Make: Lego and Arduino Projects Foreword

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, December 30th, 2012

Have you seen this book: Make: Lego and Arduino Projects? It’s all about adding in Arduinos to your Lego robot projects! This is really helpful if you find you want to do more with Lego robots, but find the NXT too restrictive.

It’s written by John Baichtal (@johnbaichtal), Matthew Beckler (@mbeckler) & Adam Wolf (@adamwwolf)! I’ve met these people at Maker Faire before, they are really cool. They asked me to write the foreword for their book, what a great honour!

This book goes along with the Bricktronics shield for Arduino. It’s how you can connect the NXT motors and sensors to the Arduino. They sent me one, cause even though I don’t have some Lego anymore, I’ll probably use the L293D for something (can never have enough of those chips eh!)

Here is a closeup of the board, not a lot of empty space and the TIP120′s will be standing up:

Here is the board when it is assembled. When following their kit instructions, the steps aren’t ordered from shortest components to tallest, so you may want to jump around a bit.

Look at this, the plastic connector things make it look like a giant compared to the Arduino / Diavolino!

CONNECTOR THINGS ARE STARING AT YOU!

Back in the day of RCX’s, the ‘connectors’ were much simpler and didn’t cost as much, they were just a few wires attached to a custom Lego brick. It was a lot easier back then to wire up your own lights or whatever.

I’m looking forward to using the L293D in some project at some point in time. As for the rest of the board, perhaps use it as robot artwork or something. Or if I find someone that is in to Arduinos and Legos, give it to them

Thanks again to the authours for the invite to write the Foreword. I hope it will get the readers motivated and ready to build (and read)!

More to come later about the latest and greatest RoboBrrd news!

Posted in: Fun, Maker Faire, News.

Maker Faire New York Fun

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, October 4th, 2012

Maker Faire New York was an incredible amount of fun! Our table consisted mainly of three RoboBrrds, Seagull, Impy, and Camouflage.

The kids really enjoyed interacting with the RoboBrrds. With Impy, the NFC hats interaction trick never gets old. I love watching how the younger kids are able to connect the hat to the action what the RoboBrrd is doing, then try the different hats and see what they do.

We started off Maker Faire with Education Day. This day is actually my ultimate favourite, mainly because it is really structured with kids going around to the tables and being very polite when asking questions.

The response from the kids and educators was great. It was really nice to have them interact with all the RoboBrrds, and be inspired by the robots. One of the observations that stuck out to me is that with RoboBrrd, the girls asked more questions than the boys. I’m not entirely sure why this is the case just yet, either the boys thought it was too easy and weren’t interested, or the girls were interested and wanted to figure out how they can make one.

This year it took place inside the big blue room, aka the grande hall. This room rocks and makes RoboBrrd look all sciencey.

For the big day on Saturday and Sunday, we were located in the Central Pavillion, lower level, nearest to the staircase as people finished climbing down. This was a really awesome spot and it gained a lot more attention than being in the little room in the back did last year.

Here is how our table was set up:

^ pic from jbc

Seagull RoboBrrd was acting as the stress test for the kit version. To interact with it, you have to shake it. So I was handing it over to kids who would then shake the RoboBrrd all around, grabbing onto its wings and such. It never broke! Seagull RoboBrrd lasted through Maker Faire. This is great news

Impy over here could interact via the hats and the iPad. I had a switch so that I could toggle what mode it was in. The iPad communication worked flawlessly, and the hats always triggered a great response from the kids.

Next up was Camouflage RoboBrrd (named because it is almost the same shade of green felt as the table cloth– thanks for the name idea Windell!). This RoboBrrd used a really simple way to interact via a distance sensor. If you move close enough to it, then it will act hyper. Either way, it does a random action every 2 seconds or so. This one was made at the last minute on Friday, so a big thank you to Chris for the distance sensor!

