Melbourne Hardware Mixer x ACES
Australian Creative Electronics Society (ACES) is excited to announce our 2nd Meetup in Melbourne!
Come showcase, witness and chat all things hardware, robotics, deep tech, and startups. Everyone is welcome.
🤖 If you have your own hardware to demo, bring it!
You'll have 2 mins during the Community Open Mic to demo a prototype or talk about what you are working on. We're looking for prototypes, finished products, and part samples from the hardware on your desks.
🦾 We have a great group of guest speakers
Guest Speakers
Jonathan Oxer is the founder of Freetronics and SuperHouse Automation, former President of Linux Australia, and author of tech books including Practical Arduino and Ubuntu Hacks. He designed the ArduSat Payload Processor Module that flew in space on ArduSat-X and ArduSat-1, and hosts a weekly YouTube livestream on electronics design and firmware development. Jonathan will be presenting Testomatic - an open-source PCB test jig system built around a Raspberry Pi, featuring pluggable I/O expander modules, a modular chassis that can be rapidly adapted to different target boards, and an accompanying web portal for collecting test results and board metadata.
Andy Gelme is the co-founder of LIFX, the Wi-Fi smart lighting company that launched via Kickstarter in 2012 and grew into a global brand. He founded the Connected Community HackerSpace (CCHS) in Hawthorn in 2009, co-led the Open Hardware Mini-Conference from 2010 to 2023, and founded the AI+ML+Robots Meetup in Melbourne. He currently works at Silverpond on the Highlighter platform, focusing on AI architecture for edge systems including GPUs, cameras, IoT devices, and robotics, bridging low-level firmware through to distributed and high-performance systems. Andy will be presenting "Project success = People + Hardware + Software + Timing", a systems-level talk drawing on real project failures and successes to explore how to build products that survive their own complexity, especially as AI adds new layers to the hardware-software boundary.
Brian Horakh is a US and Australian citizen based in Melbourne, with a career spanning more than 30 years across embedded systems, supercomputing, full-stack software, electronics design, and modern AI platforms. He co-founded one of San Diego's earliest dial-up internet providers in the early 1990s, served as CEO and CTO of Zoovy for 16 years, an e-commerce platform that processed over $8 billion in sales, and is currently founder of PromptExecution, focused on AI and cognitive systems engineering. He works across Rust, Python, and TypeScript with hands-on EE and mechatronics fabrication experience. Brian will be presenting on failure modes and anti-fragile negative engineering across multiple domains: processor architecture trade-offs (ARM vs RISC-V, Linux vs RTOS), language design decisions (Rust vs C++), hardware prototyping for debuggability, MBSE, VC and accelerator selection pitfalls, and the structural differences between building startups in Australia versus the US and China.
Ray Keefe is an Electronics Engineer and Embedded Software Developer with a First-Class Honours Degree in Electrical Engineering, additional studies in physics, chemistry, and an MBA, and is a Life Senior Member of IEEE. He founded Successful Endeavours in 1997 with a deliberate mandate to prove that complex electronics products can be profitably manufactured in Australia. The company has since completed more than 3000 projects across 85 product categories, with 90% manufactured locally. Ray and Successful Endeavours have been winners or finalists of more than 60 awards including ICT Business of the Year for Australia in 2019, Industrial Product of the Year 2022, and Best Australian Designed and Made Electronics Products 2024. Ray will be presenting "Innovation that leads to a Profitable Made-in-Australia Electronics Product", covering stakeholder mapping, cost/performance/time pressure point trade-offs, and real case studies including the IND.T early fault detection system, now in its fourth hardware generation with 98% export, and the Blair Digital Bagpipe chanter, a world-leading niche B2C product manufactured in Australia.
Agenda
6:00 – 6:30pm: Doors open - refreshments, mix & mingle
6:30 – 6:35pm: Welcome & intro
6:40 – 7:30pm: Guest speaker sessions (3–4 speakers, ~10–15 mins each)
7:30 – 8pm: Community Open Mic - 2-minute demo & project showcase slots
8 – 8:30pm: Networking, pizza & drinks
🍕🍺 Food and drinks included.
A special thanks to Colabs for the venue! Colabs provides a nurturing and supportive co-working environment that fosters collaboration, innovation, and impact-driven research and development. They have cultivated a diverse and inclusive community of innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers, and educators dedicated to creating positive change and advocating for the growth of a bio-based economy, life science sector, and sustainable innovation ecosystem in Australia.
Tickets are free for all, but if you feel generous, your ticket contribution is greatly appreciated in helping run more hardware meetups here and around the world!