CCHS GGHC: CCHS element14 group
Team moment of the week
We had a number of great moments this week.
Team member Andy was invited to join gmc and friends for an interview about the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge on the /dev/random show that broadcasts from Revelation Space on the Signal radio station. For those who don't know, Signal is dedicated to hackers, hacking, hacks and everything related. Team members Andy and Paul teamed up for a fun, relaxed chat with gmc about the challenge.
If you'd like to hear the interview playback, you can find it at the 2011-04-14-2200 entry in the archives. We're on a little after halfway (at about 33:15):
http://signal.hackerspaces.org/archive/
Another big moment was the satisfaction of finally pronouncing "Go!" on the PCB production run. A small run of 8 boards, but still a satisfying milestone, none-the-less 
. A big thanks to team members Luke and Marc for getting us there.
And finally, a few of the team attended the ever amazing Trampoline Day, and team members Andy, Paul and Luke gave a talk on the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge and Hackerspaces in general. About 15 or so people came along to hear all about it and ask questions. Thanks to all those who attended, and Wade for the photo
Progress this week
Project: Due to "other life" commitments for various team members, we found ourselves slowing down this week (counter to our plans). We also found that the Easter long weekend introduced a number of headaches for getting PCB fabrication and parts supply completed to schedule. We got the PCB production under way, the bulk of the ordering completed, discussed existing software we could reuse and new work that would be required, and planned what we would need for some concerted build activities over the Easter long weekend.
Requirements: We reviewed what would be required to create a couple of the experiments we'd like to use to demonstrate the project.
Design: We made a final round of revisions to the PCB design, and sent the gerbers off for fabrication.
Build: We discussed the approach to a hardware rig to test the graphic LCD. We ordered the LCD's earlier than other parts, so expect they'll arrive early this week in advance of the PCB's. As soon as these arrive, we'll get the test rig up and running and start exploring a design for operating the LCD via the shift registers.
Plan & Schedule: Our main focus has been bringing together all the things needed to work through build and test activities over the Easter break. We've also needed to adjust our schedule to fit with the availability of team members. We've certainly felt the pinch of "real world" commitments cutting into our project schedule.
Key Thoughts and Observations
We had the importance of local hacker support networks reconfirmed a couple of times this part week, both in terms of working together in group review of the PCB layouts, but also in overcoming the various problems associated with a short time frame, limited size PCB fabrication run. A number of folks in the extended community stepped in to offer advice and helpful contacts to getting done what we needed. In particular, team member Marc Alexander provided key advice and assistance through his company Freetronics in meeting our PCB fabrication and component sourcing challenges.
It's amazing the wealth of skill and experience a hackerspace can bring to bear. We're honored and extremely grateful to be able to work with such a diverse and supportive crew.
Rough Milestones for next week
For week five, we’ll be working hard on breaking the back of various activities, including:
- Assembling and exploring prototype LCD hardware rig
- Organising and running at least one surface-mount build day
- Concluding the purchase of remaining components from local suppliers
- Building the first set of ArduinoLab boards
- Software development
- Draft enclosure layout and assembly
- Sourcing components for the demonstration experiments
- organising some school trials in the final week of the competition.
Spotlight
No spotlight this week, but we'll try to follow up with some additional guest posts on specific topics from some of the team members.
Stay tuned for more updates!
Happy Hacking from the Connected Community HackerSpace (Melbourne)