It was great that there were many people interested in many different detailed aspects of RoboBrrd. There were some that were really interested by the iPad aspect, CAD, EDA, etc. I had my iPhone displaying the Autodesk 360 model of RoboBrrd, and also had the model displayed on paper (from Maker Faire Bay Area 2012!).

Another great thing was having the pieces for the kit there. Some kids actually even started building up a RoboBrrd just from looking at the CAD model on the iPhone! It was pretty cool. A really great way to illustrate how the RoboBrrd can be built up.

Laser cut artwork is always a hoot. Here are two examples of that:

One of my highlights was seeing Jeri again (she’s a big inspiration for me), meeting even more people I knew online but not in person, goofing around with my friends, meeting more friends, waving to all my friends. Basically, just being with all my friends! It’s so cool to have friends

Speaking of friends, check out macetech’s glasses on RoboBrrd! SWEEEEEET!

There were a lot of great instances of funny interactions with the people who came up to my table. My favourite is when I tell the kids about the robots, say that Seagull RoboBrrd has to be shaken to work, the kids reach out to pick it up, then the parents say ‘NO don’t touch!’. I always laughed and remarked about who was actually listening.

The craziest moment was on Sunday when the rain hit. Everyone swarmed inside and it was completely insane but totally fun! Actually it was thanks to Luis who popped over and watched my table for a bit while I escaped for a few moments on Sunday.

The crazy part… when I came back, there was a red ribbon on the table? What is this? It was an Educators Choice Award! Wow, this is a pretty big honour for RoboBrrd and I. We try really hard to get more people interested in robotics with the cute and cuddly nature of RoboBrrd. Having our efforts up to that point recognized by Maker Faire was amazing. It does truly mean a lot.

When I brought home the ribbons, all of the RoboBrrds gathered for a group shot around the original RoboBrrd:

We’re still going to try and spread the joy of robotics even more. With the RoboBrrd kit finished and coming out at some point in the near future, I’m really interested in seeing how well it will take off.

We had a lot of support from numerous people at Maker Faire giving out some interesting things. Thank you to everyone! Notably, thanks Chris Connors for the ‘Fashioning Technology’ book, which will hopefully teach me how to make the soft e-textile sensors that I want to put on RoboBrrd! Thanks Joey for the free kit, this is a really generous action as it does cost a lot of money to give out a kit like that! And thanks to Kevin Osborn for the components for some of the RoboBrrd Brain Board build. Thanks Brett for the useless machine! Also thanks to my friend from RedBearLabs for the BLE shield.

There are so many more that I can go on and on about for ages! Thanks for the goodies, I really appreciate it, and I will make something with them!

^ pic from jbc

Maker Faire NY was fantastic! Thank you to everyone who made this adventure possible. Special thanks to Andrew & family for letting RoboBrrd and I stay over, Andrew (clothbot) for driving RoboBrrd & I back safe and sound. Thanks mpng for bringing me some food, I probably would have passed out if it wasn’t for food!

Last but not least, thanks to the person who made it all possible by donating some last minute funds! To think that we almost didn’t make it to Maker Faire. This was an amazing journey!

I’m looking forward to sharing the latest news about RoboBrrd with everyone. Stay tuned!

Posted in: Fun, Maker Faire, RoboBrrd (thx Adafruit!).

Adafruit HQ Fun

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

Woohoooo! I finally had the opportunity to visit Adafruit HQ! Back on Sunday October 21, 2007 was when I ordered my first Arduino Duemilanove from them, and then later became actually interested in electronics! Their tutorials have helped me along the way, so it was totally a blast to go there and see them in human form again, check out their pick and place machine, say hello to the Adabot character, and learn even more!

The Adabot puppet is really interesting. It is fabulous looking in real life. With Adabot, they are taking the approach that robots are friends, which is really nice! Just like RoboBrrd! They can both be friends!

