Having a meetup in my garage

I’ve decided to start holding makers meetups in my garage. I announced it on Facebook on the Arduino Cape Town group and on Zatech Slack. Here’s some info, copied from the announcement posts:

Initial announcement:

Calling all Makers in the Stellenbosch area! I have a double garage, a bunch of tools for mechanical and electronic making, and Thursday evenings dedicated to building interesting things. Bring your projects, get some help and inspiration, and make things! This will be free and really informal. I’ll provide tables, power and tools. Anyone with enthusiasm for making is welcome. First meetup is this coming Thursday 12 April, 6:30 pm. Please RSVP so that I know how much workspace to provide.

Based on the questions I got, I added some more info:

This will be a regular thing, almost every Thursday. I will be tinkering then, even if no-one else arrives.

Anyone is welcome, beginner to pro.

You don’t have to bring a project, you can come just to chat or get ideas for projects. I might have a spare Arduino or Raspi, some sensors or lights, and breadboards available if you want to mess around with that, but no guarantees. Might be useful to bring your own laptop, even if you don’t have a project, so you can start researching one :)

Just to get the conversations started, I’ll probably have my pendulum wave set up and also will have the new, improved drawing machine with Jupyter notebook control set up. And the 3D printer, of course.

I have free wifi with 10Mbps uncapped ADSL.

If you want anything to eat or drink, you have to bring it yourself.

Bring warm clothes, the garage might be cold.

I have some parts and raw materials, which you are welcome to use within reason. This includes a bunch of scavenged motors and magnets from printers and harddrives, Solar cells from old garden lights, lots of foam, and random electronic parts.

I have a soldering station, drill press, small semi-working lathe and lots of hand powertools, mostly woodworking. Also a 3D printer, if I can get it to work.

My goal for this week is getting the 3D printer set up and working and getting the place in shape so that everything is accessible.

This is NOT the makerspace that the engineering students are setting up at the Launchlab. I’m planning on joining that and helping too, but this is just something I want to start and see where it leads to.