Robotics/Electronics Class - How Would You Do It? 58
MainerDood asks: "I have been teaching programming and networking at the high school and collegiate levels for several years, and now I am branching out into electronics and robotics for my high school students. I am keen on Linux and Open Source solutions where feasible, and would like to avoid using pre-packaged robotics/electronic 'kits' (ie: Lego Mindstorm). I have a minimal budget, like to tinker and have access to tons of old PCs... I would like to use them in these projects and buy the 'parts' where needed. I am envisioning an order of breadboards, diodes, resistors, etc. but not sure from where I should order, what a good basic startup setup should contain and resources I should refer too. I have found a bunch of links online and various resources, but I am curious to know how you would go about this... seasoned veterans and electronics/robotics enthusiasts - I am all ears!"
Bad Idea? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bad Idea? (Score:5, Informative)
Building a robot is a great way to stimulate interest in math, science & mechanics, which applies to a wide variety of careers-- from high-level software architects to an auto mechanic.
In addition, if you limit this sort of education to the 400-level college courses, you exclude the majority of students who will never go to college, enroll in a EE program, or make it the 400-level college courses.
Re:Bad Idea? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't remember enough of what we did to be of any use to the discussion though. I graduated in '93. I DO remember that we had 2 386 motherboards ( I remember thinking "I will NEVER need more power than that"), and some prepackaged gear sets. We could program in several thousand instructions for the Robot to follow. Sadly, it was a 2 year long project and I graduated before I could see the thing in action, but it can and has been done before.
Re:Bad Idea? (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering High School Students that "wouldn't comprehend most of the stuff"
Re:Bad Idea? (Score:1)
Re:Bad Idea? (Score:2)
American Science & Surplus (Score:4, Informative)
American Science & Surplus [sciplus.com] has a ton of cheap electronic components for sale. No breadboards, but they do sell LEDs, some resistors, motors, etc. They even have a whole "Robot Parts" selection, with items such as Windshield Wiper motors, etc. They also have a great (and entertaining) paper catalog, and their inventory changes very often. Lasers, high quality optics, weather balloons-- all sorts of fun, geeky stuff.
I haven't built any robots myself, but I have been ordering random bits and pieces for various projects for more then 5 years.
Electronics and Robotics (Score:2, Insightful)
Mindstorms and Contests (Score:1)
Another good option is to enter some of the various robotic competitions ( http://www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/education/Robotics%20Co mpetitions.shtml/ [cmu.edu]).
Physical Computing (Score:3, Interesting)
First FIRST robotics post (Score:5, Informative)
Other than that, I wouldn't try to be too ambitous. Teach basic DC/AC circuits, maybe the basics of transistors, and program some PICs or similar in BASIC.
VEX Robotics (Score:2)
What makes the Vex kits nice is the real microcontrollers and impressive transmitter. Very nice packaging of all of the robotic stuff. Unlike Lego Mindstorms, these use real screws and nuts and can be used as a foundation for real robotic projects.
While the starter kit is $300 (it gives you everything to m
Re:First FIRST robotics post (Score:1)
Re:Unemployment (Score:1)
I was glad to see this post, this is exactly the kind of thing I'd love to be able to do in some spare time and i'm looking forward to some intelligent responses.
Re:Unemployment (Score:1)
Re:Unemployment (Score:1)
"It's not very high considering what an EE goes through."
"I don't even have a college degree"
.....seem like an odd comment to you?
