September 8, 2012
Jim and John
Class : TI MSP 430 Microcontroller
Another microcontroller, you may ask? Why would anyone want that, when we have Arduino, Basic Stamp, and Propeller that do so many things? Well, the fact that you can currently buy the TI MSP 430 for $4.30, which includes the breadboard, USB cable, and two microcontroller chips definitely gives the chip a large cost advantage. The downside is learning to program in C or Assembly. Another benefit of the TI MSP 430 line is that they are very low power. Jim and John showed some examples and how programming the TI chip is not quite so bad as we all thought. You can pick one up from several sites, including distributors such as Digi-Key.
Update from Prof. Mason:
It turns out that there is an active project to port the Arduino IDE to support the MSP430 called Energia. http://energia.github.com/Energia/
It took him about 10 minutes from download to blinking lights and then another 10 minutes to get an LCD working using a port of the arduino LCD library. He wrote a tutorial on getting started here http://profmason.com/?p=2001
Business Meeting
Old / New Business
Treasury report : No change
Discussions about upcoming classes and contests.
Announcements
Riverside Robotics Expo - Thomas spoke about the Expo, which will take place 11/3/2012 from 12pm - 4pm. He needs participants. Please contact him when you can.
SparkFun Arduino Classes - Patricia talked about the Sparkfun Arduino classes coming up in October on 10/16 and 10/17. For more details please visit http://belmontshore.patch.com/blog_posts/your-chance-to-shape-long-beach-lemonade-day
Upcoming Classes (11:00 – 12:00)
| Month | Class | Presenter |
| October 13 | JPL Guest Speaker | Bill (organizer) |
| November 10 | Bioloid | Prof Mason and Jinux from Robotis |
| December 8 | EZ Robot | Thomas |
Upcoming Competitions:
October - Line following
November - TBD (maybe an enhanced line following, such as maze solving)
December - Talent Show
Walking Robot Competition
Our first Autonomous Walking Robot Competition took place this month.
For the full account, please follow this link : Walking Robot Competition (September 2012)
Show and Tell
Ron
Ron proposed a small working group on a navigation idea, and passed a sheet for volunteers. The basics of this idea were outlined by Jim in the September , October, and November 1999 newsletters, although Ron seems to have figured out a twist that will require less math.
Martin
Martin was showing off some software improvements to his TurtleBot. He now has his TurtleBot :
- recognizing speech, using PocketSphinx through ROS
- giving voice responses, through ROS and Festival library. He noted that the phonym (I think) added very little overhead for the speech generation.
- following a person's legs, by looking at the kinect skeletons.
Jinux
Jinux from Robotis presented some slides and video on the Darnwin-OP robot. It is a very impressive small humanoid robot, that has been getting a lot of attention thanks to success at RoboCup. Here is some sample footage from RoboCup.
For soccer, the robot is trained to find and kick red objects. We tried this out on one youngster with red shoes. Everyone look out, robots are kicking children! Maybe it's time Darwin learns the three laws?
Thomas
Thomas demoed the EZ robot board. In just a few minutes, he connected a servo driven claw, had it open and close using a slider, and then open and close using voice commands. This was all done in the EZ software with NO PROGRAMMING. For those of you who love to do things the easy way, check it out at http://www.ez-robot.com/. The board is rather economical for all the functionality, at around $150.