Good evening and Welcome back everyone!

Hey, everyone. I know it's already two days into finals week, but good luck on all your remaining finals!

This is just a quick notice that there will be no official club activities during finals week and break week. Of course, the lab is still open as always for free work, but there will be no meetings until the beginning of spring quarter. Expect another announcement around week 1 of spring quarter for details on spring activity.

So once again, good luck on finals, have a great break and I'll we'll you all next quarter!

    I hope all had a wonderful break and were able to overstuff themselves
and were able to see family. I would also like to extend my congratulations
to those who just finished their first quarter and beginning their second!

    Getting down to buisness, we're ready to get into these robots and
start projects! This quarter we are digging into a lot of competition
projects including IGVC, Trinity, Imagine RIT, and promotional projects.
Using the interest that people have given us, we have come up with the
teams and leaders for each group of projects. More after the break.

Good evening everyone,

     Making a quick post about where we stand as of today. A lot of exciting things have been happening in the back ground lately which have started to stir up a frenzy in those who know.

     First off, we're getting a couple products from the start up company iOTOS. There are a few MDRC alumni there and we're talking with them know about getting our hands on their products to do some projects with! Their main product, the Nio, is what we'll be working with. It allows you to connect to the internet in a no hassle set up. Reducing the frustration spent to get more complex internet projucts running. Check them out here:

https://www.iotos.net/

     We're also hoping to get some new equipment in the lab soon. We are also working with alumni to get potential donations. This is the time to be involved with projects!

     Sorry if I downplay the awesomeness of this all, feel free to ask more questions through our e-mail at: ritmdrc@gmail.com. Next quarter is going to get kicked in high gear for projects and I can't wait. If you're interested please sign up for meeting times and project teams:

docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform - Meeting Times

docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform - Project Teams

That said, good luck to everyone on finals and I hope to see you next quarter!

-Jared

Sup, people. Your favorite Sysadmin here. Just a little update/apology on what's been going on.

So, about a month ago, our main web server (hostname 'marie') began powering off randomly. This server resides in the research lab down in Erdle Commons, which used to be our club space many moons ago. As I did not have access to that lab, I had to work with the lab's sysadmin to try and get it back up and running. It soom became evident that the server was not long for this world.

After a few weeks, I managed to get the sever out of the lab and bring it up to our lab. Many of you may have noticed it taking up all the lab bench space last Saturday (my apologies for that). After backing up all the data from it, I began procrastinating the task of migrating everything off of it. Yesterday, that procrastination ended and I moved both the website that you're viewing now and the mailing lists on to the dev server (mdrcdev.rit.edu). After futzing around with all of that, all of a sudden the dev server stopped working.

As it turns out, it was the RIT IT people moshing IP addresses around, and a few calls to ITS sorted that out. A day later and a few other issues hammered out (certificates and whatnot), we seem to be fully operational, albeit with no backup servers now. I'll be keeping a close eye on the dev server until we can get a replacement server, which should be in the next few weeks. In the mean time, please let me know (jwg1873 at rit.edu) if there are any issues with any of the club systems (especially if you're getting bounced emails).

Thanks for your patience!

--Sean

We've been getting a lot of questions lately and our organization has been less than perfect, so I thought it would be good to clarify some things.

The "Members" mailing list is our general announcement list. Everyone who put their email into the spreadsheet at the club fair has been subscribed to it. I had to correct some mis-typed addresses, and if you aren't getting any emails, let me know (jwg1873@rit.edu). There's at least one address that's confirmed to be bouncing, and there's probably more that I haven't caught. If you aren't subscribed and want to be, visit this page: http://mdrc.rit.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/members. If you are subscribed and no longer wish to be, click the unsubscribe link on the bottom of any list email.

