hardware meetup NZ: Nerd-Night
About this event
🚀 Nerd Night is back!
After the absolute chaos, creativity, and brilliance of last year’s event, Hardware Meetup NZ is bringing back one of our favourite nights of the year.
Nerd Night is where the community takes the stage.
No polished investor pitches.
No corporate slide decks.
Just people sharing the weird, wonderful, obsessive, hilarious, and genuinely impressive things they’ve been building.
Last year we saw:
🤖 Fighting robots that literally set arenas on fire
🍺 Bluetooth beer thermometers
🚂 Real-time train maps built with ESP32s
🛥️ Autonomous ocean-crossing boats
💡 Interactive LED art installations
🔐 DIY home alarm systems
🖨️ Automated 3D printer farms
📺 FPGA-powered retro video hacks
…and a lot more beautiful nerdiness.
Nerd Night is about curiosity, experimentation, side quests, failed ideas, accidental discoveries, and the joy of making things.
Whether you’re:
⚡ Building strange hardware in your garage
⚡ Hacking together software tools at 2am
⚡ Reviving old electronics from the dead
⚡ Designing art, robots, gadgets, vehicles, games, or something impossible to explain
⚡ Or just obsessed with a niche technical rabbit hole…
…we want to hear about it.
This is one of the most community-driven events we run, and it’s always full of surprises.
Want to present?
We will be picking 6 people to present for 10 minutes each at the meetup. Answer the form below for a chance to be one of the 6 presenters: https://forms.gle/aivi2E3P2VpMroX99. You have until May 20th 11:59 pm.
A live-stream will be available - you can register to be sent the link prior to the event start-time.
Event Details
Date and time
Wednesday, May 27
5:30pm - 8:30pm
Venue: Outset, Level 4, 24 Balfour Road Parnell, Auckland
Cost: $20 / $15 students (+ processing fees)
Food: pizza, snacks and non-alcoholic drinks
Parking for Outset
Speakers
MC: Mikayla Stokes
Mikayla Stokes is a mechatronics engineer at Crown Equipment making autonomous forklifts. She loves using tech to make cool wearable things like a light-up dress or 3D printed earrings. She's passionate about creating an inclusive community where any kid can pursue a future in STEM, and is the two time overall female winner of the BrightSparks inventing competition.
Event Sponsors
Lune Digital
Lune Digital is an embedded systems expert specialising in high-tech, IoT and wearable solutions. For the past 10 years, Lune Digital has been assisting visionary companies with hardware design, electronics engineering, embedded software development, and technical advice. They excel in optimizing battery life, boosting power efficiency, enhancing wireless connectivity, and creating scalable, future-proof systems.
Outset Ventures
Outset Ventures are committed to empowering overlooked science and engineering innovators to transform their ideas into groundbreaking ventures, helping them succeed at the critical early stages. As New Zealand's center of gravity for science and engineering startups and scaleups, Outset is home to a community of 40+ founder-led companies, 5000 square meters of laboratory and workshop spaces, and the country's most active deep technology investment fund.
Triode
Triode is a New Zealand-based advanced electronics manufacturing partner specialising in high-mix, high-reliability PCB assembly across aerospace, MedTech, agritech & industrial sectors. From prototype to production, Triode helps customers solve complex manufacturing challenges with responsive engineering support, advanced SMT capability, & a strong focus on quality and continuous improvement. Combining local agility with global manufacturing standards, Triode partners closely with innovators to turn ideas into reliable products that perform where it matters most.
Braemac
Braemac is a global leader in the distribution of semiconductor components and electronic systems as well as value-added services. Empowering engineers and developers for over 40 years–Braemac features expert in-house engineers, extensive design-phase support, state-of-the-art distribution, value-add facilities, comprehensive supply chain solutions, and unparalleled customer service. Braemac offers solutions for diverse markets and applications, helping customers streamline development, reduce costs, accelerate time to market, and support long term interoperability.
Connect With Hardware Meetup NZ
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Event Alignment: This is an independently run initiative and is not aligned with any one organisation.
Media Permissions: By attending this public event, you grant Hardware Meetup NZ permission to photograph, video record, and audio record the event and to use these photos, videos and recordings in our website and Social Media Channels.
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