Westport High School Page

This page is for the Westport High School Robotics Club, other clubs are welcome to use this page as well, as long as the content makes sense for the club, other material should go on other pages

2008

Meeting will take place on in the room as usual. Thanks to Mr Renehan for being the Teacher sponsor for the club. Please do some recruting for the club we need a few more members.

Some planned dates

• Nov 13
• Nov 18
• Nov 25 ( Tuesday ) Continue orgnizing and working on projects. Mr H. Plans to build an IR pen for the wii whiteboard. See Who/What below. Can you figure out your code name?
• and generally every Tuesday

If you have time check out: Project DYI Whiteboard Thanks to Vishay Semiconductors we have some sample High Power Infrared Emitting Diode, 950 nm, GaAlAs/GaAs. I have a Wiimote, so we will put together some light pens and try this out.

Other focus for this year: Printed ciruits using the PIC Microcontroller.

If you have a computer we want to set it up with the SourceBoost C compiler and Eagle Printed Circuit CAD program ( both in their free versions ) Finally you will want to get parts to run a serial bootloader. We will discuss this in the next meeting.

Things to bring

It is very useful to have:

• Paper ( best 3 hole punched )
• Pencil ( not a pen, we all make mistakes, a pencil lets you fix them )
• Notebook, 3 ring ( I may have a supply of a few )
• USB Thumb Drive ( for documents and a copy of the web site )

Before a meeting ( say Sunday ) Check you email to see if there is any from the club. ( Please send me an email when you join so that I have your email address ) Need parts or anything else for a meeting? Make sure you send an email to Mr H reminding him of what you want, this will help a lot.

This Years Group Projects

Group in the sense that the whole group will be able to do the project, but probably best done with one member per team ( but that is up to you ).

Clock Project

Can be like the Dancing clock, or a tide clock, or a Westport class clock.

What you need to do:

• Get Eagle on your computer

• Get SourceBoost Boosts C on your computer

• Decide what kind of clock you are going to build.

• Salvage two stepper motors from printers or disk drives ( old 5 1/2 inch ).

• Test your stepper motors and determine specs.

White Board Project

• What you need to do:

• Get Bluetooth running on a target computer.

• Get the Spec Sheet for the IR Led ( I will bring in on my computer for transfer to your flash drive ).

• Plan your light pen.

Who/What

Who	What	Next?
Tippecanoe	Leggo Mind Meld
The Saint	Whiteboard, Head Tracking Looked over links	Plan pen, install software for controller on some computer.
Two	Salvage	Drop buy some time
The Lamb	Whiteboard, salvaging clocks	More salvage, test motors.
Java the Hutt	Clock? and Rockets

Links

What	Where	Posted
Arduino Links		A cool processor, but not one we normally use. Consider trying it.
Microcontroller Serial Communications Articles
BitWacker PIC USB Development Board
BitWacker Java Communications
BitWacker PIC and Other Microcontroller to Java Communications
Bargains		Cheap, but good enough stuff
Basic Circuits and Circuit Building Blocks		It is worth learing these
PIC Links
PointLess LED Array		One of Mr H's progjecs
Salvage Parts and Sources		Really cheap
Solderless protoboard
Tutorials		Go learn something
Toner Transfer		Our technique for making printed circuit boards.
Serial Communications Library -- BoostC and 16F877A
Project DYI Whiteboard
PIC based Stepper Motor Dancing Analog Clock

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