Arduino experiments at the Purley Hackspace

Last weekend our good friends from France stayed over at the Purley Hackspace. Fearnley and Pierre had never encountered an Arduino but were intrigued. With no programming or electronics experience the teenagers set about replicating the simple circuits and demos that come with typical starter kits.

Spurred on by their success, they proceeded through a variety of their own experiments, gradually integrating more and more functionality onto the board. 

It surprised them how tricky it was to develop the digital code that, combined with a simple 'push-to-make' switch, could turn into what they wanted: a 'push-to-make push-to-break' toggle switch. They also began to understand how integrating the code from one experiment, into another, was not trivial, and they eventually realized that the concept of an 'interrupt' would be very useful.

The pièce de résistance came in the form of a circuit with many features: on/off, speed control, colored LEDs and a chain of relays able to control any mains voltage device (up to 40 Amps) such as lamps, toaster, power tools, vacuum cleaner, cooker and beyond. Here it is controlling the lamp:

In another refinement, they added a light sensor and were able to activate the Arduino 'hands off' by turning off the main room light, with the effect of turning on the table lamp via relay chain. Pretty cool!




An 'end of day' final experiment which would have triggered a firework in the garden simply by turning off the house lights, failed to work. There was probably insufficient power to the firework-ignition circuit.

Giant Hexapod Robotic Vehicles you can ride in are coming ...

If you want to ride a giant eight legged robot, you cannot buy one, you are going to have to make one. And this is precisely what one team are trying to do. Learn about 'Stompy' below in this video.

If you like what you hear, consider backing the project here. 

Robots Dancing

Cool Robots

http://www.thecoolist.com/gordon-bennets-robots/

MouseBot works and seeks the light!

Jamie and Howard tested their Mousebot while at the London Model Engineering Show, Alexander Palace. The mouse worked perfectly.

We found a large open space and, managing to avoid the public, Jamie chased the Bot around the floor around a touch, and the robot responded to his commands.

We then let the Bot loose and it neatly turned towards the light at the end of the corridor and darted for the open door.

We forgot to take our camera to the event, so pictures of the MouseBot in action will have to wait until next time. Jamie tells me there is a large hall at his school. I think this would be the perfect place for some new tests.

Sail Robots

There is something very exciting about the idea of launching a sail robot. A sail robot is a sail boat that crosses large expanses of water, e.g. large lakes, oceans, steering all by itself. What shore or bay might the sail robot visit? What creatures will it encounter on its journey? Where will it put down its anchor? Or will it be lost to the "Davy Jones"? We need to find out more. One day, we might build a boat like this and track it across the ocean using satellites.

Learn more here

Festo a robotic seagull

Beanbots video presented by Bre Pettis

Bre Pettis is the founder of MakerBot Industries, the company that is bringing the exciting new field of 3D Printing to the hobbyist market. Here, he is inspiring us to build Beanbots, solar-powered minibots that move and seek out light to re-charge themselves.