Meeting on 27 July 2024 Micromouse Progress Following our meeting on 25 May a couple of group members have joined the UK Micromouse and Robotics Society, UKMARS and have been welcomed to their group. One of our members has decided to aim for the maze solving robot competition, whilst a second has decided to compete in the “Dragster” race. UKMARS has a basic robot design to allow people to get a headstart on their events and they provide PCBs to new members.

Arduino Display Paul has been doing some Arduino coding to get the Tinkerers website details onto the display. This is proving the capability to write information to the display that we can later use to show other useful information in future projects. As an example it could be used to show the temperature and humidity in a greenhouse. Robotics Helen’s Autonomous Rover Helen has spent the last year building, refining and developing her autonomous robot.

A piece of art created with multi-colour LED strips. 600 colour-changing LEDs are used to make an art piece which changes over time. This mini-series covers the design, electronics, coding and 3D printed parts that give an insight into how I approached this project

Everybody needs a logo! We wanted a logo for the website which reflects the qualities of the group. Start simple To kick off the design we started with a “T” shape to reflect the “Tinkerers” initial letter. More geometric The first was a good start, but being an engineer it was a bit free-form for me. I wanted to constrain the lines to a more geometric set of shapes. I also liked this logo as it looks a bit like a hammer, the tinkerers tool 😄, and it is broken into pieces!

Create, Learn, Share Are you creative? Do you enjoy learning new skills and solving problems? Would you like to share your skills and experience with others? If any of the above apply to you then you need to come down and meet the Tinkerers! What are we are interested in? This is not an exclusive list as new members bring new skills and interests, but it hopefully gives you a flavour of the group.