Dorkbot DC - January 16, 2008

Tom — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:45:29 -0800

On Wednesday Ben and I headed over to the monthly meeting of Dorkbot DC and soldered our little hearts out. I've only been to one Dorkbot before (well, unless you count the one at SXSW — but that was mostly an opportunity to buy t-shirts and drink free beer). My previous experience had been enjoyable, but maybe a little dry. It's inevitable that the speakers won't pique everyone's interest every time, I suppose.

This meeting was a lot more fun, and a lot more hands-on. The organizers did a fantastic job, preparing instruction material, assembling kits and even pre-drilling jigs for the rest of us in an effort to introduce the extremely large crowd to soldering by way of MAKE Magazine's LED cube weekend project, slightly modified to work with an Arduino.

Sure, it's a simple project, but we've never claimed to be electronics gurus. Besides, it was a great opportunity to refine our soldering skills — something I'm in sore need of after nearly trashing my Wii during a botched modchip installation.

Well, neither Ben nor I managed to finish our cubes — I don't think anyone did — but we did each get our three LED planes assembled. And I came away with the potentially-worthwhile realization that I need to buy a new soldering iron (this one, perhaps?). Ben had another quick go at his cube today, and got two levels completed; I suspect that by the beginning of next week we might be able to put up some video of the thing in action.

This was also the first meeting of Make:DC, and Ben and I had a chance to chat with Adam Koeppel about the group after the meeting. He said that although there may be more joint meetings with Dorkbot, the group has also found its own meeting space in Adams Morgan: a store that'll let us do anything short of welding (and that caveat only applies until their ventilation system is properly in place). It sounds pretty promising, and I'm looking forward to having two active groups for hardware geekery in the District.

For a few more pictures, click here. Apologies for their quality — I think I need to add "camera with a working autofocus" to the list with the soldering station on it.

EchoDitto Labs - Dorkbot DC - January 16, 2008 - Comments

Dorkbot DC - January 16, 2008