Tabletop gaming, first and third Thursdays, 7pm

Table top gaming tonight, stop on by enjoy some games with our game master Matt.
Next time we’ll get Matt to write this so you can know what to expect.  But whats the fun in that, stop on by and join in.

Live The Dream. Learn Programming.

It’s not scary, it’s not difficult, and it doesn’t take years to learn. I think I can prove that to you though this crash course on computer programming. It’s not going to get you a job at Google, but it will let you figure out which words are used most frequently in the book “Alice in Wonderland”, or generate a list of anagrams for your friend’s names! Isn’t technology amazing?

 
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Arduino meetup Thursday 12/8. Featured: The Chronotune’s guts

We’re kicking off i3 Detroit’s new Arduino meetup series with a show-and-tell project that’s near and dear to our hearts: The Chronotune, (as previously covered all over the freakin’ place).

For those following along at home: The Chronotune’s user interface is a rotary encoder, read by the Arduino. Year is indicated on 7-segment displays, and audio files are handled by a uMP3 board. (That’s what we had sitting around. If we had it to do again, we’d use an mp3 shield.) The speaker is driven by an LM386. The dial is moved by a stepper motor from an inkjet printer, with an EasyDriver.

Anyone tinkering with the Arduino experimenter’s platform is welcome to attend, as are those who are curious but don’t know where to begin. We’ll also have a look at the Arduino-LabVIEW bundle recently offered by Sparkfun. Things get under-way this Thursday (12/8) at 7pm.

If this is Friday, it must be Open Shop!

Last night’s tabletop gaming meetup was a great success, as I counted over a dozen players at three simultaneous games. Games of what? I haven’t a clue, I was working on other stuff. It happens again in two weeks!

Tonight is Open Shop, meaning non-members are specifically invited to bring a project to work on, help with someone else’s, or just come check the place out. There should be a member around by 7-ish to open the doors, but much earlier is possible too. Follow us on Twitter to get up-to-the-minute info on that! (Or just look at the upper-right box on this very page…)

Game Night

Thursday will be our twice-monthly board game/card game event, open to the public. The turnout last time was great! Once again, pizza will be provided. Let me know if there’s anything specific you want to play. Available games will include Carcassonne, Cards Against Humanity, Dominion, San Juan, Pandemic, World War 5, Rattus, the Emergo I made with our vinyl plotter, and many more. If you can’t make it, we hope to see you on the first Thursday of the month!

P.S. Speaking of Thursdays: microcontroller fans, don’t forget the Arduino meetup next Thursday.