[chbot] Meeting Report: Tuesday 18th August 2009

[Richard Jones]

We had a good turn out, on another cold and wet winter night. The gold coin
collection raised $11.90 for Science Alive which was much appreciated.
Thanks to all who came, and to those who brought items to show and share.
Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 20th October at 6.30pm.  Here is an
account of what we got up to, feel free to send errors, omissions,
additions and suggestions for next session to our mailing list.

Following on the the Robocup Christchurch competition held on the 9th of
August we had a nice collection of Rescue robots along:

Hayley demonstrated her 1st prize winning robot from the primary section.
The robot performed nicely, running around all the obstacles, taking the
green hint squares and pushing the victim out of the swamp. Hayley then
gave us a captivating talk about how the robot software works and fielded
heaps of questions. Thanks Hayley, and best of luck in the national
competition in Auckland on 5th September.

Luke and Ben brought along their rescue robot and showed it running running
on the tiles. Thanks guys.

Yuito brought along his sister and Dad and a rebuilt rescue robot that also
started out along the tiles but did not complete. Thanks for showing us the
new build.

Not to be outdone John (from Science Alive) showed us his rescue robot.
That too ran but needs considerable work before entering into the wrinkly
section of Robocup Junior! John plans to be a Dad by the next meeting date.
Good luck.

Hanno showed us his new Robotic creation called 12 Blocks. Thanks for
another great product Hanno, more info here: http://12blocks.com

Jill told us about the great programming environment from MIT called
Scratch. If you have not played with Scratch have a go:
http://scratch.mit.edu/ and of course show it to any young ones who might
be interested.

Sachin and Jimmy told us about progress on the Crab / Hexapod. Next step is
to order servos, prototype PCBs, locate some bearing supplies, and figure
out mechanical design. More to follow on the mailing list... You can find
Sachins robot designs here: http://sachin.surendran.googlepages.com/

Jimmy showed us his 4 wheeled robot platform built for a school project. It
certainly ran nicely under our chairs and will have its brain fitted soon.

Peter stole the late show with his radio controlled lawn mower which
lumbered around the room, flashed warning lights and had a threatening
amount of power to the cutters. Next steps will be autonomous operation
within a defined boundary and safety cutouts.

I brought along my micromouse, seen for the first time last session and
showed the Eclipse IDE with the CDT and AVR plugins for handy AVR 'C' code
development using the AVR-GCC tool chain. More info here:
http://www.eclipse.org/

Phil showed us a USB Arduino board and also showed us around the
development tools and how to move beyond the first LED flashing step. It
certainly de-mystified the Arduino toolchain for me. Arduino a great way to
overcome the first hurdle if stuck on either hardware or software
development. More info here: http://www.arduino.cc/ Phil has listed
hardware distributers here: http://code.rancidbacon.com/ArduinoNewZealand

You can find our mailing list archives or join the mailing list here:
http://lists.ourshack.com/mailman/listinfo/chchrobotics

Richard Jones