HackWeekend aims to get a group of skilled people together for a weekend to see what is possible. Projects should be completed between Friday evening and early Monday morning, and all work will be released under an open source licence.
I want to push ahead with planning and building the Disco Dance Floor. I've had a sudden burst of enthusiasm for it, and so let's get things rolling. I'm considering running the first HackWeekend meetup during a weekend in late January. As many people live in the Southampton area (or are from there), I think it makes sense to hold it there. We may be able to use a school's design/technology rooms, but that will have to be organised with them once we get the date fixed.
Things that need doing for the Disco Dance Floor project:
Planning/designing/building the physical module (excluding electronics). This mainly includes the wooden frame, but also consideration of how we will link multiple modules together and deal with distributing power.
Planning/designing/building the circuit for each module
Planning/designing the PCB (after the circuit is complete, of course)
Planning/designing/building the firmware
Planning/designing/building the controller software
Here's a list of skills that would be useful for this project (but only the first is essential):
Enthusiasm!
Physical design
Woodworking skill/knowledge
Electronics knowledge
Soldering (especially fine-detail)
Software design/engineering
Firmware engineering
USB knowledge
PCB layout experience
User interface design
Project management/organisation
So email me and let me know which task or tasks you're interested in. All of the information above will be on the project page: http://groupspaces.com/hackweekend/pages/projects/ddf/. I will also be adding people to the list of participants when they reply. Finally, I will create a mailing list just for the people interested in this project, to keep things organised.