Makeroni’s now on Mastodon, the un-Twitter messaging platform as @makeroni@fosstodon.org. This comes after a cracking talk from Andy Piper about distributed messaging systems - the notes are on the wiki and the talk served as a great kick off for attendees to move away from the topically controversial site. Also, did you know we are scheduling on Meetup now? No? You’ll find all the activity on the Meetup Makeroni Page. If you fancy coming along, just sign up and rsvp to a regular meeting.

We’re back in the flesh! TL;DR: Makeroni/HackWimbledon - March 20th - 12 till 4pm at Wimbletech. Why now? With the steady ramp down to zero of restrictions, HackWimbledon’s old digs, at Wimbletech, are now available to use again. So we’re going to start having in-the-flesh meetings once a month. We’re swapping out the Makeroni Talk event for the physical meetings. Back at Wimbletech There’s a fine revamped room for folks to interact in, which is well ventilated and now comes with a cracking big screen for showing folks how stuff works and complementing talks with visuals.

We’re making some changes at Makeroni to adapt to the current state of things and to make things easier for people to take part. We’re halving the number of online live meetings, to make sure people aren’t overwhelmed by them. There’ll now be two meetings a month, Make on the first Sunday of the month for communal making and Talk on the third Sunday of the month for talks and tutorials and other learning opportunities.

We’re still here, meeting every Saturday afternoon for hours of project building, chats and more. We’re also having occasional meetups in the flesh, down the pub and there’s still some work happening on putting together a smarter site with project tracking and micromeetups. What do we cover these days? Well, recent discussions have centered around Home Assistant, MQTT, Zigbee, ESP-Home and all the nuances of getting home automation working. There’s also been hacking on Python, MicroPython, CircuitPython, TinyGo and lots of small boards, watches and things that look like tiny game consoles.

You may, or may not, be wondering how Makeroni has been going since we went online-only for the pandemic. Well, as the solstice comes about, we’re going great with our regular Saturday meetups carrying on in an unbroken sequence and occasional Makeroni extra sessions popping up on demand. There’s less robots at the moment (they really benefit from doing things in person), but there’s a lot more Home Assistant building and installing as makers have had time to set up their own automated environs.

As HackWimbledon, we had 16 Saturday meetups online and we aren’t going to stop. Makeroni meetups happen on video and audio on Discord every Saturday from 12 midday to 4pm. You’re always welcome to chat at anytime in the Discord channels, but in these four hours we want the meeting to be more meetupy - face to face, talking about what we’re making, showing it, and helping each other make it better.

Now you may wonder what Makeroni is, so here’s some brief history. HackWimbledon, the popup makerspace in Wimbledon, operating out of Wimbletech, has been going for a six years or so when Covid-19 struck. This made things hard - the group was all about meeting up in person. HackWimbledon adjourned to an online presence with the aim on maybe meeting up again when this thing was over. It’s now July, Covid-19 will be with us for quite a while and HackWimbledon had to evolve to meet the new challenge of how to be a community.