March 2026 Newsletter
The second meeting of the Melbourne Tech Guilds was conducted on 1st March 2026 at the Library at the Dock, Docklands, Melbourne. There were many highlights. Three Guild Challenges were initiated and are open to all guild members. There was progress in many projects like Patrick’s audio player and visualiser and Mich’s controllable grid display.
This is the first newsletter of Melbourne Tech Guilds compiled by Michael Havill and distributed using Electron Workshop after the meeting.
Guild Challenges
Engage
Robotics Guild – RoboKitty Challenge
Our platform has 4 legs each with 3 stepper motors.
Your challenge is to get RoboKitty to ‘walk’ in a reasonable gate.
Members at the March meeting were able to get RoboKitty shake its legs but not walk. They have gone away with the intention to see if they can improve the algorithms.
Code is shared on GitHub
Here is a video from the March meeting
Mechanics Guild – CAD Challenge
Using one of our small DC motors, design a worm screw driving one or more gears to give an output of about 6RPM
The no load speed of the motor at 1.3v = 6000 rpm
How can the speed be controlled? (Voltage? PMW?)
How much torque is generated from the gearbox?
How can you avoid stripping the gears?
Hardware provided: DC motors free! Plus access to bench supply and tachometer
Bring laptop loaded with your preferred CAD software or get instruction on using Tinkercad (browser based)
A CAD drawing of the motor (can be exported as .svg or .stl) is here
IoT Guild – Smart Home Challenge
Joe has set up a Pi4 with Home Assistant and an ESP32-C3 with a AHT20-BMP280 temperature/Pressure/Humidity sensors. The HA dashboard shows gauges that are updated every 5 secs with new data from the sensors.
Running over a dedicated Wi-Fi router the challenge will be to show a temperature graph over time from members Laptop/phone browser.
Scheduled Events
Commit
Melbourne Tech Guilds
Library at the Dock
Sunday 5th April (Easter Sunday!)
12:30 – 3:30pm
Hardware Freedom Day
We are participating in this annual event being organised with Electron Workshop.
We should have the confirmed details in Luma Events in the next few days.
Over 4 hours there will be ‘lightning’ talks from a variety of makers and exhibition stands from a collection of makerspaces and maker groups.
What is international Hardware Freedom Day (HFD)? Check out the link!
Other Events
Be Curious
Exhibition Opportunity – South Oakleigh College 3rd & 4th October
Document (& Data) Freedom Day
Discussion about open formats and learning how to use AI for local, private and secure note taking.
Wednesday, 25th March
7pm to 9pm AEST
Online & In-person in Richmond
Imagineering with AI: Build Night!
A compact hackathon from idea to prototype, with a group of robotics and AI collaborators.
Sat 28 Mar, 7–9pm AEST
Melbourne CBD, In-Person
Collaboration with Other Groups
Outreach
Electron Workshop
We are already using some of the offerings from Electron Workshop.
We are looking forward to more collaboration and engagement with other like minded groups through the network Alexar is establishing.
Naarm Solarpunk Tech
Your editor had the chance to attend the second Naarm Solarpunk of the year.
This event is for hackers and makers specifically interested in the area of creating more ecologically sustainable and socially just futures using grassroots technologies. Their meetup last month involved talks on getting off big tech, and on building “Neighbourhood-First” local web servers. In this March meetup, they met at the Maker Community makerspace in Brunswick, and had volunteers setting up Raspberry Pi’s as linux webservers, which will be connected via peer-to-peer software (and hopefully eventually LoRa powered mesh networks) to provide communication between local community facilities during power outages.
The Naarm Solarpunk Meetup is open to all groups, but is run by Merri-bek Tech a group specifically trying to roll out climate resilient hosting infrastructure in the region of Merri-bek, in Melbourne’s north.
The solarpunk meetup runs on the 3rd Wednesday of each month, and events are advertised on their meetup page.
Melbourne PC
We are having discussions about potential collaboration
Cross promotion
Hack-a-days?
Other events?
Collaboration Projects
Sharing resources?
Linux Victoria (LUV)
We are having discussions with Linux Users Victoria on collaborating for future events and workshops and securing resources. Their next Town Hall meeting is on Tuesday, April 7th and they run weekly discussions on Linux & AI.