Happy Thanksgiving

Did a little Googling and found this cool Turkey-Bot at a blog called A Bit Dotty. The drawing is used with the artist and author's permission. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Scribbler Robot Camps - Part Two

I am getting ready to do another set of Robot Camps for the Monroe City Schools. This time we will also run the camps at each of the Jr. High Schools. That will be six schools with about fifteen students at each school, plus a group of teachers.

This year I thought a maze might be fun to solove - so, I built one. Here is video of my Scribbler running the simple maze. Students will be asked to write a program to solve this particular maze. It shold be a fun excercise.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween from Robotics Under the Stole. Check out this cool robotic pumkin!

Name that Bot!

What in the world do all these parts make? The new Parallax Stingray. The Stingray is a Propeller powered mid-size robot. I got one of the first 50 produced. It was really fun to put together and I look forward to posting more as I get it up running. Next step - sensors. See the assembled pics below from Parallax's website.

Photo - Stingray from above and side. Note the cool omni-directional tailwheel.

The Great Robot Race

This is a video from the P.B.S. Series NOVA. The episode is called The Great Robot Race. Though I do robotics on a completely different level, this is exactly why I find robotics so much fun!

Officially a Nerd!

Most people agree that you are officially an nerd when you get an oscilloscope. Well... I just got a Rigol DS 1052E, 50 MHz, 2 Channel Digital Storage Oscilloscope. I'm really having fun learning to use it. The manual is very good and has some fun Chinese to English translations! For example the warranty card is addressed to the "Honorable Customer."

Its an award winning scope because of its combination of low price and advanced performance at an entry level price. The 50-MHz portable oscilloscope provides a 1 Gsample/s rate, which puts it in the same category as big-name competitors. It then surpasses them by providing a full 1-Msample memory — as much as 40 times more than competing units.

The unit has a very bright, full color 5.7-in. liquid-crystal display, USB host and device ports, and a range of advanced triggering functions (such as edge, slope, pulse, alternate, and video) and mathematical signal-manipulation capabilities (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and fast Fourier transforms). All things you would expect in much more expensive scopes.

The real surprise is the price - the 50-MHz version is priced at just $595 (retail). I got mine on E-bay from mib_instruments shipped for free directly from Hong Kong for just $420 (plus $10 insurance)! I also have a soft case coming, which I ordered elsewhere.

The scope comes with power cord, two probes and a CD with the manual (in pdf) and PC interface software. Here are the specs:

Here is an online review from the EEVblog (Electronics Engineering Video Blog) on YouTube:

Strange Coincidence

It is a strange coincidence that theme of our Vacation Bible School this year has a robotic mascot! Each year, we combine forces with St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church and Christ Episcopal Church in Bastrop to do Vacation Bible School. We always use Concordia Publishing's materials.

This year, the theme is GADGET'S Garage and features the robotic mascot named Gizmo! Several year's ago, before I got seriously interested in building robots, we did another V.B.S. that had a robotic mascot. I made a 4 foot tall "robot" out of Christmas light and junk. The kids liked it. I ended up giving it to the local library. As I was posting this, it occurred to me that I might have a picture - so here it is too!

The basic idea of this year's theme is that in GADGET'S Garage they make new things out of old stuff. In robotics, that is called re-purposing. I guess I never thought of Jesus as a hacker!