A monthly hardware meetup for anyone interested in electronics / hardware.
Held on the second Monday of each month, 6-8pm, at Infosect, 2/9 Beaconsfield Street, Fyshwick, 2609 ACT.
We'll cover topics such as PCB design / layout, embedded programming, tips and tricks to make hardware less hard, and everything in between.
All skill levels welcome, and feel free to bring along any projects you are working on or need a hand with as well.
If you have any suggestions about topics to discuss / changes to make, please get in touch.
An unprepared talk on the wonderful world which is electronic test and measurement, discussing common tools, how they work, pitfalls, where to cheap out, and Josh's unsuccessful attempt at designing a VNA.
| Date | Topic |
|---|---|
| 11/11/19 | Test and Measurement |
| Date | Topic |
|---|---|
| 8/4/19 | Intro to KiCad / How to design a PCB |
| 13/5/19 | uC101: Intro to Microcontrollers / How to interface to the real world |
| 10/6/19 | Breadboard to PC Board |
| 8/7/19 | uC102: Embedded Communication Protocols / ADC |
| 12/8/19 | Further PCB Design / Manufacturing / KiCad |
| 9/9/19 | WTFpga Workshop |
| 28/10/19 | More FPGA! |
A workshop going over how to design a printed circuit board in KiCad.
Aimed at beginners who haven't designed many boards before, or folks who have design experience but haven't used KiCad much.
Feel free to bring a laptop with KiCad 5.1 installed if you want to design along, otherwise just come along and ask questions as we go. I would highly suggest bringing a mouse as well, as layout with a trackpad is not much fun.
The SAO101 folder contains resources which will be used on the night.
A workshop delving into the low level details of how you can use a microcontroller to interface with the physical world.
Will be going below the Arduino abstraction layer to directly interface with registers and peripherals on an ATmega328p, allowing us to interact with switches, rotary encoders, and LEDs.
You'll learn why buttons don't turn on just once when you press them and ways to get around this issue, along with how custom silicon on the chip can take the workload off your processor.
If time allows will also cover communication protocols and ADCs, however that will most likely be a different months topic.
Please bring along a laptop with the Arduino IDE installed, along with a Mini-USB cable to connect to the microcontroller with. Josh will have the installer files and spare USB cables on the night, but will not be enough for everyone. The uC101 folder contains resources which will be used.
Prototyped a circuit on a breadboard, and want to get it onto a printed cicruit board but not sure how? If so this talk is for you!
We will be going over how to to take a bunch of breakout boards with wires flying between them and get it onto a professional looking PCB.
Multiple common microcontrollers, breakout boards, and other handy components will be covered, allowing you to take your electronic design to the next level.
Following on from uC101 in which the low level functions of a microcontroller were explored, this workshop will delve into how embedded devices communicate, along with touching on Analog to Digital Converters.
UART, SPI, I2C, and JTAG will all be discussed, along with writing code and communicating with UART, SPI, and I2C devices.
Please bring along a laptop with the Arduino IDE installed. Josh will have the installer files on the night as well. The uC102 folder contains resources which will be used.
A workshop delving into more detail about PCB design, including 4+ layer stack ups, impedance controlled traces and boards, layout tips, and looking at what the modern state of the art is in PCB manufacturing and assembly.
We will also discuss tools and how to use them to achieve the above mentioned design considerations, followed by looking at some of Josh's projects and identifying where these techniques have been utilised.
2 hour crash course in FPGAs and Verilog.
Unlike most meetups where all you need to do is show up, this workshop will require software to be installed in advance and hardware to be acquired.
Have a read of the WTFpga Readme and let Josh know if there are any questions.
Following on from the WTFpga workshop, we will discuss some of the key details about FPGA function, programming, debugging, and hopefully explain some of the questions which arose at the previous workshop.