I’m thrilled to announce that DataYard is a sponsor for GemCityJS’s local “NodeBots” competition on July 25!

In a nutshell, participants will get a bag of parts when they check in at the Firefly Building, the venue hosting the event. The parts bag will have an Arduino, some motors, a motor control board, a T-shirt, and other goodies. We’ll also have tools and materials available for everyone to use. The instructors will give some basic demos on how to use an Arduino to control hardware, and then participants will be off to the races to build a Javascript-controlled robot. We’ll have pizza for folks to eat, more building, and then a head-to-head “battle bot” style competition to determine the winning robot.

The tickets are $35 now, going up to $45 as the day approaches — just to defray costs. Everything participants build will be theirs to keep and tinker with after the event.

I think anyone, adult or teen, could have a lot of fun doing this, and no advanced Arduino or programming experience is required. As the NodeBot web site says, “The only prerequisite to attend is a desire to build.”

Come on out and have a blast learning something new, building something cool, competing to win, and meeting new folks in the Dayton Maker community!

To get more details online visit http://gemcityjs.com/nodebots.