Very cool write-up in Technical.ly/DC about a meetup in the District whose members have frequent ‘metro hack nights’ to explore the city’s infrastructure through technology. The group’s next meetup is November 30th around the theme “Playing with Traffic.”
When you walk into a Transportation Techies meetup there are two things you are guaranteed to see: the latest hacks of local transit systems, and a crowd of people who seem to care a lot about each other.
The last meetup we attended was the seventh edition of Metro Hack Night in October. It featured nine presenters, two LED projects, and one “hug timer” person who gave presenters a hug when their time ran out. We spoke to meetup founder and organizer Michael Schade on why he started the group, and how he built the community.
Eric Haengel from the DC Hack and Tell Meetup, who built an LED metro map. And Ed O’Brien, who built an LED strip mapping train positions on the red line using Raspberry Pi and Adafruit. (Both used WMATA’s API.)
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Comments Off on ‘Transportation Techies’ in D.C. are Exploring Infrastructure – and Building Community – Via Technology | #metrohacknight @TechnicallyDC @Technical_ly
