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. This years page a lot like last year's page, but different. Last year's page moved to 2008 Westport High School Page

Last Update Nov 5 2009

This page is not always up to date, how much I update it depends upon how much feedback I get from club members, and howmuch news I have. Last updated

2009 Meetings

Meeting will take place on in the room as last year. Thanks to Mr Renehan for being the Teacher sponsor for the club. Please do some recruiting for the club we need a few more members. The meetings here are in reverse order so more recent ( or future ones ) are at the top. Expect meetings every Tuesday school is in session.

Next meeting

Nov 10: Will start on sound and the Arduino.

Past meetings:

• Some undocumented meetings, more light, arrays, and communication with the PC.
• Tuesday Oct 20. More messing around with Arduino. Perhaps sensors and motors, perhaps not.
  • As an assignment go to instructables and search on Arduino. Find a project to tell us about that you think is interesting. It does not have to be a project you want to do. This link will do the search for you [Instructables serach results for Arduino]
  • Think about buying an Arduino. I will do a write up you can show to your parents.
  • Load the Arduino and Processing software on your computer. You should see the page Beginners Setup for Arduino and Processing for the setup you will need.
• Tuesday Oct 13. We will start real work. Mr. H. will bring 2 computers, some Arduino's, cables, and some stuff: sensors, led's and motors.
• Tuesday Oct 6 First meeting in Mr Renehan's Room. This will be an organizational 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 your own work )
• Computer ( if you can, and can hang on to it )

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.

2009 Projects

Read this and look at the links!

This year we are going to switch our attention to Arduino based projects ( but as usual any electronics platform is open for consideration ). See: Microcontrollers for Beginners. We will also connect the Arduino to our PC so that programs on the can talk to programs on the PC and programs on the Arduino can talk to each other. You should see the page Beginners Setup for Arduino and Processing for the setup you will need.

Links

What	Where	Posted
Arduino Links		A cool processor, our focus for this year.
Microcontrollers for Beginners		Reasons for using the Arduino. Also has links to starter kits and other good places for beginners
Beginners Setup for Arduino and Processing		Good place to start your setup.
Bargains		Cheap, but good enough stuff
Basic Circuits and Circuit Building Blocks		It is worth learning these
Arduino Links
PointLess LED Array		One of Mr H's projects
Salvage Parts and Sources		Really cheap
Solderless protoboard
Tutorials		Go learn something
PIC based Stepper Motor Dancing Analog Clock