I'm in sacramento, ca. NEC, intel, HP, aerojet, northrupp grumman, the state/city, and a variety of smaller companies suck up the engineers from the surrounding 3 universities every year. I came out of high school knowing that if I got a degree in any kind of engineering, I was basically gurateed an engineering position somewhere(assuming I actually lear
Re:Unemployment (Score:2)
"I don't even have a college degree"
Without going into any other questions of merit or opinion in this thread; this comment is not odd at all. You're correcting a statement that needs no correction. It sounds like you're reading "It's not very high considering what an EE goes through" as "It's not very high considering what an EE goes through [to become an EE]" or "It's not very high considering what an EE goes
Re:Unemployment (Score:1)
I still don't understand why he would push people away from a degree in electrical engineering though. The market in montreal must be very saturated, because the enrollment in engineering programs in california is pretty low. The market here is slow for engineers, but I don't know a single engineering students at school that is afraid of not findin
undetailed hint (Score:2)
Google for "floppy drive robots" or similar ideas.
Base idea: build a robot using mostly or only the parts from a 3 1/2" floppy drive... If you have computers to spare, then be liberal and allow other parts and see what they come up with...
Don't discount lego mindstorms (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically, their theory is that building robots is difficult work, and most of the students wound up spending more time cutting, welding and soldiering than programming. The Lego mindstorms kit (with a firmware hack so we can use Not Quite C) proved very useful for programming the lego robots to do various things. There's still plenty of room to learn about various mechanical and electrical systems with mindstorms, but you don't have to worry about dorking around with soldiering, which is a pretty risky business with the hot iron, nasty fumes and toxic chemicals. I've seen more than a few mindstorms hacks onto their electrical systems to add stuff. The one problem is that they're probably pretty expensive, even with a qualified academic discount.
Parts (Score:2, Informative)
Sounds like a good course... I wish I had something like that when i was in highschool
Hardware focus or Software focus (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Embedded programming models
2) Funky I/O devices
So which one do you want to focus on - from your post, I am guessing it is the later. So what you want is a brain dead easy programming model - then build the I/O devices (ie. Sensors, motor controls, all the fun things to manipulate the physical world) to fit into the programming model.
The alternative is to get a canned hardware model (ie. Mindstorm) and then present interesting project in having the hardware manipulate the real world.
Leave it to VERY seasoned profesionals to manipulate both of these environments at the same time, and even then - there are hardware people and there are software people... and they tend not to mix
Ebay (Score:4, Interesting)
I picked up a breadboard locally and that was the last item I bought retail. Everything else came off ebay at ridiculous prices. The problem for me was usually I ended up with too many items.
The best thing about the cost is that I'm not afraid to break things. That burning smell doesn't mean I've blown $10 more like 10c.
For robotics you can go with the latest pic/stamp + prgrammer. But think simple, Z80 + EEPROM + SRAM gives you the same sort of thing at a much reduced price. For instance I picked up 100+ Z80 chips for less than $10.
Decide which controller you're going to use, I'd suggest Z80/6502 etc for cost reasons, but the low end pics are very reasonable as well. Once you have that decided, there are numerous emulators etc available for Linux for each controller. Cheap serial burner can be built for pennies, make that the first class. Kids hate theory.
Build the course around the controller and only delve into theory briefly. Show how to build a drive controller, light/ir/sound detector etc etc. Make one class cover a topic. Give weblinks so the interested kids can follow up in there own time.
Zach's Cool Stuff (Score:4, Informative)
Use MicroChip's "Mechatronics" webinar, etc. (Score:2)
Begin by showing what has happened to the size of MCU's, eg,
by showing your students the subject presentation
(it's like a PowerPoint show with its own audio)
Systems of interest include:
PICaxe-based educational robot (from UK?)
If programming in Assembler, try CoreChart:
http://www.eLabtronics.com/CoreChartFR.htm
(from Australia)
Your first stop... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.servomagazine.com/ [servomagazine.com] - mainly robotics
and their sister (parent?) magazine:
http://www.nutsvolts.com/ [nutsvolts.com] - mainly electronics but covers robotic stuff quite often.
These magazines also have Lego Mindstorms articles in them quite often.
Server has advertising for several companies carrying various kits. In my opinion the kits would be the way to go...even if you can only purchase a few and run you class in groups. As one poster mentioned, the problem with building from the ground up is that you spend most of your time building the hardware and very little of your time programming and running.
