Freeside Atlanta

Have you been itching to donate things to Freeside, but you’re not sure what we need?  Have you been looking for volunteer opportunities to use your awesome skills?  This monthly post shall be your guide, henceforth! Items we need, in no particular order: Paint (brighter colors especially, not black/grey/white): we are painting an internet meme explosion mural in the front bathroom, and Carrie needs more paint. Paint (dark, black, matte): for shrouding the stage in the darkness. Printer ink for the HP L7680 4+ port NIC card for rack system, or full system: we are trying to build a router to create subnets, see Alan or any IT staff person for details. Mounts for rack systems: stacking the pizza boxen on top of each other just won’t do. Lumber and other build-out materials: ask about specifics, but the two main projects that could use some lumber are for the electronics lab benches and for improvements to member storage. Small to Medium plastic bins: We can start subdividing or r

Tuesday [5:30p]: CNC Build Project, Public, Free. Freeside veterans, Preston and Eldon, will be leading this project to assemble and tune a smaller CNC for high-precision work, then design and build a full-size 4' x 4' CNC mill for the space as well. http://www.meetup.com/Freeside-Atlanta/events/106771092/ Tuesday [7:30p]: Open House, Public, Free. We host this meeting every Tuesday so people can check out the space, chat with members of the organization, and get together to plan projects, events, and classes. http://www.meetup.com/Freeside-Atlanta/events/106718942/ Tuesday [8:30p]: Introduction to Basic Electronics, Public, Free. Chris Moore and Wayne Salhany explain basic electricity and electronics concepts that you can use in your next project. http://www.meetup.com/Freeside-Atlanta/events/106481602/ Wednesday [8p-11p]: Analog Game Night, Public, Free. Come get your board and/or card game on! http://www.meetup.com/Freeside-Atlanta/events/106083922/ Friday [8a

I've been busy working on this project since I last wrote about it. I have a new PCB designed and built up and another that has since been designed but not yet built. Designing electronics is a process. The first design I had built had an analog mux on it that I was using to push all the current sense signaling to a few ADCs on the board. Later designs needed those pins on the MCU for other purposes so I added an 8 channel ADC to the design and removed the mux all together. I then found that the ADC was too fast to measure the current in a useful way because the PWM I use to adjust the current would give the ADC values that were either 0% or 100% instead of a working average. I knew this going in, but assumed I'd be able to get a reliable average in a reasonable amount of time. For whatever reason though, it took about 300 samples per channel to get an reliable average value. Multiply that by 8 channels and then assume a single byte to store the value and you can see that it co

Freeside Atlanta and My Inventor Club will be teaming up on Saturday, February 9th to bring you  a daylong hackathon in 3D Modeling, Design, Marketing, Theory and  more.  This is a free, educational meet and greet event which will be hosted  in Freeside Atlanta and My Inventor Club's space. This is the (draft) speaker line-up and schedule of events!  Like so many of these things, this is subject to change.  Watch this blog or follow us on Twitter for updates and other announcements. Cost: Free Location: Freeside Atlanta ,  675 Metropolitan Parkway Suite 6066, Atlanta, GA 30310 Directions, Parking, and other Information Date: February 9th, 2013 Time: 1200-1700 EST Contact: pr@freesideatlanta.org or info@myinventorclub.com Speakers Track 1100~1500 Eastern Time (UTC−05:00) This will be a Google Hangout invitation on the day of the event. Nicholas Giovinco ,  Moderator - Freeside Atlanta Greetings and Introductions: Welcome to Freeside Time/Length: 30 mins 1100-1

I have been working a Bluetooth 4 automotive power distribution unit for a couple months now. Here are some videos showing the capabilities.  The goal is to have a device about the size of a deck of cards that can distribute up to 100A @ 13.8V for automotive applications. 8 individual circuits can be controlled. Control will include constant current, circuit breaker at specific currents, and PWM duty cycle. You will be able to program dedicated functions to external buttons. Lastly, you will be able to get real time feedback from the system on a Bluetooth 4 device. This data will include total current, current by channel, and system voltage among other things. There are a lot of features on the drawing board still. This is going to have application in show cars, jeeps, motorcycles, and boats I believe. It's been a really fun project so far. I'm going to need about $120,000 to bring it to market so I want it to be pretty perfect before I write that check. I do hope I ge

Come one; come all! Freeside Atlanta and My Inventor Club will be teaming up on Saturday, February 9th to bring you a daylong hackathon in 3D Modeling, Design, Marketing, Theory and more.  This is a free, educational meet and greet event which will be hosted in Freeside Atlanta and My inventor Club's space. What to Expect : -Several Machine Technologies on display with instructional demonstrations -Show and Tell examples of select prints and design prototypes -Lectures ranging from Design Theory, Modeling Techniques, Printing Strategies, Troubleshooting & Community Experiences -3D printing workshops and Hands on immersion -Special Guest Speakers Cost : Free Location : 675 Metropolitan Parkway Suite 6066, Atlanta, GA 30310 Date : February 9th, 2013 Time : 1200-1700 Contact : pr@freesideatlanta.org or info@myinventorclub.com -Nick

We've had two really great 3D printing meetups lately, one to talk about and demo 3D printers , and another to help people build and debug them . Here's some of the stuff we saw -   Jorge brought in his Rostock Prisma to show it off and debug a few extruder issues. It's a really cool and fairly robust design. Plus, it's a lot of fun to watch! You can also check out the Thingyverse page that Jorge has put together for it.  We also had Ant's 3D printer and the Thing-o-Matic going, so people could benchmark or run off a few parts. James Stephens also brought in his RepRap Mendel to debug some extruder issues. Randy did some work on his CNC, building a cabinet with removable side-walls for it, while Van continued working on his 3D Printer, the same variant as Ant's and the one that I am building for the space. I made slow progress on that, too, and it "only needs to be wired up" now. That's all for now! Watch our Me