Robots and Physical Computing: January 2021

Saturday 30 January 2021

Blog stats: Most read posts in January 2021

Thursday 21 January 2021

Tinkercad and Microbit: To make a neuron

The free online CAD (and so much more) package Tinkercad https://www.tinkercad.com/ under circuits; now has microbits as part of the list of basic components available to build circuits out of.

To have a quick play I wonder if using the built in Scratch=like code blocks, I could build a simulation of neuron on the microbit.

Requirements

- By altering the bias, weights change the behaviour of buttons A and B

-when A is pressed a variable input1 is set to 1 and when released it goes to 0. The same happens for Button B and a variable input 2

- if (bias+weight1*input1+weight2*input2)>=0 then a T for True appears of the LEDs otherwise F for False is shown.

That is it really, apart initialising the variables. The code for producing an OR is shown below and the GIF at the end shows an AND in action:

The GIF below shows it action for an AND (bias is set to -2); change the bias to -1 and you would get an OR.

The whole thing is available at: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/8Ph6UBFdICz-brave-duup

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. Twitter @scottturneruon

Saturday 2 January 2021

Playing with Marty the Robot: Set-up and go

This post forms part of occasional posts about playing with Marty the Robot V2 (https://shop.robotical.io/products/marty-the-robot-v2) from Robotical. In this post I am going to do a quick look at initially setting it up and a bit of Scratch programming.

Set-up

I had a partially assembled version so most of the fiddly bits of putting the legs together etc were done; the instructions clearly make out the start of the instructions for building the partly assembled Marty. It is ready to build from the box including adding in a screwdriver. The only deviation I had to make from the build instructions was I having to partially disassemble the arm bit already done to fix the rest of the arm together - this was minor.

I am initially running this through an iphone and setting it up to do this was exceptionally easy to do and follow.

Download the app (just search for 'Marty the Robot' and found the right app),
pair it up with BlueTooth,
calibrate - just followed the instructions and it was fine.

Programming in Scratch

From the App there is an option to program in Scratch, just started it up and in the motion and sensing options there are blocks for Marty. Then it was just the same as other Scratch programming - an example is shown below.

Where next

Python, connecting to wifi and add some extras.

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. Twitter @scottturneruon