Pumping Station: One

The second meeting of the Intro to Arduino Class will be Sunday March 4 at 3pm. There are 10 seats available, but observers are welcome after the 10 seats are filled. In the first meeting, we learned about soldering and reading circuit diagrams by making an Arduino work-alike from raw components and a blank proto-board.

In the second class we’ll

• learn to use a breadboard for doing quick “sketches” with electronic parts.
• use a pushbutton, a photoresistor, and a potentiometer to learn about providing inputs into an Arduino program.
• use a serial data connection to communicate with a small LCD character display that can show two lines of text.
• have a first look at ways of powering our circuit when it’s disconnected from the computer.

If you weren’t at the first meeting and therefore don’t have a copy of the board we made, you can still participate by bringing your own Arduino or Arduino-compatible.

The session-2 kit has a breadboard, LCD character display, heavy duty 5-volt adapter, and a couple of other things. If you attend, you should purchase the kit. Price for the session-2 kit is $29.00

I’ll take reservations by email and payment for the kit on site.

Who: everyone (members and non-members are welcome), seating is limited to 10 people.

Cost: $29 for the kit. and to arrange payment.

When: 3/4/2012 3-5pm

Reservations: email ed at kineticsandelectronics dot com

Where: Pumping Station: One 3354 N Elston Ave Chicago, IL 60647

There will be an intro-level Arduino class next Sunday 2/19/12 from 3-5pm in the big room. The emphasis is on understanding circuits and hooking stuff up.

This will be a 4-part series or so. There are 10 seats available, but observers are welcome after the 10 seats are filled.

I’ll have a kit for sale on site to get people started. Price is $29.00. It has a board, chip, USB adapter, LED’s, and a couple of other things to get you started. Because I’ll be packaging the kits for the occasion, I ask that if you attend, you purchase the kit.

I’ll take reservations by email and payment for the kit on site or by Paypal.

The first session (2/19) basic description is:

• How to Solder: Solder up an Arduino workalike.
• How to run the Arduino development application on your laptop.
• Basic Arduino program structure. Run an LED. (Hello World blinky).
• Show where the built-in examples live in the IDE. Run an input example and an output example.
• For inspiration, demo a couple of circuits with an Arduino and some connected hardware.

That’s probably all that will  fit in two hours.
Future sessions may discuss Arduino-compatible accessories, motors, simple sensors, and so on. There are many possibilities.

Who: everyone (members and non-members are welcome), seating is limited to 10 people

Cost: $29 for the kit. Email ed at kineticsandelectronics dot com to reserve and to arrange payment.

When: 2/19/2012 3-5pm

Where: Pumping Station: One 3354 N Elston Ave Chicago, IL 60647

On May 5th, At 7pm

Pumping Station: One will be hosting Mitch Altman, the inventor of the TV B Gone and Brain Machine, and many others,  will be leading an electronics workshop on May 5th  that will teach complete beginners in less than 3 hours how to assemble, solder, and complete a TV B Gone.

After the class we may find the nearest electronics retailer and do a demonstration.

The cost of the class covers materials:

This includes one kit per participant

Members: 30$

Non-Members/Starving Hackers: 35$

Kits Available:

TV-B-Gone

Trippy RGB

Mignonette

Brain Machine

Plus many others, including a few of the Jimmie P. Rodgers line of kits.

Here’s the TV B Gone in action:

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