Jun 09, 2007
These minutes are also available in PDF format.
Class
Martin Mason, an instructor at San Antonio college gave an interactive demonstration of using the PICAXE microcontroller. He brought in a number of kits that he uses in his class for our use. We split up into a half dozen groups assembling circuitry onto a prototyping board and loading software into a microcontroller chip to run some demonstrations. The PICAXE seemed like a very easy system to use and several people mentioned how much they enjoyed such a hands-on class.
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Business meeting
Our President, Bruce Weimer, notified us that our club treasurer is not longer available. Bruce will be taking over the duties of treasurer until our next election of officers. We revisted the subject of the club mail-list. We had previously discussed setting up a new mail list for the RSSC rather than continuing to share the SDRS list. Brian Loject offered to set up a web based forum for the club. He showed a demonstration of what it might look like. The club thought that this was an excellent idea and several members were assigned to work with Brian to help set it up.
The class for next month will be Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) presented by Steven Gentner and Bruce Weimer.
Upcoming contests will include:
August: Sumo contest for slightly larger robots
October: Hallway navigation contest
December: the annual talent contest
Contest
A Find-the-wall-outlet contest was held. Read more about it here.
Show & Tell
Walter Martinez showed us his upcoming robot as a demonstration of how PVC pipe can be used to easily put together a durable framework. The use of bright red and black paint on the PVC gave a good appearance. He has a touch screen mounted on top (in day-glow orange!)
John Walters showed off his robot which (I believe) was just completed in the last month. It is unique in that the controller board is completely constructed using wire-wrap. The controller is an 8051 (or a varient) and is programmed in C. It has very nice aluminum wheels which he machined at home. He gave a demonstration of it running around on the floor in a programmed pattern.
Derek Jones showed a very small camera (C328). It runs on 3.3 volts and produces a 60x80 pixel picture.
He also told us about “surfboards” which are adapter boards for attaching surface mount components to prototyping boards. Each surfboard is a small PC board to which the surface mount part can be soldered, then this adapter board can be easily attached to a proto board.
Jeff Dunker played a video demonstrating a microphone device (RSC148) which has two microphones and can detect the direction from which a sound is coming. The video showed the device attached to a servo turning back and forth as two people talked to it. Unfortunately, it is about $350…..but hey, we ought to be able to build one!
Thomas Messerschmit and Tim Sullivan brought in their B9 robot to show their progress. They showed how they have added lights and a rotating device to the bubble head. They are controlling it using the Leaf software and are using X10 devices to control much of the robot components. They mentioned difficulties in getting a clean AC signal from commonly available DC-AC converters. Brian Loject suggested using an uninterruptible power supply for computers. They have created an extensive set of wav files which allows the Leaf software to talk with a B9 accent (more than an accent, the files are taken from actual B9 speech).