Good day at The Generator

Today is the last Saturday of National Robotics Week. DPRG marked that date with an event at The Generator, a coffee shop in downtown Garland. the Arduino project made an appearance as well. There would have been one more Arduinp project board, but trying to get the board running at 6:30 this morning, a careless application of 12 volts was made, and that particular Arduino chip is no more. My backup chip, it turns out, may be a wonderful ATMega 328, but it is no Arduino. Maybe at one point, I will learn how to put the bootloader on the ATMega, but not today. Time for another order from Sparkfun.

The Arduino appeared in a rare, shared-power configuration. The Cylon board already had a voltage regulator on it, the Ping did not. These particular boards will snap together, so they were shapped and a jumper was run between the positive and negative 5-volt buses on each board. It would have looked great with the switching board in the middle, but that was not to be today.

RBNO

It's been a busy week.

Tuesday night was a productive night at Robot Builders Night Out (RBNO), a weekly gathering of DPRG (Dallas Personal Robotics Group http://www.dprg.org/ ) members. I finished a basic Arduino breadboard for the next class session. The next task is to see how much junk I can cram onto this board. It is sitting in front of me and the only additions are the USB to TTL converter and a phototransistor.

There have only been minimal changes made to the class, so there isn't much to report there.

Hopefully, I can make some progress this weekend and have more to report to you.

Arduino Project Checkpoint

Well, maybe I haven't been quite fair with you. Much of the work of the Arduino Project has been completed; at least as a draft. You have gotten to see snippets of the document without getting anything complete. I won't apologize for that as it is still a working document. I can't share the document at this point as I am working with someone else on this and have not discussed the topic with him.

What I will do is share the table of contents with you. I know, it isn't much, but you can get a feel for how things are progressing. The section on reading input has not been started yet. I need to build the board, write the class and the programs. 

If you happen to be within the reach of the Dallas Personal Robotics Group (http://www.dprg.org/), then please consider taking the introductory class and getting that under your belt. If you happen to BE a DPRG member, so much the better. If you are NOT YET a member of DPRG, visit the website and sign up! We do a lot of interesting things and have a lot of fun.

There are still a lot of detail items to complete before this class can be offered, but forward motion is being made; please have patience and the class should be available soon!

Remember- this is a DRAFT!

The Table of Contents is really tiny as that is the size I had to select to get the TOC to fit on the page. Go get your reading glasses and check it out.

Here is the Table of Contents:

Arduino Project Status

Well, the current status of the Arduino project is that the motor control board is built and the code is about 50 % complete. We still have a lot to do to get the course completed. Overall, I believe the course is more than 50% complete, but not 75%. There is not a formal project plan in place, so my estimates are more guesses than formal estimates.

The mission of the course is: Learn Ardunio, Have Fun, On the Cheap. As a result, the GPS module of the class may be stripped. $75.00 is cheap for GPS, but probably not really cheap for this class. I think it would be interesting for another class. The Arduino may not be able to handle it, but I think it is worth the attempt.

Tuesday was DPRG night and also a board meeting. Ed (our beloved DPRG President) is doing a fine job of leading us forward. That also meant that I had some work to do in the DPRG arena as well. Board meetings are such a thrill. I think we may turn to Robert's Rules of Order for some assistance in organizing our meetings and making them more efficient. We worked through a lot of material the other night, but it took awhile. The agenda was a page and a half long. If we are to get through the material, we need to do it quickly and efficiently.

In Scouts, I was able to organize the PLC meetings where the young men were able to conduct their meetings efficiently and actually get things done. I am confident that adults are able to learn the same tricks just as effectively. It would be to our benefit to do so.

RBNO

Well another good evening at RBNO. That is, the Dallas Personal Robotics Group (http://www.dprg.prg/) Robot Builders' Night Out. Not a big turnout for RBNO, but there were things going on. Another basic Breadboard Arduino is assembled and ready for additional components. It will need another wiring check before power is applied to it. This will be the foundation platform for Session 3 dealing with motor control. There is also a MosFET and an H-bridge from Sparkfun that will be utilized.

These assembled breadboards do not travel well. There must be a better way to carry them around. Granted, that's not something one usually does with a prototyping board, but that is the current plan.