San Jose, Ca.

[Trebor]

Any Robot geeks doin anything here in this part of town? I'd like to check out any clubs or activities involving Robotics.

[tempusmaster]

Any Robot geeks doin anything here in this part of town? I'd like to check out any clubs or activities involving Robotics.

San Jose! My old stomping grounds. You have lots of options. Start with The Homebrew Robotics organization and they will introduce you to lots of other groups.

[Trebor]

Thanks, I'll try and make the Wednesday meeting. Should I bring anything or just show up?

[tempusmaster]

Thanks, I'll try and make the Wednesday meeting. Should I bring anything or just show up?

They will probably be happy to have you just show up, but it wouldn't hurt to contact them ahead of time. They list their email addresses on the website. I'm currently living in Tokyo, so I haven't been to one of their meetings in a while. I spend most of my free time attending robot events here like the Robo-One competitions and reporting about them on Robots Dreams.

There are a lot of other resources available to you in San Jose and also San Francisco and Berkely. For example, David Calkins at San Francisco State University organizes the annual Robogames events and would probably be glad to point you to local groups. His contact information is listed on the Robogames contact webpage.

[tempusmaster]

Thanks, I'll try and make the Wednesday meeting. Should I bring anything or just show up?

Another place to check is Hobby Engineering in Milbrae, California. Art Margolis is the owner/founder and is extremely well connected in the Bay area robotics community. I'm sure he and his staff would be happy to help you get connected to the robot groups there.

[limor]

Thanks, I'll try and make the Wednesday meeting. Should I bring anything or just show up?

Another place to check is Hobby Engineering in Milbrae, California. Art Margolis is the owner/founder and is extremely well connected in the Bay area robotics community. I'm sure he and his staff would be happy to help you get connected to the robot groups there.

I went to visit Hobby Engineering shop in Malbrae about a year ago and bought there a USB-serial board, a tiny DIY radio 19kbps xmit/rcv and a couple of publications including Nuts & Volts.
It is a very cool little shop that has most of the popular robotics kits, controlers and parts that you see on internet sites. Surprizingly, this shop was pretty much it for hobby robotics in the "silicon valley"... even spoke to the owner about humanoid robot kits but he didn't believe at the time that the market was ready for expensive hobby robots.

[tempusmaster]

It makes sense. The whole Robo-One robot scene is only a few years old now, and awareness really hasn't developed very much outside of Japan and Europe yet. The exhibitions that the Japanese competitors put on for events like RoboGames caught people's interest, but haven't been enough yet to really hook people. Thankfully that seems to be changing for the better.

Running a 'robot' shop in Silicon Valley must be tough. Most of my friends there that are involved in robotics are engineering types - and they always think they can design something better themselves rather than buying a kit.