[sudo-discuss] Microcontroller Hack Night - Tomorrow!

[Hol Gaskill]

Hi Folks,

I'm back from a brief hiatus and returning to sudo room with chips and wires tomorrow night for some good ole fashioned 8-bit tinkering.  There have been a few projects going around involving solar power - it would be good to get a handle on this sun tracking thing once and for all, and a group is already in depth with some custom hardware but I think it would be fun to hack something together with car charger panels and servos.  I will be working with Morten and Julio on a little project we call the garden sentry, which is basically a different take on the now more or less old hat closed-loop plant watering / aquaponics setup, with an emphasis on - you guessed it - being cheap.  Beer machine testing will resume two weeks later since we're still waiting on some components to increase the heating power.  Bonus round if time allows: testing out some of the solenoid valves that Steve donated.  We probably won't be building a cryogenic fuel thrust vectoring lunar lander rocket engine with them as had been originally planned, but I have high hopes we can get within 1.5 orders of awesomeness magnitude.

I will have some extra chips on hand if you're just getting started - atmega328p, uln2003, 555 timers, etc.  

Hope to see y'all there!
Hol