Hackaday Los Angeles kicks off the new year with our first meetup at the end of January.

[Carlyn Maw] gave our first presentation. As a person of many talents and interests, she presented a story drawing parallels from two subjects rarely discussed together: between the dynamics of Victorian-era London society and the network interaction for Internet of Things. She walked us through an the idea applying Victorian home architecture principles to modern home network topography. Visualized via this home network diagram where every subnet has a purpose, and trust must be established before a device may "enter the room".

[Nikita Pashenkov] followed with his story of building "Line of Sight" kinetic sculpture installed on the grounds of nearby Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Building an outdoor electronics device is already challenging enough, with weatherproofing, thermal management and many other factors to worry about. Line of Sight had the additional requirement of being readable and photogenic in full direct sunlight. As cameras typically adjust to a very low sensitivity and high shutter speed under bright light, this requirement pushed [Nikita] to iterate through many different LED modules to find one that would photograph well even in bright light.

After our full-length presentations, our lightning talks presenters covered topics such as:

• An invitation for local makers to check out nullspace labs.
• Free expo passes are available to an upcoming manufacturing trade show in Anaheim.
• People who can't afford a professional oscilloscope can buy a kit to build very simple and inexpensive hobbyist level scope.
• Hackaday is running a "Repairs You Can Print" contest, with a special invitation to students for their own category (with a very nice 3D printer as prize.)

In the back of the room, we always have tables set up for people to bring projects to share with others. A highlight tonight is [David Shorey]'s collection of 3D-printed objects fused to various flexible media. The "dragon scale" got a lot of attention and David has shared the design on Thingiverse so anybody print their own.

Got a fun project? Bring it to the next Hackaday LA meet! Keep an eye on our Meetup page.