December 17th, 2009 by noise

It’s official! Twin Cities Maker will partner with Hack Factory of Minnesota to share a maker space. The members meeting resulted in a unanimous vote to merge with Hack Factory. The new space is located at 3119 East 26th St. in Minneapolis.

Starting January 1st, monthly dues will be $50. Membership will include access to the space and other benefits to be determined.

Full details on partnership structure, membership responsibilities and opportunities, etc. will be resolved going ahead. We’ll announce further information as we have it. Both the Twin Cities Maker and Hack Factory names will be retained in some regard.

December 16th, 2009 by noise

This month the business meeting will be held at 3119 East 26th St. in Minneapolis. This will be the location of our new space once we officially merge with Hack Factory. Details will be discussed at the meeting. Please be prepared to pay dues (cash or check).

To enter the space go through the chain link gate on right side of the building and enter the first door on that side of the building.  There should be some signs in place to help. Here is a link to the street view of the building, you can see the yellow door on the side of the building just past the gate (right side of the image): Street View.

Bring your own chair (or bean bag or pillow or whatever you feel like sitting on) or you may be sitting on the cold concrete.

Tentative Agenda

• Introduce Hack Factory to TC Maker
• Vote on merger with Hack Factory
• Brainstorm about the future

November 30th, 2009 by noise

The next casual meet-up will be held at the house of noise (a.k.a. Secretary Pat Arneson). To take maximum advantage of the changed venue (and frankly because I’ll be ready for some visitors after a few days of an empty house) people are welcome to show up any time after 5pm. Let’s also do an informal potluck for anyone that feels like bringing something. I will try to get together a pot of clam chowder or chili.  Bring your own beverage of choice.

Most importantly, bring something to show off or play with, especially those things that you wouldn’t normally feel comfortable bringing to Common Roots (hmmm, lots of room for misinterpretation/misuse in that sentence).

Here is the map. My house is on a hill, so if there’s something you don’t feel like dragging up the stairs feel free to drive around back in the alley.  There will be space enough for a couple of people to park.

November 13th, 2009 by noise

LTSpice is a free SPICE simulation tool from Linear Technologies.

For those in the electronics world, SPICE simulation can be a great way to answer the “will my circuit work as advertised” question without breadboarding. It’s a great sanity check- if it don’t work in SPICE, it won’t* work on a breadboard.

LTSpice is Linear Technologies’ own incarnation of SPICE. It’s a nice little product, and comes with models for many of Linear’s products (power supplies, op-amps, etc) along with many supporting components from other manufacturers (diodes, transistors, capacitors, inductors, etc) and generic parts (555s, LEDs, etc). Obviously, they provide it expecting people to download it, sim up a solution involving Linear parts and then sell eleventy-billion a year, thus providing a nice income stream for Linear (and it works- LTSpice makes it much more likely that I’ll reach for a Linear part for power supply design than another manufacturer’s parts).

[via uptownmaker]

November 10th, 2009 by noise

Twin Cities Maker is having a business meeting, Wednesday November 11 at 7pm.  As usual, our meeting will be in the back room at Common Roots Cafe, 26th and Lyndale, Minneapolis. Topics for discussion:

• Maker Faire Attendee Ideas – Please come to the meeting with at least two ideas for groups or individuals that could be invited to a Maker Faire.
• TGIMBOEJ Collection – Bring any electronics junk that you would like to contribute to The Giant Internet Migratory Box of Electronic Junk.
• Halloween Event Report
• Prototyper Build Update
• Financial Update
• Vote for Secretary
• Grants
• Officer reports
• AOB

Hope to see you there!

October 26th, 2009 by noise

Attendance at the TCMaker Clothesline and Halloween Costume Contest was pretty light, but we had a good time nonetheless.  The were four total entries in the clothesline race, two racers that had been built ahead of time, one was built from scratch on site out of LEGO and one that wasn’t quite done but made an attempt at running.

Nobody fully completed the course out and back, although Michael and John came very close with similar solutions at opposite ends of the complexity spectrum.  Scott’s racer made it down the cable one way and then failed catastrophically upon contact with the end plate.  It was difficult to judge an actual winner of the contest because a number of factors, so it was decided to reward all participants for making the effort. Prizes were distributed from the box of swag that Mike received from Make: Magazine.

At the very least by the end of the day we were all pretty excited about the concept and started to brainstorm about some fun ideas for future racers.

There were no entrants in the costume contest although as you can see from the group picture above there was a certain level of personal style from some participants that may have qualified.

Please visit the TCMaker flickr pool for more images from the gathering.  Mike has also now uploaded some pictures and video to our new Picasa public gallery.

Thanks to John for the venue, Jude for setup, Michael for the fun idea and to everyone that brought chow.

June 10th, 2009 by noise

The Twin Cities Maker business meeting will be at 7pm this evening. We will meet in the back room of Common Roots Cafe.

Agenda:

• PayPal, bank account, and collection of money
• Non-profit registration in the state of Minnesota- adjusting the constitution and by-laws to meet the requirements for registration
• Collecting data on fees and rates- SurveyMonkey? E-mail?