Mitch teaching the basics of soldering

Mitch gave a great introduction to microcontrollers, and entertained everyone with, among other tales, his experiences in the US, recounting how he left his job in Silicone Valley and got into hardware hacking, and amusingly how the Noisebridge hackerspace is insured somewhere under the category of “Artistic Robotics”.

He and Jimmy had a great selection of projects on show and available as kits for hacking; the LoL Shields went down well, around 6 of us opted to build them for our arduinos.

Heads-down and soldering!

Another attendee constructed an Atari Punk Console, while someone else constructed their first arduino clone from a Boarduino kit.

Our guests continued their tour of the UK the following day, going on to their next event at the Brighton hackerspace BuildBrighton.

If you’re interested in hardware hacking or learning to solder, why not join the discussions on our google group? If you want to stay up to date with the latest SoutHACKton news the google group is also the place to go!

Sunday 4th October 2009, 10:30am-6:30pm, Steamshift HQ

As the Arduino meeting was such a success, we’ve already booked our next meetup – a Hack Day – again kindly hosted by Steamshift at their HQ in Eastleigh.

What is a Hack Day?

It’s a day where everyone brings along their current projects (if any) and can work on them in the presence of other like-minded individuals. Just starting out with Arduino? Putting the finishing touches on your latest life-size robot? Planning to build a water jet-pack? Hacking electronics into clothing? Hacking together the components necessary to make a new GNU/Linux distro or media centre software? Join us!

What if I don’t have a current project?

Come along anyway – help with someone else’s! Skilled or unskilled, knowledgeable or not-so-knowledgeable, all are welcome!

Why is it so long?

The idea is that people can turn up when they want for however long they want – pop in for just a couple of hours or come for the whole day – it’s completely up to you! We anticipate that the busiest time will be 12:30 until 4:30.

Why so early? (Also: what about lunch?)

We thought it would be nice to have lunch together (at around 1pm, though the timing is up to the individual) – some of us will probably order pizza, others may bring lunch with them. However, we didn’t want to cut into two meal times so we’ve aimed for “after breakfast and before dinner.” Everyone is responsible for bringing/ordering their own food and drink.

Where do I sign up?

This will be another free (no cost) day, all you need to do is turn up. We like to know how many people are coming though, so please join the Google Group and drop a short message in this thread.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

This event is kindly hosted by Steamshift.

Steamshift develops creative solutions to technical challenges primarily in the fields of web application development, flash AS3 programming and linux hosting. They work closely with their design and branding partners to deliver an end-to-end solution.