Airblock - programmable drone.

I recently received my Airblock drone from Makeblock funded through a kickstarter. If you want to see an Airblock in action this very funny video showing it being un-boxed from the Channel 5's Gadget Shown is worth a look. 



Of course I had to play with it in Air mode, it is a drone I want to see it fly. But there options for creating hovercraft and your own designs.

It is controllable via an app either by directly controlling or through Makeblock's own block based programming language Makeblock both are in the same app which is a feature I particularly liked. It can be annoying have to multiple apps for the same product.

Selecting Air Mode (as below) means you can control it directly or chose New Project to program it.

In a new project, in design mode you can set up the interface dragging buttons into the project and then write code to go behind them. I found I needed to add a power switch in the interface.

 

Click on the button and you can drag blocks to program the drone. Take it out of design mode and it the appropriately name play mode and your are ready to go.

Great fun, but I struggle to control it (that is probably just me I do with most drones). When it hits anything the propeller units (prop, motor in polystyrene case, with a magnetic connector)  do come away, as they are designed to do, for safety. A mistake I kept making was getting the propeller unit upside, but you quickly notice it - it goes all over the place. You will be playing 'hunt the prop' quite often when it crashes (and it will) they do seem to fly off.

Great fun to play with; now are available to order/pre-order (at the time of writing) at https://makeblockshop.eu/products/makeblock-airblock .


Related links:

mBot - cute, fun and Arduino based 

It is a good time to play with little robots 

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

Microbit Remote Control CBiS Car

I wanted to contol the CBiS micro:Bit Car via gestures whilst holding another micro:Bit (see Figure 1)

I went for:
- Button A in combination with moving the micro:bit left or right, moves 'Car' forwards or backwards;
- Button B in combination with moving the micro:bit rotated forward or backwards, turns the 'Car' left or right;

Perhaps not the most logical combination but fun.

Figure 1: CBiS micro:bit car and 'controller' micro:bit

The inspiration from this remote car idea came from four sources
- CBiS Education site and seeing them demonstrating it;
- Technology with Save Us Micro:bot Radio Control website ;
- DrBadgr blog on the Lunch Box robot;
- A twitter conversation

@jobadge @scottturneruon #simples pic.twitter.com/1pXJEyNrSn

— Lorraine Underwood (@LMcUnderwood) May 1, 2017

The approach taken is simple; the Controller micro:bit has the following operations (see Figure 2 for the PXT code)

• Buttons A+B together send '0' out by a radio protocol;
• Button A with changes in the x-direction send '1' or '2';
• Button B with changes in the y-direction send '3' or '4' ;

Figure 2: Remote Control 

For the code go to: Remote Control - the images produce on the micro:bit, are there as a bit of fun (they have no meaning) and are different for each action.


The control on the 'Car' turns the received numbers  (sent from the controller) into forward, backward, turning motions and stop. The PXT code can be found at Motor Control.

Figure 3: Car Control

The control is basic but fun (well I enjoyed it). There is a lot of scope for improvement and adaption. Please feel free to adapt any of the code and it would be great to hear what others do via the comments.






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

Silly Cozmo videos (updated)

As a bit of fun some videos using Anki's Cozmo.




Did really mean for this one to be as dark as this.


Moody Cozmo - Normally happy, but just don't put it on it's side.



Related link: http://robotsandphysicalcomputing.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/cozmo.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. Twitter @scottturneruon

Bigtrak's little sibling - Rover

Recently bought a Bigtrak Rover, kind of the smaller 'sibling' of a Bigtrak (see above). 

Mobile Phone
It has the some of the same functionality as the Bigtrak, though no cannon sound. Control is via an iPhone or Android phone app, giving the same direction and number of steps functions (see below) found on the larger Bigtrak.

Control via another device.

What is different to the Bigtrak is it can be controlled remotely from a PC, Mac or Tablet via a web interface. It also uses the phone's camera to provide a video stream and remote control via on-screen controls. What it doesn't have is programmable control (or I haven't found it yet). The web interface is Flash based; so there may be problems running this on iPads.

Overall
A Nice, little robot that use the phone to control the robot.  A set of cones gives the option of setting up an obstacle course. Once the app is installed it is very easy to get going with this. Would have liked programming from a PC or Mac. At the price, this is a good fun piece of kit. 


Related Links

• Phiro Pro Robots
• Kamibot

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

CBiS Education Micro:Bit based Robot Car

At PiWars 2017 (1st-2nd April 2017), thanks to the generosity of CBiS Education, I now have one of their BBC micro:bit RobotCar^™ . It is a sturdy bit of kit, encased in an aluminum chassis with a clear acrylic screen - it feels substantial when you pick it up. 

It is based around fours motors, control by a Micro:Bit, via L298N based motor controller/shield. Batteries power, 8 AAs, the motors and a Lithium powerbank to power the Micro:Bit - all included. 

More information about the technical details and example software can be found on their site https://www.cbis.education/robotic-car-kit# including further details on the L298N based motor controller/shield, which I found useful for programming it. 

I have experimented briefly with programming it in Python (micropython), getting it to it move forward, backward; to the right and left, using the Mu editor. 

The code is shown below for those who want to try it:

from microbit import *


def forward(n):
    pin13.write_digital(1)
    pin16.write_digital(1)
    sleep(n)
    
def backward(n):
    pin14.write_digital(1)
    pin15.write_digital(1)
    sleep(n)

def stopit(n):
    pin13.write_digital(0)
    pin14.write_digital(0)
    pin15.write_digital(0)
    pin16.write_digital(0)
    sleep(n)

def spinLeft(n):
    pin13.write_digital(1)
    pin15.write_digital(1)
    sleep(n)

def spinRight(n):
    pin14.write_digital(1)
    pin16.write_digital(1)
    sleep(n)


while True:
    forward(500)
    stopit(1000)
    backward(500)
    stopit(1000)
    spinRight(1000)
    stopit(1000)
    spinLeft(1000)
    stopit(1000)


This thing is quick. I like the feel of it, you pick it up and it doesn't feel like it is going to fall apart; because it comes all assembled - including batteries, it is ready to go. I look forward to trying some more ideas on it.

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

My photo experience at PiWars 2017

I was only able to stay at Pi Wars for a short while on Saturday 1st April. Even so, as a spectator, it was good fun. Here are a few pictures (and a video) for the day.




Skittles - The course designers don't make anything easy.

Golf Course

Obstacle Course 

It was not all robots, here is a Pi Controlled Drum Machine

My new toys

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

Micro:bit, PXT, Micro:pixel and Rainbows

Continuing to play with PXT (http://pxt.microbit.org) and the Micro:bit, I wanted to try this in combination with a Proto-Pic Micro-pixel board with its 32 neopixel LEDs.

The routine (shown in the screenshot below) use the Neopixels package (use the add package option on the menu to add it) to do two things:

• On pressing button B - cycle through the colours and shift the colour to the next pixel producing a shifting pattern.
• On pressing button  A - the pixels are cleared one by one.

Code is shown above, and thank you to Jonathan "Peli" de Halleux (@pelikhan) for pointing out the redundant code I had left in, it is appreciated.

The video below shows the system in action:




You can try the code out in the simulator below:

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