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.
Contents
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 recruting for the club we need a few more members.
First meeting
- Tuesday Oct 6 in Mr Renehan's Room. This will be an orgnizational meeting.
- Tuesday Oct 13 probably. We will try to start real work.
2008 Meetings
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 your own work )
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
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 talke to each other. You should see the page Beginners Setup for Arduino and Processing for the setup you will need.
2008 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 ).
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.
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.
EL Wire Project
- May have this as an option after MrH gets the parts.
Who/What
| Who | What | Done | Next? |
| Tippecanoe | Leggo Mind Meld | Mess with robot, installed some software on MrH Computer | *Get Wiimote?
|
| The Saint | Whiteboard, Looked over links | Watched MrH build chopstick pen | *Plan pen, install software for controller on some computer.
|
| Two | Salvage | Drop buy some time | |
| The Lamb | Salvaging Motors, Building clocks | One printer partly deconstructed. | More salvage, test motors. |
| Java the Hutt | Clock? and Rockets | Try to make it to a meeting | |
| MrH | Clock, El Wire, StepBot, WhiteBoard | *First Clock Built
|
Get Clock #2 running soon |
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 |
