We had a select gathering on a wet evening.<br>Kay brought along a life size pair of walking legs supported on a mock
Zimmer frame with wheels. The legs walked even more realistically than
last time we saw them.<br>Carl brought a 5 channel sound system which he gave away for repair, and showed the iPhone application that he's been working on.<br>Charles showed a stepper motor based robot
platform using 24v 7.5 degree steppers, discrete darlington transistor
drivers, arduino control board and a roll on deodorant front castor. The robot moved
under control of switches for direction and a potentiometer for speed. Charles also talked about what CAD packages people use, especially those where you may start for free and upgrade to a more capable package.<br>
I took along my 1.8 degree stepper motor based micromouse, still not moving on its own, maybe next time. It uses the kiwipatch pcb available from <a href="http://brightsparks.org.nz">http://brightsparks.org.nz</a>. Students get a free kiwipatch board in exchange for a photograph of how the last one was used. Otherwise they cost $4 each and a great for mounting PICAXE or AVR chips.<br>
Steve
brought an educational puzzle/display nearing completion. It had heaps
of LEDs and large removable puzzle knobs with embedded magnets and fancy
flashing led sequences. All controlled by a pic axe with
darlington driver ICs. When it has the artwork incorporated it should be great fun to use.<br>
Hanno showed us his 12 blocks programming language for young children integrated with a Propeller board, flashing LEDs with just a few mouse clicks. It now has
forward and back annotation between the 12 blocks graphical programming
language and the spin files that it creates for the propeller.<br>Phil talked about Chch Creative space now rebranding as Space Craft. They currently meet on Wednesday nights from 7pm to 11pm at the Canterbury Innovation Incubator, <a href="http://tinyurl.com/ciinz" rel="nofollow">200 Armagh Street, Christchurch</a> <a href="http://spacecraft.org.nz/">http://spacecraft.org.nz/</a><br>
Sachin talked about his six legged walking platform having problems moving under its own weight, I would love to see that.<br>Jimmy brought along his ATTiny2313 USB programmer and we put some code into it, let us know when its is programming AVR micros.<br>
Sorry no photos this time. Let me know if I have missed anything.<br>Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 21st April 2010 at 6.30pm in the Science Alive Seminar Room. See you there!<br><br>Richard Jones<br>