Robots and Physical Computing

In a recent post ( First play with a SPOKE capacitive touch MIDI board ), I shared some first impressions of getting the SPOKE board connected, trying the web-based examples, and using it as drums in GarageBand. At the end of that post, I mentioned that the next thing I wanted to try was looking at the coding side of things., image taken from https://www.spokeboard.com/ Because the SPOKE board acts as a MIDI controller, my mind immediately went back to Sonic Pi . As I mentioned in an earlier post ( Spooky Hot-Cross Buns - Sonic Pi ), I have no musical ability at all, but I really enjoy creating with Sonic Pi—it is free, fun, and a brilliant bit of software. Putting the two together seemed like an obvious next step. For this experiment, I connected the SPOKE board as before, but instead of using an installed desktop app, I ran the web version of Sonic Pi ( https://sonic-pi.net/code.html ) straight in Chrome with no special set-up. This is a really useful option when you are working on a...

I was fortunate to get a place at Picademy (#picademy) this week. It was a fantastic opportunity and great fun, especially as most of it was about Physical computing. In the screenshot above I was playing SonicPi ( http://sonic-pi.net/ ) programming music (or trying to create music in my case). If you haven't had a go at throughly recommend it. It is great that SonicPi is available on the Mac and PC as well.  Playing with connecting Python and Minecraft is very engaging and fun, but programming LEDs and Motors through either the the GPIO or using an HAT (see the images below) is just what I enjoy the most. In the above image was my attempt at a simple 'Dalek' - essentially a cup and straw, with a wheeled motor inside. Controlled using python,  Pi through an ExplorerHat. It essentially moved in a circle either clockwise or anti-clockwise. Rise of Rabbitsapien - A team of us put together a project of a robot with a rabbit (no other soft toys were ava...