The pick and place machine… wowza, I was amazed to see it in person. Think of all the technical details that have to go in to a machine like this! Vision, programming, mechanical! There are trays and reels from which it can take the parts from. It places the pieces on the board from checking on its vision system. Plus, it even knows when it drops a component. Not only all of this, but your circuit creations can be functional in seconds rather than hours of soldering. It’s just wicked!

RoboBrrd wants a pick and placed brain some day…

ladyada is an inspiration, and the pick and place machine is stellar!

After the tour was done, they let me choose stickers! I kind of went out of control, but check out how great the RoboBrrd travelling case looks now! Thanks for the stickers Adafruit

In return for the visit, I said I would make some sort of Adabot head with servos. I’m probably going to revise this idea into some sort of goofy project enclosure to hide your Arduino project in, and it will also have servos for the antennas. Well, more on this later since there’s a lot of pre-existing work to get done before a next project.

Hackerspace passport was STAMPED!

Thanks Adafruit for the tour! It was a blast!

Posted in: Fun, Maker Faire, RoboBrrd (thx Adafruit!).

Open Hardware Summit 2012

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, September 26th, 2012

Join us at the Open Hardware Summit 2012! We will be giving a talk, doing a poster presentation, and also demoing RoboBrrd.

Our talk will be during the Hardware & Materials session, somewhere in between 11:30 and 1:00! It is called: Sharing the Inspiration with Robot Kits! Check out the description here. It’s only 5 minutes long, but I aim to leave people more inspired anyway!

When building a robot, transitioning from using accessible resources to designing a kit version is often times very challenging. One of the underlying motivations to tackle this challenge is the ability to share your inspiration with more people. This talk will discuss reasons to jump in and design a kit version, and how doing so will benefit the community. It is intended primarily for those who have not had the experience with designing their own kit, but can also be beneficial for experts to communicate their lessons learned as well.

Our demo is about RoboBrrd of course! Look for D7, and that will probably be us. You will be able to check out the new Seagull RoboBrrd, as well as Impy RoboBrrd, and see what some of the kit pieces will look like. For more info see here.

RoboBrrd is a robotic bird character that has an entertaining personality, and can interface with virtual learning applications. It is designed as a do-it-yourself kit, providing an introductory experience into the world of robotics engineering. This demo will showcase the intractability of the RoboBrrds, including feeding it virtual fruit, and putting different hats on RoboBrrd to change its behaviours!

Our poster is about the Robot Party. Look for P3, and it will be it. Alternatively, it may be located at the same place where our demo is. From the poster you will be able to learn about the Robot Party, and how it can inspire many robot builders. Check out more details here.

The Robot Party is a weekly Google+ hangout that brings together robot builders to share their robots, knowledge, and ask questions. This poster will showcase screenshots and descriptions of various moments featuring makers who have created robots and shared their knowledge on the Robot Party. It will be fun and colourful to look at, capturing the spirit of many of the Robot Party hangouts!

I’m looking forward to what the badge will be for OHS this year. Will it be tasty? Blinky? Who knows! Also hoping for some really nice freebies, because I want to build more crazy robots!

Looking forward to meeting everyone at OHS and learning more about the open hardware world. If you see us there, feel free to stop by and say hello!

Posted in: Fun, Maker Faire, RoboBrrd (thx Adafruit!), Robot Party.

RobotGrrl in Robotics Book

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, September 12th, 2012

Robotics: Discover the science and technology of the future! This is the title of a cute book about robotics in general by Kathy Ceceri. It’s aimed mainly towards elementary school kids, but I’m sure experts could still learn a thing or two from it

Inside of the book is a blurb about me (RobotGrrl) and RoboBrrd!

Also another one by the back of the book as well

Isn’t this a great picture? It sounds like the outro of the Robot Party each week!

It’s quite kind of Kathy to feature up RoboBrrd and I in her book! I hope that it will inspire some kids out there to build all sorts of robots, not just the classic ones with wheels. Be creative!

