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!

Camp Fun

Here is one picture of the Monroe City School's Scribbler Robot Camp students playing with their robots. They were letting their robots follow each other around the line on the poster board. As you can see, the lead robot is lost and looking for the line. If I remember correctly, pictured from left to right are Brittny, Franz and Kaitlin. Those are the student's names - I don't remember what they named their Scribblers ;-). I hope that more pics will follow.

Addition to My Lab

Many of you who follow my blog will remember my post on my Robot Lab. I've just made a really cool addition to my lab thanks to my wife. Her business had some old glass door metal storage shelves that they were getting rid of and she got them for me!

I have been looking for something like this for a while, but these are better that anything I could have hoped for. They look like something out of IBM headquarters during the early days of computers.

Now all my robots, equipment or whatever I put in them can be out of the dust and at the same time where I can see them and show them off. It is a combo storage space and display case. Super cool, eh?

Robot Camps Underway

Last week (April 27-30), we held the first to the Monroe City Schools' Robot Camps. It all began at Wossman High School and I think the students had a great time. I know they learned a lot about their Scribblers! Each of the students left with their own Scribbler Robot, a workbook, a USB adapter and cable, a padded lunch box for storage and a flashlight (for light following)!

This week (May 4-7), we will be a Neville High School.

Jodie Moorhead from Instructional Technology is my partner in running the camps and he got some great pictures and video. I will try to post some of them later.

Monroe City Schools' Robot Camp

I am working with the folks in Instructional Technology at the Monroe City School District to conduct a Robot Camp at three High Schools this spring.

We will be using Parallax's Scribbler Robot and will introduce about 50 students to robotics and programming. We will hold 3 one week camps at each of the three high schools.

I will post more information as we firm up our plans.

Scribbler Encoder Success!

Happy New Year! On January 3, 2009, my buddy erco announced, "Success! I made several test runs with the finished encoders today, and it's quite rewarding to see the Scribbler actively correcting itself to drive a straight line. I posted a video... which shows the robot driving a small square and ending up pretty close to where it started. I have finished the encoder hardware installation to my satisfaction, but my software is very preliminary."

Here are photos of erco's encoder installation. As he explained, he built it on a tiny piece of single-sided perfboard in a non-standard way as you can see in the photos. The board is a tight fit between two molded ribs in the top body shell. The encoder sensor is mounted in a raised position on the non-copper side so that it can stick through a mostly square hole in the case. All other components are mounted on the copper side so that he could flush-mount the non-copper side to the housing inside using a drop of hot melt glue. The Optical gap between encoder and wheel is ~0.150. erco aligned the sensors to read the outer rings of his encoder wheels, and mounted it horizontally from axle in the top body shell. Each encoder circuit has 3 wired connections: +5V, ground, and output. He disconnected photocells on the front of the Scribbler to use the encoders. Photocells are also mounted in the top body shell on a small green PC board under a black plastic light shield. Nothing was removed, erco just unsoldered the green wire from P4 on the circuit board to disconnect all 3 photocells. The green wire becomes the ground connection for both encoders. He connected the left encoder output to pad P3 and the right encoder output to pad P1 on green photocell PC board. Stamp-wise, the left encoder is IN2 and the right encoder is IN0. The +5V connection is taken from the 6-hole "Hacker Port" header on main PC board.

See erco's impressive video below. With the pattern on the floor, you can clearly see the Scribbler keep itself running straight and it returns almost perfectly to where it began.

Photos and video courtesy of erco.