Are you looking for a place in Warner Robins, GA to rapidly prototype a product or test a business concept? Are you looking for a community to learn technical skills and grow your business concept? Are you interested in learning more about the makers movement in Warner Robins, GA? If you’re a business leader or maker in Middle, GA, make sure to attend the FireStarter meetup on April 30th.
If you follow this blog, you know that I serve as a founding member of SparkMacon Makerspace in Macon, GA. Our community is VERY excited for the FireStarter community. Our leadership team is actively finding ways that we can support and grow this community of business leaders and makers. We hope to find ways for SparkMacon and FireStarter can collaborate. From reviewing their website and materials, I’m excited to see the focus and direction of this community.
What kind of benefits can makerspaces and fab labs have on the local economy? Check out the impact of another makerspace in Augusta, GA: Clubhou.se .
If you care about fostering the makers movement in Middle, GA, make sure to attend the FireStarter meetup. You won’t be disappointed.
Thanks to projects like Code.org and MIT Scratch, students can encounter ideas from computer science using rich puzzle interfaces. Using these puzzle interfaces, students grow their skills of creativity and critical thinking while building something fun. Puzzle based programming interfaces put emphasis on the student learning sequencing, loops, and connecting appropriate pieces together. In this post, I wanted to share my experiences with Ardublock, a puzzle based programming interface for the Arduino platform. Using the most recent beta of Ardublock, I found that I could create an Arduino program to control motors quickly. I’m looking forward to seeing how students in our makerspace will enjoy the software.
The Arduino platform enables makers and students to program experiences involving electronics or sketches. You can learn more about this platform from the following blog post. In our previous blog post, we used Arduino, Lego’s, and a few servo motor’s to create a small toy crane. In this sketch, the user can move the crane by sending a character to the Arduino through the serial monitor.
w – moves the crane up.
s – stops the crane.
x – moves the crane down.
a – moves the crane left.
d – moves the crane right.
In the crane setup, pin 9 of the Arduino is connected to a standard servo. Pin 9 will be used to move the crane left and right. Pin 10 will be used to move the crane up and down. We initialize our variable for the direction or angle of the crane. We also send an angle of 90 degrees to both servo motors to ensure that the motors stop moving.
In the Arduino platform, the programmer needs to define a main loop of functionality. In the crane control program, we start the process by accepting a character from the serial port and storing the character in a variable called “input.” If we receive the character ‘d’ for move left, then the system changes the angle variable and writes the angle to the servo motor. You can see the Ardublock code below. The character ‘a’ for move right operates in a similar manner. When we receive the characters x and w to move up and down, we write an appropriate value to the continuous rotation servo. (0 = move up, 180 = move down)
When using Ardublock, the student is not hidden from the C code generated by the tool. The student can be encouraged to change the C code. I see this as a nice learning advantage. I want our students to make the connection between puzzle pieces and traditional code.
If you’re interested in learning more about this free and open source product, check out the following link:
I’m always looking for new ways to play and build with my kids. In the Rosario house hold, we enjoy building stuff with Lego’s. My kids have also enjoyed playing with Lego Wedo and Lego Mindstorm kits at our makerspace. For many families, getting access to a Lego Mindstorm EV3 kit that costs $350 to $400 can be a challenge. Even the Lego Wedo kits are not inexpensive. Our family already had a pretty nice collection of traditional Lego and Lego technic pieces. I started wondering if I could build some pieces that would enable us to combine the world of Lego and Arduino. In this blog post, I would like to share some of my experiences of building a fun Lego crane for my kids. I hope to use some of these ideas to engage older students in coding and making at our local makerspace. You can see a video of the crane in action here:
Here’s some of the materials that you’ll need to build your own!
Traditional Lego pieces
Lego technic pieces – These lego pieces are used with Lego Mindstorm/Wedo kits for constructing robots. They include parts like beams, gears, and connectors to enable pieces to turn and spin. You can learn more about Lego technic from this post.
