Upcoming Events
Hardware Hangout - May 2026
Date: May 14th, 2026
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Place: 112 SE 4th St, Des Moines, IA 50309
Join us for the May Hardware Hangout on May 14th! This networking event brings together embedded developers, electronics engineers, hobbyists, and industry supporters for technical discussions and community building.
The topic for the February Hardware Hangout is AI in IoT.
AI, especially LLMs (Large Language Models), have been in the news daily. So we wanted to hear the experiences of the Iowans of Things community. Are you using an LLM on your projects? How about other machine learning or artificial intelligence algorithms? Tell us the good, the bad, and the ugly! And if you haven’t used AI in any way, let us know that, too!
Share your stories, tips, and questions with the group!
Registration below.
Firmware Fellowship - Third Thursdays
Date: Monthly on Third Thursdays
Time: 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Place: The Walnut - 1417 Walnut St, Des Moines, IA 50309
Join us for Firmware Fellowship on the third Thursday of every month! This technical discussion focuses on embedded firmware development best practices and provides a forum for developers to share expertise and learn from each other. We meet in a casual lunch setting to share what we know and to learn from you! Don’t be afraid to join us, there won’t be any pop quizzes!
April’s topic is Building Custom CircuitPython - CircuitPython is a great way to prototype with hardware. It provides a lot out of the box for an astounding number of existing development platforms, has an interactive interface to facilitate rapid development cycles, and primarily uses Python instead of C to hide a lot of the distracting low-level details. Normally, you can get started in less than five minutes downloading prebuilt firmware from the CircuitPython website. If you have custom board or need some extra space for data storage, you may have to take a few extra steps to build it yourself.
Bailey will talk about what building CircuitPython looks like for an ESP32-S3 kit and show that even if you need to put in the extra effort for a custom build, it’s still worth considering CircuitPython for your next prototyping project!
Come chat with us about problems you’ve seen, best practices you follow, and questions you have on April 16th!
Registration below.