Once you have the class going with kits then add some simple "build from scratch" projects like BEAM robotics. Even with these various PIC or ATOM kits will come in handy.
Disclaimer: I am not associated with the Servo or Nuts&Volts but I am a long time satified customer (Servo: since its first issue two years ago or so; Nuts&Volts: several years since when another electronics magazine died and switched the remainder of my subscription to N&V).
Merlin.
Pseudo-Prepackaged, but... (Score:2, Informative)
Some free stuff out there helps... (Score:2)
MicroChip's MPLAB (IDE w/ ass'r, simulator, etc.)
(there's a link to it on their site's front page)
Programmer's Editor for PICace (it's got a tech ref built-in):
http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/progedit.htm
RealTerm (a SourceForge project)
My thoughts (Score:1)
I actually brought my VIC-20 to college in the early 90s for electronics courses. While the rest of the class was using PCs for hardware projects, I did them all on the VIC. Top reason : the BASIC is so funky and primitive that you can poke memory and run ML from it. Reason #2, the video output works on CGA monitors...
One of the projects back then was with an 8 bit DAC for generating waveforms. Wh
Ultimate Dissertation/Term Paper (Score:2)
YAAARC JanBot (Score:3, Informative)
We did this as a group, and high school students actively participated.
Also, one of our members is developing a mobile robotics kit using the AVR Butterfly, which has a similar components cost, but has an LCD and LED screen. (See our web site).
levels of complexity (Score:2)
Robots are uninteresting until you reach a few levels of complexity higher than what could be done in a high school.
K.I.S.S. (Score:2)
In the strictest sense, a material handling system in a warehouse is a robot. Ditto for many assembly lines (or at least portions thereof), automatic sprinkler systems, traffic lights with vehicle sensors, and so on.
Urge them to come up with creative but practical "robots," not R2D2 or C3P0 clones.
My dos centavos.
Robots don't run on water... (Score:2)
Build a tracking system for solar panels. It's close enough to a robot, but it might actually come in handy. Use the opportunity to compare the amount of power used to the amount generated. I'm assuming these are students with a basic understanding
High School Robotics student (Score:3, Interesting)
Microcontrollers are a must (Score:2, Insightful)
Microcontrollers are an excellent bridge between code and hardware - you can code in C but your I/O is actually CMOS digital I/O which can then be plugged up to whatever digital devices or auxiliary chips you want.
The best subject of my undergraduate degree involved writing a pre-emptive task scheduler simultaneously running LCD interfacing code, kermit file transfer protocol, an LED chaser program selecting patterns based on input pins
Re:Microcontrollers are a must (Score:3, Interesting)
Microcontrollers are an excellent bridge between code and hardware - you can code in C but your I/O is actually CMOS digital I/O which can then be plugged up to whatever digital devices or auxiliary chips you want.
Seconded! Forget the combination of diodes, resistors and old PCs and get some Atmel AVR prototyping boards and set up a C programming environment for them on a Linux PC. Then get a bunch of cheap RC servos - these are very ve
Details vs Big Picture (Score:2)
I think there are several great kits on the market for various levels of experience. Try starting with a cheap kit wit
Motorola HC12 (Score:1)
Any generic RC car (sub $30)
A few bucks on diodes/breadboards/etc, and you can build a decent line follower, maze racer, GPS guided bot
Be forewarned - if you're doing this, I don't think there's any kind of high level compiler for the HC12, so you'll be writing in assembly (but for simple robots, I don't think it'll matter)
Re:Motorola HC12 (Score:1)
We use the HC12 in my graduate level mechatronics class. It's awesome.
Re:Vex and OAP (Score:2)
http://oap.sourceforge.net/
Yikes:
"Major project milestone reached dwalters - 2003-10-08"
My PCs? (Score:2)
sorry, couldn't resist
An idea (Score:1)