We had a good turn out, on another cold and wet winter night. The gold coin collection raised $11.90 for Science Alive which was much appreciated. Thanks to all who came, and to those who brought items to show and share. Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 20th October at 6.30pm.  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.

Following on the the Robocup Christchurch competition held on the 9th of August we had a nice collection of Rescue robots along:

Hayley demonstrated her 1st prize winning robot from the primary section. The robot performed nicely, running around all the obstacles, taking the green hint squares and pushing the victim out of the swamp. Hayley then gave us a captivating talk about how the robot software works and fielded heaps of questions. Thanks Hayley, and best of luck in the national competition in Auckland on 5th September.

Luke and Sam brought along their rescue robot and showed it running running on the tiles. Thanks guys.

Yuito brought along his sister and Dad and a rebuilt rescue robot that also started out along the tiles but did not complete. Thanks for showing us the new build.

Not to be outdone John (from Science Alive) showed us his rescue robot. That too ran but needs considerable work before entering into the wrinkly section of Robocup Junior! John plans to be a Dad by the next meeting date. Good luck.

Hanno showed us his new Robotic creation called 12 Blocks. Thanks for another great product Hanno, more info here: http://12blocks.com

Jill told us about the great programming environment from MIT called Scratch. If you have not played with Scratch have a go: http://scratch.mit.edu/ and of course show it to any young ones who might be interested.

Sachin and Jimmy told us about progress on the Crab / Hexapod. Next step is to order servos, prototype PCBs, locate some bearing supplies, and figure out mechanical design. More to follow on the mailing list... You can find Sachins robot designs here: http://sachin.surendran.googlepages.com/

Jimmy showed us his 4 wheeled robot platform built for a school project. It certainly ran nicely under our chairs and will have its brain fitted soon.

Peter stole the late show with his radio controlled lawn mower which lumbered around the room, flashed warning lights and had a threatening amount of power to the cutters. Next steps will be autonomous operation within a defined boundary and safety cutouts.

I brought along my micromouse, seen for the first time last session and showed the Eclipse IDE with the CDT and AVR plugins for handy AVR 'C' code development using the AVR-GCC tool chain. More info here: http://www.eclipse.org/

Phil showed us a USB Arduino board and also showed us around the development tools and how to move beyond the first LED flashing step. It certainly de-mystified the Arduino toolchain for me. Arduino a great way to overcome the first hurdle if stuck on either hardware or software development. More info here: http://www.arduino.cc/ Phil has listed hardware distributers here: http://code.rancidbacon.com/ArduinoNewZealand

You can find our mailing list archives or join the mailing list here: http://lists.ourshack.com/mailman/listinfo/chchrobotics

Richard Jones

Chch Robotics 2009 August