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Thanks to someone donating a workbench, several shop members cleaning an area for it, and two shop members getting the missing bolts, we now have a new workbench for our electronics projects! Horray!

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The HSIS group completed their first test flight this past Saturday, April 10th. We had a camera scripted to take pictures every few seconds and a cell phone setup to post it’s GPS coordinates to a website to track on the ground. We were invited to hitchhike on one of UAH’s balloons. At 9am Saturday we met, activated, and assembled our payload for a 10am launch time.

Satyam and Ethan with packaged payload
Satyam and Ethan with packaged payload

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Where: Makers Local 256, 203 Brown Street
When: Saturday, October 17th, 1:00 – 3:00pm
Cost: $30 (for the things you get to keep)

Mr. Mike Spiceland, a coworker of mine, will be giving an basic AVR class in two weeks, October 17th from 1 to 3pm. Everyone will need to bring a laptop with them. I’m waiting to hear back about getting some Arduinos for $30. Please email me before Saturday if you’re interested in taking part in the class so we know how many people to plan.

For those with Debian or Ubuntu systems, you should be able to just run the following before the class:
apt-get install gcc-avr avr-libc avrdude

For those with Windows systems, you’ll need to install the WinAVR package here: http://winavr.sourceforge.net/

Don’t worry if you have any problems getting your system setup, just show up a little early and we’ll be able to help you get going.

The class outline is as follows:

Class 1: Introduction to microcontrollers / AVR / Arduino
– October 17th
Basic Concepts
building projects and programming your micro
bits and bytes – hex, binary, binary C operators, and accessing
16-bit registers on an 8 bit micro
getting familiar with the datasheet
I/O ports – talking to the outside world
intro to avr-gcc and avr-libc
Interrupts
Interrupt Service Routines
External Interrupts

Mike also has two more classes planned. We’ll discuss when we want to have them at the this class.

I look forward to seeing you there!
#matt