Don’t have a 3D printer? No problem, you can print the parts using Shapeways.com for $8 to $10. Shapeways will deliver the parts to your door!
For this construction, you will need two Lego servo horns. Connect Lego technic beams to the Lego servo horns.
In the following picture, you can see how we used Lego, rubber bands, the standard servo to enable the crane to turn left to right.
In the following picture, you can see how we used the continuous rotation servo so that the string of the crane can be extended and retracted. We’re just using rubber bands to connect the servo’s to traditional Lego pieces. We also used our second Lego servo horn.
Here’s how we connected the top beam with the support beam.
What does the Arduino code look like?
In this section, we’ll give you an overview of the source code used to drive the servo’s. In the Arduino platform, the host PC can communicate with the Arduino at runtime using serial communication. In the code, you’ll see that we are using serial communication to send out servo commands in response to characters sent by the host PC.
#include
int incomingByte; // a variable to read incoming serial data into
int angle = 0;
int delta = 3;
Servo servoLeftRight;
Servo servoUpDown;
void setup() {
// initialize serial communication:
Serial.begin(9600);
void loop() {
// see if there's incoming serial data:
if (Serial.available() > 0) {
// read the oldest byte in the serial buffer:
incomingByte = Serial.read();
//move right
servoLeftRight.write(angle);
delay(15);
}
if (incomingByte == 'w') {
//raise the hook
servoUpDown.write(180);
}
if (incomingByte == 's') {
//lower the hook
servoUpDown.write(0);
}
if (incomingByte == ' ') {
//stop the continuous rotation servo
servoUpDown.write(90);
}
}
}
In the following setup code, we declare variables for the character typed by the user and the angle of the crane. We also declare our servo’s. One servo is used to change the direction of the crane. (servoLeftRight) The other servo moves the hook of the crane up and down. We initialize the direction servo to 90 degrees. “ServoLeftRight” will be attached to Arduino pin 9. “ServoUpDown” is connected to Arduino pin 10.
#include
int incomingByte; // a variable to read incoming serial data into
int angle = 0;
int delta = 3;
Servo servoLeftRight;
Servo servoUpDown;
void setup() {
// initialize serial communication:
Serial.begin(9600);
The “loop” function keeps repeating code forever. If the Arduino finds bytes incoming from the host computer, we read the byte and do something useful with it.
void loop() {
// see if there's incoming serial data:
if (Serial.available() > 0) {
// read the oldest byte in the serial buffer:
incomingByte = Serial.read();
//Do something!!
}
}
To send characters to your Arduino, you will need to open the serial monitor window by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+M . By entering ‘d’ or ‘a’, you will move the direction of the crane left and right.
if (incomingByte == 'd') {
//move right
servoLeftRight.write(angle);
delay(15);
}
In a similar fashion, entering ‘w’ and ‘s’ will raise and lower the hook. Sending a space character will stop the continuous rotation servo.
if (incomingByte == 'w') {
//raise the hook
servoUpDown.write(180);
}
if (incomingByte == 's') {
//lower the hook
servoUpDown.write(0);
}
if (incomingByte == ' ') {
//stop the continuous rotation servo
servoUpDown.write(90);
}
In a future blog post, I might try to recreate this program using ArduBlock to make the programming experience more accessible to kids.
Let us know if you need help building your own Lego robots using Arduino. I would enjoy hearing what you’re trying and building!
Let’s say you want to tinker with making simple Android applications, but you don’t have a lot of time. Perhaps you just love JavaScript and want to write Android Apps. Consider checking DroidScript on the Google Play Store. DroidScript enables you to quickly build simple Android apps using JavaScript.
I greatly appreciate DroidScript enabling you to edit programs directly from a Wifi connected desktop computer. All you need is a desktop web browser. You don’t need to install Eclipse, Java, simulators, Netbeans or anything. You press a button in DroidScript and the app fires up a web server on your Android device. From your web browser, you can start making new apps, exploring and running sample programs, and checking out the documentation.
