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Meeting Report Tuesday 16th June 2009
Written by RichardJones   
Thursday, 18 June 2009

Meeting Report Tuesday 16th June 2009

We had a small gathering on a dark, cold and wet winter night. The gold coin collection raised $12 for Science Alive which was much appreciated. Thanks to all who braved the cold, and a special thanks to Gail at Science Alive who left the heating on for us, and to those who brought items to show and share. Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 18th August at 6.30pm. Suggestions for topic welcome. Here is an account of what we got up to, feel free send errors, omissions, additions and suggestions for next session to our mailing list and I'll add them to the http://kiwibots.org edition.

I brought along the new micromouse, with lathe cut wheels, single axle, rotation sensors and motor drive hooked up to the AVR with one forward looking optical wall sensor. Quite a bit further to go, I expect to have it running around a maze soon.

Hanno showed us Parallax Propeller based products, his IO dream kit, propscope, viewport, sections from his new book, and a rebuilt balancing robot. Hanno raffled a couple of propeller prototyping kits. We would love to see these back working next time.

Peter showed some strong ex garage door opener motors running on a 12v PSU and large wheels ready for fitting to the robot lawnmower. Peter also brought along his electric bicycle which we may get to try when the weather is a little more in our favour.

Morris showed us some motors and wheels from printers running round the floor tethered to a PC PSU, an Asus wireless router with USB connection and a USB serial port ripe for robotic applications and $5-$10 servos and a servo tester.

John came along with the Robocup rescue tiles and football at our request, sadly no takers came to use them. The Robocup competition for primary & secondary age students is Sunday 9th August. Details here: http://www.sciencealive.co.nz/robotics/RoboCup%202009%20Chch%20Newsletter.pdf

Katana showed us a rescue grab mechanism from http://www.robokits.co.nz/ which did a very nice job of picking up a small Robocup rescue can.

Jimmy brought along his ATTiny2313 for which he built a programmer and had LEDs flashing nicely from 'C' code using the winavr/gcc tool chain.

Quite a small turn out by recent standards with some new faces but some very thought provoking demos and ideas came up.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 18 June 2009 )
 
Meeting Report Tue 14th April 2009
Written by RichardJones   
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
The evening was very well attended. We were pleased to welcome Kate Coleman with parents and youngsters from http://cagcy.org.nz as well as many of our regular attendees. The gold coin collection raised $82 for Science Alive which was very much appreciated. Thanks to all who came, especially our speakers John Wynyard and Charles Manning who put so much energy and preparation into their presentations. Meetings are now held on 3rd Tuesday of even numbered months. Next meeting will be on Tuesday June 16th 2009 in the Science Alive Seminar Room. Offers of presentations and topics for our next session most welcome. For those who were not able to make it, here is a record of what we did (do let me know if it needs updating) ...

John Wynyard from Science Alive gave us an introduction to Robocup Junior Rescue, Soccer, Dance and Theatre categories with live demonstrations of robots performing rescue and soccer challenges. The Robocup web site is due to be updated soon with new rules, application forms and venues. See: http://www.robocupjunior.org.nz for more details. John has an .avi movie on DVD available with scenes from the National Competition, this gives an idea of the standard required to get to national level. Our regional competition will be held at Selwyn House School on 9th August 2009. Stuart Whelan has offered to coordinate individuals, not associated with a school entry, into teams providing a venue, space, and technical assistance. Stuart may be contacted by email here: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Alex brought along a new NXT sumo robot that had a very neat spiked roller to catch and pull the oponent off its wheels. It gave a very convincing demo of pushing my robot, Gnasher, out of the Sumo ring. Thanks Alex for bringing the robot and your Dad.

Peter showed more robots from the Robokits range including a tiny robot from Polulu with very smooth line following action. Peter has a huge range of NXT sensors in stock. See the whole lot at http://www.robokits.co.nz/

Matthew showed us an ingenious way to create a free running ball castor from a ball bearing held captive in a wooden frame with a nut and bolt to run in.

Timothy showed a line following robot made from Tamaya gearbox and wheels, avr micro and light sensors with discrete H bridges. Timothy has plans to get his robot maze solving, maybe it will be maze solving before mine.

Phil told us about creative/project/hacker/maker space in Christchurch where you can meet like minded folks to discuss and make things. Sessions are currently on Sunday afternoons and Wednesday evenings at the Canterbury Innovation Incubator, 200 Armagh Street, Christchurch. see: http://chchspace.nztech.org/

Charles Manning delivered a very practical introduction to making your own sensors for Lego NXT. Everything from how to cope with crimping the strange connectors, some really simple switch, and opto interfaces through to active blocks to more than double the NXT sensor capability. You find Charles slideshow here: http://embeddedjanitor.blogspot.com/ Charles recommended a book that parallels much of his work: http://www.extremenxt.com/books.htm

After the meeting Timothy asked me how my micromouse maze solving simulation colour character display is implimented. The complete code can be found here:
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~rjtp/Micromouse/Simulations/LinuxMouseSim.tar.gz
the display function is in file navigator.c Navigator_ShowMaze(  ). Documentation on escape sequences can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code
Last Updated ( Friday, 24 April 2009 )
 
Meeting Report Wed 18 Feb 2009
Written by RichardJones   
Sunday, 22 February 2009

For those of you who were unable to make it here is a report of what we got up to last Wednesday. Those who were there feel free to email me with any corrections or missing details.

The SumoBot session attracted a turn out of about 40 people and six robots. The collection raised $47.40 for Science Alive that was much appreciated. Next meeting will be Tuesday 14th April at 6.30pm in the Science Alive Seminar Room. We hope to have demonstrations of the Robocup Junior challenges (Dance, Rescue and Football) at 6.30pm and a talk from Charles Manning about DIY design and construction of Sensors for the Lego NXT at 8pm.

Three Lego NXT robots came along brought by Yuito recently arrived from Japan, my battle hardened robot Gnasher and Alexs robot that I don’t have a name for yet. Yuito had a very neat reciprocating pusher and Alex has a neat set of gears that pull any loose parts off unsuspecting robots and try to haul them up off their wheels. Yuito’s dad Hiroto pointed out that my robot was too large for the rules (I should check this out). Each of the robots did a fine job of searching the ring for opponents and pushing them out of the ring. However Alex’s robot won through with an uncanny knack for remaining firmly on the board while pushing opponents out. With a bit of luck I’ll post the video soon.

Peter brought along three robots from the inex collection. See: http://robokits.co.nz/Robo-STAMP-YouTube Buggy Bonzai and Sumo Tank took part in the Sumo against the NXT bots. This was an interesting match with no clear winners as the NXT’s could not move the inex bots once they had stalled. The third robot showed off the tabletop challenge wondering randomly around the table and not falling off.

Andrew gave us further details about how the folks in Japan make robot wheels by machining hubs and casting rubber tyres onto them. I’m sure this technique has potential for the home workshop.

There appears to be plenty more to be discovered about Sumo technology and challenge organization. If we run this event again we need more robots, scales, measuring devices and a no go zone around the ring to prevent spectators appearing to the robots as opponents!

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 07 April 2009 )
 
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