Skip to main content

UFO has landed

CBiS Education generously sent me two of their new range of robotics development kits - BinaryBots (https://www.binarybots.co.uk/makers.aspx), these are a range of cardboard based kits (so far a robot and a UFO) with electronic components for example LEDs; sensors and buzzers,  depending on the kits. What makes the kits interesting though is they are designed to be controlled by either by a BBC Micro:bit or a CodeBug.

 This blog documents, briefly, an initial play with the UFO kit (see below) using a Micro:Bit for control. 


The UFO model came together readily, the instructions were fairly easy to follow. Personally, a feature I especially liked about the model was the LEDs being both on the top and bottom of it - increasing its usefulness. CBiS EducationThey have also provided a webpage / portal with some example projects and code. 


My first project I built, was to pulse the LEDs on and off (one set of LEDs on Pin 0, the other on Pin 1). Pin 2 was connected to the buzzer, so produce a low buzz every few seconds. The code below is written using the Block Editor (https://www.microbit.co.uk/create-code)

 The video below shows the LEDs pulsing. I do need to decorate the UFO though!


Looking forward to playing with it further.

 Related
http://robotsandphysicalcomputing.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/ufo-detects-light.html


All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Robot Software

In the previous blog posts for this 'series' "It is a good time...."  Post 1  looked at the hardware unpinning some of this positive rise in robots; Post 2  looked at social robots; Post 3  looked at a collection of small robots; Post 4 looked at further examples of small robots Robots, such as the forthcoming Buddy and JIBO, will be based some established open sourceand other technologies. Jibo will be based around various technologies including Electron and JavaScript (for more details see:  http://blog.jibo.com/2015/07/29/jibo-making-development-readily-accessible-to-all-developers/ ). Buddy is expected to be developed around tools for Unity3d, Arduino and OpenCV, and support Python, C++, C#, Java and JavaScript (for more details see http://www.roboticstrends.com/article/customize_your_buddy_companion_robot_with_this_software_development_kit ).  This post contin ues with some of the software being used with the smaller robots.  A number ...
1 comment
Read more

Speech Recognition in Scratch 3 - turning Hello into Bonjour!

The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently released a programming activity Alien Language , with support Dale from Machine Learning for Kids , that is a brilliant use of Scratch 3 - Speech Recognition to control a sprite in an alien language. Do the activity, and it is very much worth doing, and it will make sense! I  would also recommend going to the  machinelearningforkids.co.uk   site anyway it is full of exciting things to do (for example loads of activities  https://machinelearningforkids.co.uk/#!/worksheets  ) . Scratch 3 has lots of extensions that are accessible through the Extension button in the Scratch 3 editor (see below) which add new fun new blocks to play with. The critical thing for this post is  Machine Learning for Kids  have created a Scratch 3 template with their own extensions for Scratch 3 within it  https://machinelearningforkids.co.uk/scratch3/ . One of which is a Speech to Text extension (see below). You must use this one ...
5 comments
Read more

Escape the Maze with a VR robot - Vex VR

You don't need to buy a robot to get programming a robot, now there are a range of free and relatively simple to start with robot simulators to play with. Three examples are listed below: - Make code for Lego EV3  https://robotsandphysicalcomputing.blogspot.com/2020/05/programming-robots-virtually-3-lego-ev3.html   - i Robot simulator  https://robotsandphysicalcomputing.blogspot.com/2020/04/programming-robots-virtually-2-irobot.html - Vex robotics Vexcode VR   https://robotsandphysicalcomputing.blogspot.com/2020/04/programming-robots-virtually-1-vexcode.html   It is the last one of these ( https://www.vexrobotics.com/vexcode-vr ) that is the focus of this post and return to hit, after an earlier discussion in  https://robotsandphysicalcomputing.blogspot.com/2020/04/programming-robots-virtually-1-vexcode.html   .  Two of the nice things about the package, apart from being free, are it uses a Scratch-like programming language and it provides a ...
2 comments
Read more