good deal.  Also, I think Daniel had fun causing all of the mayhem, I can’t think of many things that he likes better than tearing something apart, it is a pretty good stress reliever.  As you can see from the pictures, some of the pipes were pretty massive. The largest one took down 2 discs on its way out.  Thankfully it was the last pipe that Daniel clashed with.

Midsouth Makers-1: Monster pipe-0