[TriEmbed] Short presentation idea for next month, reminder about TriEmbed @ Splatspace & call for volunteers

[Pete Soper]

I just noticed the Sparkfun Eagle file for a size 0805 capacitor defines 
a very much smaller pair of pads than the corresponding file in the 
Adafruit Eagle library. Of all the areas where I would have expected 
everybody's spec to be the same, this would be on the short list. It's 
one more thing that is driving me to the conclusion that making/using my 
own component library isn't just about making up for components that 
have no CAD files. (And another realization close on the heels of this 
one: if I end up having to do custom device description files anyway, 
what is the real advantage of the "relatively vast" set of Eagle files 
out there vs the corresponding ones for KiCad? I think the only 
remaining reason to use Eagle for full custom designs is that there 
never seems to be time to stop and learn KiCad.)

A few nights ago I did an initial, trivial first test of my new reflow 
oven. It worked perfectly, although there was a minor temperature 
excursion during the cool down part of the cycle. As soon as I can 
remember where I put the bag of itsy bitsy FETs I'll try out the oven 
with some Adafruit bare breakout boards that look like this:
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1230

It wouldn't be within the rules for the TriEmbed meeting room to 
actually run the oven next month ("second Monday" the 13th, meeting room 
TBD), but if folks are interested I could do a quick 20 minute "start to 
finish" tutorial about designing a simple board, getting the PCB made, 
soldering it, etc with, say, 10 minutes for Q&A. Maybe I'll have the 
software for the very powerful Adafruit USB microscope figured out by 
then so it doesn't create weird color distortions. But the distortion 
can be kind of cool. Here's a shot from the recent TriLUG Holiday Demo 
party: http://bitser.net/images/FXOS8700CQ-on-paste-stencil.jpg

If anybody else has an idea for a short presentation please "speak up." 
I say "short" because we seem to be doing well with a format allowing 
plenty of time for folks to network and see and talk about the gizmos 
and gadgets brought to the meeting, current problems, etc. This would 
seem to work very well as a complement to TAR (Triangle Amateur 
Robotics) meetings @ NCSU on 1st Mondays. I think if we get 
announcements and short presentations out done by 8pm at the latest 
we'll preserve this format for TriEmbed meetings.

Don't forget there is a TriEmbed meeting at Splatspace in Durham 
starting at 2pm on Saturday the 21st.  Scott Hall is back in mostly 
sunny North Carolina but has a conflict and can't preside over this 
meeting this month but will presumably resume his duties in January. My 
bias for this month's meeting will be the hands-on activities that we 
could do at meetings at TechShop but cannot do at the NCSU meetings, 
namely soldering, drilling holes, the occasional accidental loss of 
magic smoke, etc.  If you'd like to join in this fun or just want to 
watch or get help or get in out of the cold, please consider attending. 
Details are on the web page athttp://triembed.org <http://triembed.org>, 
but there are Meetup pages for this meeting and another meeting that 
will overlap this meeting and that might be of interest:

TriEmbed Meeting @ Splatspace December 21st, 2pm 
<http://www.meetup.com/splatspace/events/dhqlpgyrqbcc/?gj=ro2_e&a=ro2_gnl&rv=ro2_e&_af_eid=dhqlpgyrqbcc&_af=event>

DigiFab Meeting @ Splatspace December 21st, 1pm 
<http://www.meetup.com/splatspace/events/154053902/?gj=ro2_e&a=ro2_gnl&rv=ro2_e&_af_eid=154053902&_af=event>

NCSU students and faculty staff: Charlie West did a great job of being 
the official NCSU rep at past TriEmbed meetings, but he needs a break. 
We need one or more students and/or faculty or staff members who can 
simply agree ahead of time to be the official rep(s) for a given meeting 
to satisfy the meeting agreement with the university. There doesn't need 
to be anything specific involved with this beyond attendance of the 
meeting, although helping with pre-meeting communication within the 
university would be very welcome. If you can help with this just drop a 
line to mailto:coordinators at triembed.org and include your name and 
(emergency) phone number and the meeting(s) you can commit to attending. 
There's zero harm in having multiple reps and we can hopefully arrange 
something like signup genius for subsequent meetings. Charlie, Paul 
MacDougal and I thank you in advance for helping with this!

-Pete
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