led

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.