Micro Framework Robots at Tech Days

Straight after my complete “demo meltdown” last week I was greatly cheered by some robots that one of the chaps at Tech Days was showing off. He had taken a toy robot and make it properly useful by adding potentiometers to the joints so that the .NET Micro Framework controller could properly position the arm.

These are the GHI controller boards that he built up.

He even had a demo where the robot was controlled by someone in front of a Kinect sensor. And his worked…..

Gadget Box

Yesterday I got a box for all the Gadgeteer bits and bobs that I’ve been lent to pay with. In amongst the cables we have a soil moisture sensor, barometer, a bunch of switches and multi-coloured lights, compass, gyro, GPS sensor, SD card reader, network interface, Joystick, LCD panel, OLED panel, network connector, processor board, video camera, power relays and usb host connector. I’ve already built a little camera (that’s the demo application). Now I just have to think of something else to build.

.NET Gadgeteer Fun and Games

I love getting parcels in the post. Particularly if they contain things like a complete set of .NET Gadgeteer devices and interfaces. There are loads of interface devices, including touch screens, GPS sensors, barometers, thermometers, gyroscopes, moisture sensors and even a thing that which looks like it will measure my heartbeat.

The potential for fitting things together and doing great things with them is wonder, wonder, wonderful. I’m going to take them home for Christmas and see what we can build. I foresee a return of the Blog Controlled Christmas Lights.

Rampant Robots

We let the students give their robots names. As well as “Pet Art” above we have two Daves and one Eric.

We had a proper session of robot control today. We were making robots that don’t fall off the desk. We had a few miss-wired connections and people discovered that two motors told to go at full speed don’t actually go at the same speed. So the program can’t just assume that things will happen the way they should….

Next week we are going to see about making the control software multi-threaded so that we can drive the motors and monitor the sensors at the same time. Great fun.

Building a Robot Army

Spent some time this morning building robots. Actually I didn’t, students on a hardware interfacing course did all the hard work. They are all Fez Micro Framework powered and great fun. They are based on the same platform as Oscar, who has been all over the place with me over the last couple of years.

Next week we are going to get some C# code into them and get them running around the desks and not falling off the edge. Then we are going to get another Micro Framework board running and see if we can control them via the internet.

Great fun.