Meeting-20130518

WPLUG will have a General User Meeting and presentation on Saturday, May 18th, 2013, starting at 2pm at the Brookline Library.

Schedule for the Day

1:30pm - Doors open, set up
2:00pm - Business Meeting starts
2:30pm - Raspberry Pi Demo and Hands-On Workshop
4:00pm - Registration for Raspberry Pi giveaway closes
4:30pm - Drawing for Raspberry Pi door prize
4:35pm - Meeting ends; clean up, and leave...

Business Meeting

• Review minutes of Februrary 9th, 2013 GUM (5 minutes)
• Reports of officers (10 minutes)
• New Business

Speaker/Presentation

There will be three Raspberry Pi mini-workshops. At the end, we’ll give out coupon codes and/or discount links for the non-gratis products and services used (subject to availability). WPLUG Chair Pat Barron will also be giving away a free Raspberry Pi to a lucky attendee!

Justin Smith's mini-workshop will cover how to turn a Raspberry Pi into an XBMC media server. We’ll install the Raspbmc distribution, go over basic XBMC usage, and touch on sharing protocols like DLNA that can be used for streaming content to the Pi. He may also talk about SABnzbd/SickBeard/Couch Potato if time permits.

Pat will use two Pis, a Model A and a Model B, for two separate demonstrations. Some of the ideas he’s considering include using the Pi in a model rocket, making the Pi into a music player, and installing an IR receiver and setting up LIRC.

We invite you to bring a Raspberry Pi of your own so you can follow with us. Here’s a basic shopping list:

(Note: links to vendors below do not imply any endorsement on the part of WPLUG, they are provided solely as a convenience)

• A Raspberry Pi from Newark ($35), Adafruit ($40), or Sparkfun ($40)
• The Multicomp-branded case that Newark sells ($7.35), the Adafruit Pi Case or Pi Shell clear or blue (each $10), or the Sparkfun Pi Tin ($8)
• An 8GB SD card rated at Class 8 or greater ($8.95 from Amazon)
• A microUSB charger rated for at least 1A. ($7.99 from Amazon), ($6 from Adafruit - cable sold separately), or ($4 from Sparkfun - cable sold separately)

You could probably get away with using a spare cell phone charger, though.

Raspberry Pi Giveaway

At the conclusion of the event, we will be giving away a Raspberry Pi Model B to an attendee via random drawing. The giveaway will include the Raspberry Pi board only - the lucky winner will be responsible for obtaining the appropriate power supply, cables, SD card, case (if desired), and anything else needed other than the Raspberry Pi board itself.

The random drawing for this prize will be conducted at the end of the event, at 4:30pm. In order to win, you must be present for the drawing. Registration for the drawing will close at 4:00pm - if you arrive after that time, you will not be able to participate in the drawing.

Meeting Minutes

MEETING START

The meeting was called order at 2:03 PM. Chair Pat Barron, Vice Chair/Secretary Justin Smith, and Treasurer Terry Golightly were present. Director-at-Large Joe Prostko was absent (excused).

The reading of the previous month's minutes was dispensed.

REPORT OF OFFICERS

Chair Pat reported his intention to give away a Raspberry Pi at the GUM. Based on the board's previous discussions, Pat created an account with Stripe, an online payment service, so that WPLUG can accept electronic payments for membership dues. Although the WPLUG Stripe account is currently in "test mode," it will go live in the near future.

Vice Chair/Secretary Justin reports that two WPLUG members have lapsed: William Teeter and John Lewis.

Justin installed an instance of Tiny Tiny RSS, a Web-based news aggregator, on the WPLUG server and set up five user accounts to test it. Although there are no stability problems, TT-RSS runs slowly, has display problems with Internet Explorer, and doesn't work properly with the Tiny Tiny RSS Android app. Until these problems can be resolved, Tiny Tiny RSS will not be made available as a WPLUG member service.

Treasurer Terry reported that WPLUG's current bank account balance is $699.10.

Director-at-Large Joe Prostko is absent.

COMMITTEE REPORTS

Internet Committee: Chair Vance Kochenderfer upgraded PHP on the WPLUG server to 5.3 so that Tiny Tiny RSS could be installed. At the same time, he updated Mediawiki, which powers WPLUG's Web site.

Program Committee: Pat and Terry will talk about holding an event for Software Freedom Day.

Marketing & Communications Committee: Justin posted a comment on the Tiny Tiny RSS Google+ page letting the developer know that WPLUG has decided to host its own private instance and thanking the him for his hard work. It was well-received.

NEW BUSINESS

Terry would like to discuss future presentations with Pat.

MEETING END

The meeting was adjourned at 2:15 PM.

Meeting Staff

If you would like to volunteer to assist with this meeting, please add your name to one or more of the categories below.

• Host: Pat Barron
• Co-Host: Your Name Here
• Snacks/Refreshments: (Sorry, CLP Brookline doesn't allow us to have any food or beverages at the event without paying a cleaning charge...)
• Setup: Your name here
• Clean Up: Vance Kochenderfer, Your name here

Carpooling

• Your name/location here