Our Wednesday meetings are mostly administrative. They've been more useful in the past, but considering the large number of new members and the scheduling conflicts of our E-Board members, we may end up dropping those meetings. Saturday workshops are still on, and as always the lab is open to anyone with swipe access or anytime it's occupied. If you're looking to get swipe access, definitely spend some time in the lab. The webcam will show you if there's anyone in the lab, so you can check before you make the trek up. We generally grant swipe access to those members that have shown that they are willing to put effort into the club by showing up to the lab. Broadly speaking, if we know your face by the end of the quarter, you can get swipe.

For those who have been wondering, yes, we'll be doing more advanced workshops in the winter and spring quarters. The fall quarter workshop schedule was tailored for all the new members, many of whom may not have the necessary skills or knowledge to be a successful contributer to the club. The intent of the fall quarter workshops is basically a crash course in basic robotics skills. If you feel that you already know what a particular workshop is teaching, feel free to skip it. As we said before, workshops are not graded and attendance is not mandatory. If you're ready to dive right into robotics, talk to any of our returning members. There are lots of projects that could use your help.

This Saturday's workshop is dual-purpose. We'll be doing an intro to the lab equipment and a small breadboarding exercise for the actual workshop, then we'll be granting server and wiki access to those that want it. This is important as the club makes extensive use of the wiki for coordination of projects and information.

There seemed to be some confusion over pizza sales. As a club, we receive a small budget from Student Government. The remaining volume of our funds must be made via fundraising. Our primary fundraiser is the KGCoE Pizza Sale. Almost all clubs in the KGCoE participate in this fundraiser on a rotating basis, with a different club doing a sale every day.
We request that every club member get pizza sale trained (a requirement imposed on us by the Monroe County Health Board) so they can be available for working pizza sales. If enough people sign up, everyone will only have to work a maximum of one hour. Members get free pizza for working at least 1 hour at a sale. We feel that the pizza sales are a good alternative to required club dues. I can assume that most of you haven't gotten trained, so I'll be setting up a training session sometime soon.

I hope this clears up any confusion. If you have questions, email us at eboard@mdrc.rit.edu.

Greetings, robot enthusiasts! Since Derrick graduated, I'll be handling the news posts from now on.

With many of our senior members graduating, we are in need of new members. To facilitate this, we're starting the year off with a bunch of new introductory workshops to teach the basic skills needed to make robots.

Our kick-off meeting will be Saturday, September 8th at 2:00 PM in Erdle Commons. The kick-off will go straight into the week 1 workshop after general club introductions and a small info session. The saturday workshop schedule will go as follows:

Week 1: Blinky - Introduction to Soldering
Week 2: Instrumentation - Learn the Lab
Week 3: Introduction to Robot Programming with C
Week 5: Introduction to Microcontrollers
Week 7: BristleBots - Make a Simple Robot
Week 9: Open Lab / Personal Projects

The off weeks will be fun weeks. The lab will be available like always for personal project and open work time, but we'll also be doing things like movie night, game night, bike rides, miniature golf and more.

If you signed up for our mailing list at the club fair, you'll be receiving a meeting time poll sometime during week 1. If you didn't sign up for the mailing list but want to, send an email to jwg1873@rit.edu.

I hope to see lots of new members at the kick-off meeting!

Edit: Weekday meeting poll is up:  Polls are closed and Wednesday is the winner. Weekly meetings will be held Wednesday at 6 PM in the MDRC Lab, 4th floor of the engineering building. Use the stairwell by the rear entrance to the engineering building, near the Brinkman lab (glass-windowed hallway). There will be a note on the door with a phone number to call if you don't have swipe access.

--Sean Greenslade

 Well thanks to Sean I finally have some pictures up of the results of my weekend cleaning effort!

Check out the page here!

James also showed up on Sunday to lend some lifting and pushing power to get most of it finished by the start of classes on Monday.

 With BArd proving stubborn in getting its motor control working, the mood has struck me to do a little house cleaning (including getting the floors mopped!). Once the lab is back in serviceable condition I will be taking pictures of the lab to create a new virtual tour section of the website.

Make sure you check back next week to see the result of the work!

 We will be postponing this weekend's workshop one week. We will be holding the pan/tilt workshop on the 18th.