Our regular Wednesday evening meetings in the month of March will be on the evenings of:

• Wednesday 2nd March, 7pm - 11pm
• Wednesday 9th March, 7pm - 11pm
• Wednesday 16th March, 7pm - 11pm
• Wednesday 23th March, 7pm - 11pm

The day-long Hack Session will take place on

• Sunday 20th March, 11am - 6pm.

Hope to see you all there!

The omniversity is being run by our good friends (and landlords) MadLab, without whose support we'd not be able to meet in such a handy and soldering iron friendly environment, If you know anyone who might be interested, please pass this on to them.

Beginners guide to Arduino and Physical Computing

‘Physical Computing’ and Arduino devices have made physical interaction affordable and available to non-experts. Whether creating interactive installations, information systems, prototyping products, or making new interfaces, there is a whole world of DIY electronics, interaction design and rapid prototyping available through this platform.

What you need to be familiar with

You’ll need to know how to use your computer, edit files, and save them.
Some programming background is useful, but not essential; if you’ve ever written Javascript, Pascal, C, C++, Java or Actionscript, you’ll find the Arduino programming language very familiar. If you’ve written Macros in Excel or any desktop software, you’ll find this will help you understand what’s happening.

Software and costs

All software is freely available and copies will be distributed with the course materials on the day.
We will be using the Arduino IDE, version 0021,  which can be downloaded from http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software for all platforms.
We will also be using the Processing IDE, version 1.2.1, which can be downloaded from http://processing.org/download/ for all platforms.

Equipment you’ll need

You will need to bring a computer, ideally a laptop, with a recent version of  Linux, Windows or OSX installed. You will need a USB interface on this computer.

To prepare for the course...

Sign up - Beginners guide to Arduino and Physical Computing

Our regular Wednesday evening meetings in the month of February will be on the evenings of:

• Wednesday 2nd February, 7pm - 11pm
• Wednesday 9th February, 7pm - 11pm
• Wednesday 16th February, 7pm - 11pm
• Wednesday 23th February, 7pm - 11pm

The day-long Hack Session will take place on

• Sunday 20th February, 11am - 6pm.

Hope to see you all there!

Hacky New Year!

Our regular Wednesday evening meetings in the month of January will be on the evenings of:

• Wednesday 5th January, 7pm - 11pm
• Wednesday 12th January, 7pm - 11pm
• Wednesday 19th January, 7pm - 11pm
• Wednesday 26th January, 7pm - 11pm

The day-long Hack Session will most likely take place on

• Sunday 16th January, 11am - 6pm, but this is still to be confirmed.

Hope to see you all there!

Everyone is currently ill, busy or both, so we've taken the decision to cancel tomorrow's HAC:Manchester Meeting.

Our regular wednesday meetings will resume on the 5th of January, 2011.