The Automation Technology Club is a small group of people, mostly located in South West Ohio.
We are interested in various technologies, hobby robots, industrial robots, AI, ham radio, Arduino, ESP32, and other micro-controllers.
The club has been around in one form or another for over a decade, I personally joined in 2014 - and the group was around before that.
Meetings were held in person, every week on Thursdays, unless there was a holiday in that week.
It was all good fun, and I learned quite a lot about Arduino and micro-controllers.
Some how during that time I became 2nd in charge of the meeting - I'm still honestly not sure how that happened. But we had one official leader, and it wasn't me.
But during that time, I created a repository for shared code on github. Started to record our meetings. Tried many times to get our members to use social media to help get the word out about the meetings. And I'm sure there was more, that either got added, or changed.
We even did a few group projects (we had a display for Star Wars Day 2015 that the library hosted).
Sometime between 2016 and 2018 the library started to loan out Arduino boards, they stopped doing this shortly after they started. And the group started to grow slightly.
In late 2019 the library added a maker space, this didn't affect the group, but we all liked the idea of having access a large format printer.
In 2018/2019 I even tried to get a spin off hobby robotics group started, and it was starting to take traction - then....2020.
Things went good for a long time, making and recording videos, learning the ins and outs of streaming, getting people to join virtually. I think it was all preparing us for 2020.
2020 - Changed everything, thou not all at once.
Of course when we were all home bound, we switched to a virtual only meeting.
And we tried Google hangouts, teams, and a couple of others, we finally landed on Zoom.
The library where we meet at changed how often people can book a meeting. And even getting a room was pretty hard to do after the pandemic was over.
Our leader left the group, but this was later - maybe sometime in 2021 Early 2022. And I took over as best as I could. I'm not even going to pretend that I know anything, but I didn't want to see the group just go away.
We lost some members of the group due to Covid, and during 2020 a few just didn't realize we were meeting virtually.
During the time we were having a hard time booking the room, we found a 2nd library in Mason Ohio that could host us.... And did have a couple of meetings at that location, but Midpointe Library has always felt like home.
We now try to meet at least twice in person, and twice virtually (actually, even in person you can meet with us virtually).
We are trying to build membership back up, and trying to do a few projects again.
So if you are in South West Ohio, Westchester or Cincinnati area (even Dayton area) and would like to learn more, you are welcome to join us at Midpointe Library Westchester typically the 1st and 2nd Thursday of the month. (Subject to change, so reach out to me and I can get you the information needed for the meeting).
https://github.com/automation-technology-club
https://www.youtube.com/@automationtechnologyclub
