Teaching Robotics

Teaching robotics can be very fun.  Keep in mind that each student responds to different approaches and materials.  Some students are visually oriented , some are hands on , some love to read , some respond to lectures.  Allow the students as much autonomy as practicable.

Below are some preliminary ideas for introducing the subject of robots.

Dissect

 gather some ( salvage ) common robotic electronics and dissect them

       printers  ( steppers , motors , belts, slide rods , gears )
       scanners

       hard drive
       RC models .... cars, boats , drones
a salvage yard may donate some of the above

       

Elements of robots

demonstrate common elements of robots

make a kit

motors

screw positioner

sensors

gears

Action video

      put together video of robots in action 

             long on action… short on words

      tree climbing

      quadracopter

      sea going   diving
       pipecrawling

         see examples below

Robots in Film
      Iron Giant
      Lost in Space  ( best is at minute 9:00 )
      Iron Man   ( is he a robot ? )   sometimes the suit is used without a man in it
   
      poll of best robots in film

Simulations

   simulation software

    gears            http://geargenerator.com/

 

Programming

Scratch

Python
      Pyro

Development Boards that may be useful
Chipcon and GreatCowBasic


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Robots in Action

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Suspense ......  things to follow up on
http://www.tensorflow.org/    googlized  machine intelligence
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tags:  777robotics  777education  777teachingRobotics   99guspuppet

1990 Miata engine idling problem

In this photo you can see the AFM ( air flow meter ) as the "U" shaped black spot in the center of the photo.  The black cover peels off to reveal the inner workings.  All of the airflow from the air cleaner goes through the AFM.  The air cleaner is under the AFM.

Debris is silicon sealant that I started scraping off the cover

There is a black arc the wiper travels on as AFM flap rotates.

There is a switch ( upper right ) that closes when the AFM rotates.

Below are some photos of the ECU ( engine control unit ) located under the passengers feet.

Vacuum tutorial
http://www.camaros.org/pdf/timing101.pdf


tags:   777miataEngine   777miataidling

Dell D3100 Docking Station works great with Mac Laptop

One problem...... the two attached displays seem to blink off once and while.  This problem appears to be associated with power supplied to peripherals attached to the Dell unit.
I would recommend powered USB hubs.



Using very successfully  ..........   I love this device.

MacIntosh MacPro Laptop with USB3.0 port as link to the D3100
                  I am using OS X 10.10.5
Two HDMI displays
Ethernet cable
USB 2.0 hub   ( for isolation and to reduce connector wear )
USB mouse
USB drawing pad
Powered external speakers

I used HDMI to DVI adapter since my monitors did not accept HDMI cables.
   The adapters were $3 each from eBay.

For the Mac I had to download a driver.

http://www.displaylink.com/support/mac_downloads.php)

If this link quits working... contact me at cinternational.com and I will try to help.

I bought this Dell unit used for $80.
I have no connection with Dell.


777D3100   #DellD3100   777DellD3100      99guspuppet

Photon Wireless WiFi module

arrived on 2015m07d14    Is working great so far

Kickstarter

Datasheet

How to start using Photon


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tags:  777photon   #photon

ESP8266 WiFi Superstar IC CHIP

The ESP8266 was introduced around 2014.  It is a very inexpensive chip ( as little as $3) that supports WiFi. on-board processing , serial communications , GPIO , ADC , .......

