The Dork Exchange
Wanted
Joseph Barrows: looking for a plotter (not necessarily in working order) to modify ( jjbarrows *atsign* artwww.net )
Jesse Stevens: Tomy Robots - especially the omnibots and any related gear for parts/non-destructive robotic modifications - of special interest is the Omnibot2000 with the moving arm - will buy them! (noodlepringle *at* gmail *dot* com)
Javier Candeira: Can anybody lend me access to a CNC machine? Also where do you go in this city for cheap chinese toys in bulk? I find dollar shops expensive in comparison to Madrid!
Buying
Open-Mesh Boxes
We'd love to be able to purchase some of these great little units from http://www.open-mesh.com which gets a bulk discount if you purchase 20 units at a time plus massive savings on shipping. Basically we'll see who's interested and if we can reach 20 or near 20 then we'll go ahead - the purchase price for 20 will be US$39. Should you want help with it after purchase we can help and there is a large community behind them also. Just put your name followed by how many units you'll be interested in:
Cake Communications (Jesse & Hannah) (5)
- Toby Corkindale (1)
- Andrew Worsley (1 or 2)
- Dennis Wollersheim (2)
Tim Humphrey & Madeleine Flynn (1)
- Tony Nagle (1?)
- Tim's Project (3?)
- Christian Ramilo (3)
- Paul Eterovc (1)
Arduino
We are banding together to buy some Arduino Boards and save by buying in volume and saving on shipping. The preferred supplier is the manufacturer, pcb-europe in Italy. I don't know what we will do for import taxes, we still have to calculate whether they will be cheaper than buying from Little Bird.
Please write yourself downself next to the type of board you want, with the number of boards you want:
Arduino Diecimila: Javier Candeira(1), Jesse Stevens(n), GeorgePatterson (2), Atosha McCaw (2)
Arduino Serial PCB: Javier Candeira(2)
Arduino Proto Shield: Javier Candeira(3)
Michael Borthwick: has ATMEGA8 chips available, already programmed with the Arduino bootloader, for AUD$5.00 and can help people with making their own Arduino (and other) printed circuit boards.
Local Shops
Loscha: "I work as near as across the road from RS Electronics, Salmon Street, Port Melbourne (I work at Holden). If people need something picked up from there to be brought to Dorkbot, and they aren't going to jerk me around over the money, I'm happy to collect things for people."
Discounts
Little Bird has a discount for us. Just input the code DORKBOTL9DWH48M on their online store. I just did and it appears to be a 8%. They have also just discounted the Diecimila to 39 dollars, but the prices quoted on the web are not GST included, so you have to add a 10% on anything quoted there.
Loscha: "Also, because I work at Holden, if I show my ID badge at RS Electronics, I get the trade prices discount. It's not much (it appears to be around 5-7.5% depending on the item), but, hey, it helps, especially with their often outrageously illogical and overblown price structuring!"
Selling, giving away...
Jesse Stevens: Free to good home - Dual Pentium 3 500mhz HP netserver with 6 (possibly 9?) disks @ 9.1gb per disk raid array (able to do raid 0,1,5) with hardware raid controller, 128mb ecc ram, hot swap hot swap everything, also now with spare dual 800mhz processors and voltage regulator to suit included - bit of a monster machine but has been great - was running our home until recently - had debian sarge running happily onboard (noodlepringle *at* gmail *dot* com) - will need to pickup from my house
Resources
Monash Design Dept suppliers contact list now online. You can find + download by opening the attachments tab or monash_suppliers_contactlist.doc. Beware that it may not be up-to-date though as it's from the beginning of this year (2007), so always call before rocking up.
Loscha: Has a very good collection of Yamaha and Casio service manuals. The Yamaha things are mostly on Yamaha Black Boxes and the Casio service manuals are well organized in a filing cabinet at his house. He also has available for Dorks, a large collection of journals and papers from the Audio Engineering Society.