Recently Ben, Cliff and Claudio have built Diametric’s Mini Quadcopter. We met a fellow RepRap user- Diametric- at this years Midwest RepRap Festival in Elkhart Indiana. He brought along a 3D printed quadcopter that he designed and built.

The quadcopters are remarkably inexpensive, the design, models and bill of materials can be found on Thingiverse. They are easy to build and easy to get off the ground. We’re still learning how to fly them however. While all three have taken flight, we have had some accidents and damaged the frames on 2 of them, twice. We’re not too worried when that happens, for we can always reprint the frame within about an hour and a half on one of our 3D printers.

For all those that may not be aware, good friends of Midsouth Makers, Makers Local 256, down in Huntsville, AL are having a pig roast and LAN party extravaganza on June 2nd starting at noon. These guys know how to throw down a good party with awesome food and a great selection of games. If you go down for a visit, you wont be disappointed. The LAN party wont happen until later in the evening, but for the early part of the day you’ll get to enjoy the excellent yummies they’ve prepared. In addition to the food, it’s a great opportunity to see what other spaces look like. They put on an excellent open house with the grub. There won’t be any lack of exciting things to see with them showing off projects, tools, shop upgrades, and the vast array of all the cool things the Makers have going on. Any of the Midsouth Makers that are free to go down that weekend should take the opportunity to go hang out with our fellow makers. It will be great motivation for what kind of things we can have going on here at our very own space. The LAN party will undoubtedly be a blast as well. They always put on a great set of tournaments with prizes and amusement all around. There are pretty good chances there will be some interesting Minecrafting going on, as well as all the fun games from Steam that everyone loves such as Team Fortress and Monday Night Combat. The LAN is assured to go on into the early morning so be prepared for lots of fun. If you manage to go, don’t forget to take a few bucks with you as well as your computer. The Pig Roast is 1 for $10 or 2 for $15, and it would be equally kind to make a donation to the Huntsville guys for putting on the LAN party in addition.

What: Food and Games
Where: Makers Local 256
When: June 2nd @ Noon, LAN party starting later that evening
Cost: $10 for 1, $15 for 2, and any other donation

LAN WARS from Midsouth Makers on Vimeo.

What: This will be Midsouth Makers 4th LAN party/fundraiser/cookout event! Pulled pork and fries will be served. Feel free to bring any games you’d like to play. There will also be a Minecraft tournament with special prizes!

When: October the 29th from 4:30pm until we get tired of seeing at you.

Where: Our space – 2203 Freemont Road, Memphis, TN 38114. We will be setting up the shop to hold as many contestants as possible.

Things to bring:
-A computer (PC or Mac, Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, Power cables, USB cables, etc.)
-Copies of the game(s) you wish to play.
-Drinks
-If you want to participate in the tournament or just play Minecraft for fun, you will need at least 1GB of free HD space. (We can provide copies of Minecraft to you.)
– Headphones
– Ethernet Cable
– Bring your own drinks, or bring cash to buy drinks from us

Cost: Free, but donations are highly encouraged because they help make events like this possible!

Sign-up on our events page: http://www.midsouthmakers.org/events/

We hope to see you there, and as always, may the force be with you!

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.

It’s taken a while to get around to it, but on the 5th the Midsouth Makers went to visit one of our sister groups in Nashville, the Hacker Consortium. The HC guys were unbelievably generous, they did a lot in a little time to prep for our visit. Quite often for the few days before we arrived, their IRC channel was littered with chores being doled out to clean the place up. No offense, but it was likely a waste of time as we were just so mesmerized by everything. They probably could have had every piece of junk they could find scattered on the floor and we wouldn’t have noticed. On top of doing what they could to make the place presentable, they went so far as to fix an impressive lunch. I personally had never had “Beer Can Chicken” before, but I’m already wanting more. Hopefully we’ll be able to have our own cookout and make the same thing before too long. The trip really served as a good chance for the people here in Memphis to see what we could potentially have and to motivate them to push for the same.

As for more details about the space, we’ll just say that it is unbelievable. If you take a look at what they have now and compare it to what they started with, you almost wouldn’t believe most of it. They had tons of tools everywhere, an impressive server room, and had even just finished their learning lab. They have roughly 2000 square feet of space and have done an excellent job of laying things out. The best thing you can do is just take a look at the Flickr account and see for yourself.