Contacting the
Seattle Robotics Society

The best way to get in contact with the SRS is via email. You will get the fastest response via email.

Send your email to

The Mailing List: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SeattleRobotics/ -- this is a discussion group with many enthusiastic and knowledgeable robot builders; this is a great place to ask all your robotics questions. (See below for joining the list server.)

Membership in the SRS

The Seattle Robotics Society accepts members worldwide. All we ask is that you be interested in robotics and related technology. We have suspended our yearly dues since we no longer print a paper version of the Encoder. Someday we will reinstate the dues to cover the cost of our website. You are free to visit our website at any time, and we encourage you to make it to the monthly meetings when you are in the area.

Join our email list server

Our email list server is a great way to communicate with all of the world wide members of the Seattle Robotics Society. We have members from all over the world who routinely contribute great information.

The purpose of this list is to encourage the discussion of robotics and related technologies. We have very few rules. They are summarized as DO and DON'T lists.

DOs:
Contribute anything technical that you feel is appropriate for the group.
Share cool websites or other interesting information to the group.
Help others find resources and information on robotics.
Conduct other club business as needed.

DON'Ts:
Flames, personal attacks, or other poor conduct is NOT allowed on our list.
Pure commercial postings are NOT allowed, or are spam or very nearly spam like postings.

If you would like to subscribe using the egroups website, which allows you to set various options like digest mode, etc, use the following form.

Monday Night Chat

Seattle Robotics Society members can be found at all hours of the day, seven days a week, in the #SeattleRobotics channel on irc.freenode.net. This is an informal chat session and is a great place to come ask live questions of the SRS members, seek help for technical problems, or just chat about robotics.

Each week, SRS hosts a "Monday Night Chat" in this channel. The channel tends to get the most active during this time, with lots of people online chatting. The 'official' time is 7 - 9 p.m. Pacific Time, but there are people from many time zones, so discussions often take place outside that timeframe.

Directions

Users of Chatzilla (Firefox plug-in) and various other clients may be able to simply use the link to irc://irc.freenode.net/#SeattleRobotics.

A simple browser-based chat interface is at http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=SeattleRobotics. It won't have some of the features of the IRC clients, but should work nicely if you want to get a feel for the chat experience.

If you have problems, you should post a message on the SRS Yahoo group discussion.

Getting an IRC client

Find an IRC client that seems appropriate for your platform (Win/Mac) and has the features you want. A web search for "free IRC client" should find plenty of options. Wikipedia also offers a comparison of IRC clients. Also, many messaging clients for AIM, MSN, etc., also offer IRC support.

Connecting to freenode

Here's the basic information that you'll need to tell your IRC client:

• Protocol: IRC
• Server: irc.freenode.net
• Username: (choose something you like, see the section below for info on registering your nickname)
• Password: (enter this if you've registered a nickname, otherwise leave it blank)

Advanced settings, which your client will probably set by default:

• Port: 6667
• Encodings: UTF-8

Joining #SeattleRobotics chat

Use your client's command for joining a chat and specify #SeattleRobotics when prompted for the channel. If you are prompted for a password, leave it blank.

Registering a 'nick' (nickname)

It is a good idea to register the nickname that you like to use. See freenode's FAQ on Registration for details on how to do this.

U.S. Postal Mail

We would really prefer you send email. See above. If you would like to send a real paper letter to the Seattle Robotics Society, we use the following address

Seattle Robotics Society

P.O. Box 1714

Duvall, WA 98019-1714

If possible, please include an email address that you can be reached at. All materials sent via US Mail become property of the Seattle Robotics Society unless prior arrangements have been made for the return of said materials.