[chbot] Robotics News

[Richard Jones]

Apart from the news of Synco's GPS Boomerang in my last email here is
some other ChchRobotics News:

Younger ChchRobotics Members.
One new member has suggested that we might start sessions earlier so
that younger age groups can attend. This seems like a great idea and
Science Alive say the room is free from about 15:30 most days. I suspect
that younger sessions would be more practical maybe with a design build
format so they might run better in a school technology room with a
supply of tools etc. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Micromouse.
I now have 300 maze walls with 600 metal pins inserted ready for
painting. The floors are also cut and ready for painting. I hope to have
the maze ready for use by Decembers meeting.

Sonar.
I purchased some ultrasonic senders and receivers from Surplustronics in
Auckland and hope to put them on a robot for range sensing someday.

Low Cost Linux in Robots.
I purchased a DSLG502T ADSL router from Trademe for $17.50. Inside I
found a MIPS32 RISC, C6x DSP, 4MB flash, 16MB RAM. The plan is to
reflash with openwrt http://openwrt.org/, write some device drivers and
get the thing running around mazes. This looks like it will take a
while! There is a free book that explains how to write Linux device
drivers here: http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/

WWW site.
Still a work in progress. Carl showed us how to put joomla together, and
I've demonstrated hosting on Linux. We just need someone with enough
time to put up the content. Meanwhile the prototype site
http://groups.msn.com/chchrobotics is still functioning.

New Members
I've met a few new folks who plan to come to our next meeting. Also I've
invited flying folks along from http://chchsoar.org.nz This next meeting
may be busier than usual.

Anyone have other news to add?

See you all on Wednesday 17th Oct, 7.30pm, just 6 days to go. Please
bring your latest projects along to show, ready or not.

Richard Jones