The first meeting was a huge success!

I am happy to announce that the first meeting of MAKE:Princeton was an incredible success! Perhaps 10 people showed up from as far away as Jackson, Ewing and New Brunswick, New Jersey, and even Yardley, PA!.  Several people brought projects for show and tell.

Bill showed us his HF Start for his Tig Welder. He effectively turned a $200 welder into a $1000 welder.

Here’s Bill’s HF Start… That’s about 1,000 volts arcing between tungsten terminals

Here you can see Bill built it from a light dimmer, a large coil from a car, and some hand made air gaps. Throw in some large caps, and a transformer made out of an old CRT yoke, and you have high voltage:

Jon showed us his new USB RFID reader. He toyed around with all sorts of ideas, even crazy user interfaces build around RFID dice. Unfortunately, the tags are expensive and there is next to no linux support ;(

I showed off my alarm clock,

Ian was kind enough to show us the diy Jukebox and arcade game that he built with his brother. Each of these has an embedded computer and incredible craftsmanship. He said he engineered the arcade game so it could be disassembled and transported in a car,

Overall, I was really impressed by the quality and variety of work out there. Very cool stuff guys.

The next meeting will be in two weeks. Same bat time, same bat channel.