Alternatives
ESP32
NL6621 from Nufront
EMW3165

AT Command Set
https://github.com/esp8266/esp8266-wiki/wiki/at_0.9.1

Datasheets
http://www.esp8266.com/
https://github.com/esp8266/esp8266-wiki/wiki/Pin-definition

ForthLang

I had found no ForthLang support as of 2015m07d13

 https://www.linkedin.com/grp/post/3385416-5947385831332343810

http://craigandheather.net/misc/ESP8266Forth.zip

              by Craig Lindley

LUA
Lua is a coding language aimed at providing a small footprint and wide range of capabilities.

 https://nodelua.org/

Mbed
https://developer.mbed.org/teams/ESP8266/

Olimex
Olimex has been at the forefront of promoting and developing FLOSS OSHW Open Source products.

https://github.com/OLIMEX/ESP8266

development board    6 euros
development board


Python
https://github.com/micropython/micropython/tree/master/esp8266
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/214379695/micropython-on-the-esp8266-beautifully-easy-iot

Cayenne Language
http://www.cayenne-mydevices.com/docs/

Blynk
http://www.blynk.cc/
https://www.sparkfun.com/blynk
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13794  $30



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tags:  777ESP8266   #esp8266   esp8266WFT

AtLast ForthLang

User Manual

https://www.fourmilab.ch/atlast/atlast.html

RaspberryPi Install
http://elinux.org/Forth

PEZ
Pez is based on AtLast
https://github.com/pete/pez

Pez is a small, lightweight, 100% C (for now), embeddable or standalone,
public domain, portable, highly nonstandard dialect of Forth.  It was
originally based on the Atlast system (see doc/CREDITS for more
information), but the feature set has been expanded significantly and
there are flagrant breaks with Forth compatibility.

The primary goal of the Pez project, much like the goal of the Atlast
project, is to bring dead-simple scriptability and dynamism to otherwise
static code, with a focus on user-level scripting of applications.
There are a number of compile-time options for trimming down and
limiting in the case of untrusted input, and also a large number of
OS-level facilities both added and planned.  Pez is also designed to
work well as a stand-alone language for general-purpose coding.  And
it's designed to be fun.

I highly recommend having a look at doc/historic/atlast.pdf, written by
Mr.  Walker in 1990, especially the introduction which is still
shockingly relevant now, about 20 years later.

There are a number of benefits to adding user-level scripting to an
application.  You get a free doman-specific language to expose to users
however you see fit.  You get a free configuration file parser in the
same language as your application's DSL.  You get a dynamic internal
scripting language a la LUA.  You get a safe, plain-text, cross-platform
language for communicating between your applications.  It can even be
used as a complete, full-featured standalone language.  And it's
lightweight to boot:  running on a 64-bit Linux, I'm looking at about 568k
of memory for the REPL for a full system.

Pez has added to the Atlast system a number of features:
* Portability to 64-bit platforms
* A Foreign Function Interface, for dynamically loading libraries to
  interface with system libraries.
* More complete access to standard system calls, such as fork(), exec(),
  etc.
* Regular expression support.
* Garbage collection.
* Numerous small improvements, and more large improvements on the way.  See
  doc/TODO.

I certainly hope that you find this codebase to be as useful and as much
fun as I have.

If you're a Ruby fanatic, by the way, there is also Rupez, which lets
you talk to libpez by means of the fantastic RubyFFI.  See
http://github.com/automatthew/rupez for the code.

Pete Elmore

Lina

http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst/lina.html

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tags:  777ForthLang   777AtLast

WaveForm Generator Open IP

Here is a great KickStarter project
An OpenIP waveform generator
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nickjohnson/tsunami

Here are the OpenIP files at Github
Here is the PDF schematic
Useful documents have been provided about the Theory of Operation and how to use this device.

MCP4241    is a digital potentiometer
D1               does peak voltage detection
FOX924B      is an oscillator for the microprocessor   16MHz
AD9838
IC6             is an oven stabilized oscillator
CN1           is flash memory


I would like to see an expansion connector that includes
==   SCK , MOSI , MISO ,
==   Any spare I/O pins from the ATMEG processor [ IO13 ,  ]

I really like this board and I want to hack a ARM based micro onto the circuitry ..... possibly using micro-python or pharo smalltalk.


Questions:
What is CN1 ?
What are J3 and J4 for ?
Is there a BOM ?







tags:  777waveformGenerator      777Tsunami
99guspuppet