If you will be at Maker Faire NY, be sure to keep an eye out for a talk about the projects inside of this book. Apparently it will be on Sunday morning in the Maker Shed area.

This makes for a great book to give to someone else to learn all about the crazy robots we build for hours on end. You can give one to your local school’s library, or community library, or dentist! There is also a facebook fan page for it, so you can share your love for robotics with a portion of the world.

If anyone out there does make a RoboBrrd, it would be mega wicked to see it! You can post some pics up online, and ping me on Google+ here! *crosses fingers for some epic new RoboBrrds!*

Posted in: Fun, Maker Faire.

RoboBrrd at Montreal Mini Maker Faire was a BLAST!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, August 28th, 2012

We were at Montreal Mini Maker Faire and it was a huge success! There were many people that showed up at the event, and there was a good amount of makers there!

Here are all of the RoboBrrds on the table!

We had Impy RoboBrrd going with the different hats, and the black RoboBrrd (Penguin Brrd? Stealthy Brrd?) was going through some motions. There were lots of kids who grabbed on to the black RoboBrrd and break its wings, but the wings were still going the whole day! This is great for knowing that the little armatures for the RoboBrrd kit will work pretty well

Stealthy RoboBrrd is so stealthy… <_< ... >_> … (teehee)

We also had MANOI blinking its necklace on Sunday! I had to take out the Arduino ADK from Learning Pet (blue RoboBrrd) and swap it for the DUE. There were some weird issues that I’ve been having with the DUE, so I need to investigate it more.

This picture here is kind of funny because everything isn’t set up yet!

One of my favourite things of Montreal Mini Maker Faire other than my RoboBrrds was the learn to solder tent by SpikenzieLabs. They sent me down two RoboBrrd badges beforehand, it was really cool:

For the weekend, they had oodles and oodles of these badges with ‘Montreal Mini Maker Faire’ on them. People were soldering the entire time. It was awesome! And it wasn’t just the kids, but also old people too! It completely blew my mind, it’s a strong maker spirit to do that.

Here is a randomly placed picture that has nothing to do with the above, just to make a transition to the next topic, woosh!

Getting to Montreal Mini Maker Faire was kind of hard from where I’m at right now. However, I was saved and able to make it there with much help of the sponsors, organizers, and volunteers! A big huge THANK YOU to those people!

The two people that were kind enough to let me stay with them were mega awesome. On Monday after Maker Faire, we went flying since they have a plane! How cool is that! We brought RoboBrrd along too!

RoboBrrd in the AIR! YEAH!!! WOOHOO!!!

Their 3D printers are awesome. I want an Ultimaker so badly, the print quality is awesome on it! We printed out a little wheel that I modified on OpenSCAD. No idea what I will do with it yet, but it is so cool! It was also really cool to hear the motors moving… mmm!

Here’s a pic of me at the end of Maker Faire, taken by the Lego NXT Wall-E guy! It was great fun, and I can’t wait until next year! Maybe it will be in the Montreal Science Centre!

Thank you so much to the organizers of Montreal Mini Maker Faire and the volunteers for making it all possible! I wouldn’t have been able to go otherwise, so it was really special! It was great meeting old friends, and making new friends as well. Excited already for next year! ^_^

Posted in: Fun, Maker Faire, RoboBrrd (thx Adafruit!).

RoboBrrd at Maker Faire Montreal

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, August 25th, 2012

Through a change in events, we will be at Montreal Mini Maker Faire! Be sure to check out the table with all the RoboBrrds, it will have a green table cloth at lots of cool robots!

Also be sure to check out the Spikenzie Labs learn to solder area, you get to make a really sweet badge!

I’ve made some hand-made cards for anyone who wants them! So be sure to come by and grab one Now I have to go and prepare all my robots! Hope to see everyone there and…

Get excited and MAKE THINGS!

Posted in: Fun, Maker Faire.