What features of Android can you access using DroidScript?
You can use the GPS, Compass, Camera, and Accelerometer.
DroidScript can do basic graphics functions.
According to the documentation, you can send and receive emails and SMS.
You can control Arduino and Lego NXT.
On a personal project, I used DroidScript to send commands to an Arduino through serial communication.
You can also fire up a custom web server so that your phone can respond to HTTP requests.
I think users will appreciate the effective samples and documentation.
For the young programmer, hobby programmer or someone who needs some quick code duck tape on Android, DroidScript is worth checking out. If you need help, they have an active forum community at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/androidscript
I love it when I find a tool that combines my two favorite hobbies: music and computers. A gifted programmer named Sam Aaron has created an engaging tool for teaching music and code to makers young and old entitled Sonic-Pi. The tool delightfully blends an introduction to Ruby programming and concepts of music through written tutorials and a real time coding area. The tool can be used on a Raspberry-PI, Windows, or Mac.
Make sure to check out the introduction video on the front page of the Sonic-Pi website.
I liked how the Sonic-Pi tutorials decomposed the concepts of sound, loops, pitches, and music. I like that the tutorials progress from simple to complex ideas. Since music, R&B, and techno have loops and repetitions, students encounter natural introductions to the coding concepts of sequencing commands and repeating them.
During high school, my mother and I were looking for “mother/son” activities. We decided to take a course in cocktail piano together at a local college. It was great fun! In the course, we learned how to improvise piano pieces based on a melody line a chords. The secret of most jazz musicians is that much of their creative thinking combines heart, physical execution and a kind of mathematical theory we call music theory. I’m not an expert in this subject, but it’s very fun. It has enabled me to learn how to arrange music, basic scores, and improvise with groups. You can think of it as the “math” or patterns that exists behind music. I think the Sonic-Pi tutorials do a good job of introducing the music theory concepts and code for ideas like scales, chords, rests, and the various timing ideas of music.
So, what does Sonic-PI code look like? Here’s my first program:
in_thread do
loop do
play_chord chord(:a, :minor)
sleep 2
play_chord chord(:g)
sleep 2
play_chord chord(:f)
sleep 2
play_chord chord(:e)
sleep 2
end
end
in_thread do
loop do
sample :drum_bass_hard
sleep 1
sample :drum_snare_hard
sleep 1
end
end
in_thread do
loop do
sample :drum_tom_hi_soft
sleep 0.5
sample :drum_cymbal_closed
sleep 0.5
end
end
loop do
play choose(scale(:a, :minor_pentatonic, num_octaves: 1))
sleep choose([1,0.25])
end
Here’s the break down; In the following code, we play the following chord progression: AM, G, F, E. The chord changes every two beats.
Since we want our chord progression to repeat itself, we wrap the chord progression in a loop. We also wrap it in an “in_thread” code block so that this progression can be executed in parallel with other musical ideas.
in_thread do
loop do
play_chord chord(:a, :minor)
sleep 2
play_chord chord(:g)
sleep 2
play_chord chord(:f)
sleep 2
play_chord chord(:e)
sleep 2
end
end
This small musical piece has a drum track executing in the loop. The following code executes a bass drum on beat 1 and a snare drum on beat 3. We put this musical idea in a loop and a thread so this idea can run in parallel with other ideas.
in_thread do
loop do
sample :drum_bass_hard
sleep 1
sample :drum_snare_hard
sleep 1
end
end
In the final element of code, I wrote a few lines to randomly generate a melody based on an A minor pentatonic scale. The “scale” function generates a set of notes included in the pentatonic scale. The “choose” function selects one of those notes at random. The program will hold the note from 1 beat or an eight note.
loop do
play choose(scale(:a, :minor_pentatonic, num_octaves: 1))
sleep choose([1,0.25])
end
I’m looking forward to trying this out with older middle school students or high school students. I know some “big kids” who will enjoy this as well. Hope you enjoy Sonic-Pi! Send us links to your songs if you make anything cool!
