Colin
and Randall soldering their Stamp boards
Cregg
helping Elise with her board. An extra pair of hands was often needed!
Jon,
Matt E. and Mike working on soldering and getting some tips from Rob
Matt
E. and Jon working on the more difficult parts
Matt
R. concentrating hard
The day concluded with some testing of the boards to see if they worked. It was fun to see the blinky-lights on the logic probe as the microcontroller send out some high and low signals to the port.
Day 2
On the second day the students learned about servo motors. For the
Micromouse application we had to modify the servo motors so that they could
be used to drive the wheels. This involved several steps and once one was
completed, it was time to start on the next!
George
and Jim tearing apart the servo
Matt
R. putting his servo back together
Once the servos had been modified, the next task was to assemble the robot chassis and attach the batteries, switches, servos and Basic Stamp board.
Jon
assembling the robot chassis
Matt
R. and Elise cheerfully adding the plastic spacers
At the end of the day, most students had working robots!
Day 3
On Wednesday the fun part began - programming the robots to do cool
things! We started by programming it to go in a straight line. Then we
tried turns.
Jon
testing his robot
In the afternoon we added some lever switches to the front of the robot
so that it could detect when it collided with another object. A crimp-on
connector was used to attach the switches to the Basic Stamp board. Then
the students wrote some programs to use this information to make the robot
back up and turn when it hit an obstacle.
The
instructions for adding the switch
Cregg
teaching students how to use the crimping tool
Matt
E. trying it himself
George
working on adding his switches
Day 4
Thursday was a day for programming! The contest rules were announced and students began to write the code for traversing the obstacle course.
We were all so busy debugging code and making the practice boards (and fixing download cables and broken solder joints) that we forgot to take more pictures!
Day 5
On Friday morning the students worked hard on their contest programs
and after lunch the camp concluded with a friendly contest to see which
robot was the most accurate in its journey through the obstacle course.
Although everyone was a winner, we did give prizes for those who racked
up the most points. First prize winner was Colin!
Below are the other prize winners - click on the thumbnail photos to
see larger versions.
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