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What we did on Wed 17th Feb 2010 |
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Written by RichardJones
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Thursday, 18 February 2010 |
We had a select gathering on a wet evening.
Kay brought along a life size pair of walking legs supported on a mock Zimmer frame with wheels. The legs walked even more realistically than last time we saw them.
Carl brought a 5 channel sound system which he gave away for repair, and showed the iPhone application that he's been working on.
Charles showed a stepper motor based robot platform using 24v 7.5 degree steppers, discrete darlington transistor drivers, arduino control board and a roll on deodorant front castor. The robot moved under control of switches for direction and a potentiometer for speed. Charles also talked about what CAD packages people use, especially those where you may start for free and upgrade to a more capable package.
I took along my 1.8 degree stepper motor based micromouse, still not moving on its own, maybe next time. It uses the kiwipatch pcb available from http://brightsparks.org.nz. Students get a free kiwipatch board in exchange for a photograph of how the last one was used. Otherwise they cost $4 each and are great for mounting PICAXE or AVR chips.
Steve brought an educational puzzle/display nearing completion. It had heaps of LEDs and large removable puzzle knobs with embedded magnets and fancy flashing led sequences. All controlled by a pic axe with darlington driver ICs. When it has the artwork incorporated it should be great fun to use.
Hanno showed us his 12 blocks programming language for young children integrated with a Propeller board, flashing LEDs with just a few mouse clicks. It now has forward and back annotation between the 12 blocks graphical programming language and the spin files that it creates for the propeller.
Phil talked about Chch Creative space now rebranding as Space Craft. They currently meet on Wednesday nights from 7pm to 11pm at the Canterbury Innovation Incubator, 200 Armagh Street, Christchurch http://spacecraft.org.nz/
Sachin talked about his six legged walking platform having problems moving under its own weight, I would love to see that.
Jimmy brought along his ATTiny2313 USB programmer and we put some code into it, let us know when its is programming AVR micros.
Sorry no photos this time. Let me know if I have missed anything.
Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 21st April 2010 at 6.30pm in the Science Alive Seminar Room. See you there!
More info on http://kiwibots.org
Richard Jones
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