Robots and Physical Computing

Popular Posts Cool Adafruit PyGamer #1 I seem to play with Games software more and more (e.g. the recent post  My first Pygame zero attempt ) and that is not a problem at all. Thi... How to produce a Microbit neural network This is really part two of a set of post  in response to a question from Carl Simmons ( @Activ8Thinking ) concerning building a   micro:bit ... Simple PyGame Zero Apollo Lander #Apollo50th With all the excitement of the 50th Anniversary of the first Moon Landing and the world record attempt Moonhack  https://moonhack.com/ , I w... Micro:bit, Servo control with Micropython or blocks You can control servos (small ones) from a Micro:Bit directly. Following a link from the David Whale (Twitter  @ whaleygeek ) , thank you, t... Speech with EduBlocks on BBC microbit The microbit is a great piece of kit, not least of which because of the range of programming languages and tools t...

With all the excitement of the 50th Anniversary of the first Moon Landing and the world record attempt Moonhack  https://moonhack.com/ , I wanted to experiment with PyGame Zero a little more. So I created my own, very simple, Moon Lander game using Python and PyGame Zero. The lander has to pass through a red rectangle on the surface as it accelerates to the surface. Left and Right keys move it sideways and the up key gives it a boost. When the lander passes through the red rectangle it makes a noise; if it misses (or after it passes through the rectangle) it resets to a new position and starts again. Two images were needed The lander image came from  https://www.kissclipart.com/apollo-program-apollo-lunar-module-lander-moon-landing-wgwzny/  shared by  Xfanmy.  This n eeded to shrunk by about x10 to fit. Surface came from Vector Designed By from Pngtree.com An image from the game, the code and a link to the repository are shown below, please f...

I seem to play with Games software more and more (e.g. the recent post  My first Pygame zero attempt ) and that is not a problem at all. This post is another one. The most recent AdaBox from Adafruit  (see above) was based around their PyGamer Starter Kit and it is great fun. This is a microcontroller based, open-source Retro gaming emulator; or is it a cool handheld gaming device that you can write your own games for. It can be programmed in CircuitPython, Arduino, but I been trying it out in the Beta version of  MakeCode Arcade  and if you have used MakeCode for the microbit this very much the same (see below). A nice feature about this is you can share - this code example (shown above) was developed by my son (and is shared with his permission) after about an hour of playing - the emulator below shows the game in action. My future plans with it so far: - Investigated the features available in MakeCode Arcade for this console; - Play ...

I attended the brilliant #ExaBytes19 on 28th June 2019 , among many very good sessions, I went to Jon Witts ( @jonwitts ) session on PyGame Zero [ 1 ]. Pygame zero is meant for Educational use and teaching programming through game development. Impressed with Pygame Zero relative simplicity, I have had a go myself. The Game! A Bee buzzes around the screen and a player moves to avoid it; if the bee and player meet the player's image changes and a sneezing sound is produced (I just fancied have a short cute noise). Both the bee and the player characters wrap around the screen. A very helpful source of advice on getting started on using Pygame can be found at [ 2 ]; my example takes the game produced there as a starting point. If you want to explain of what Pygame does previously mentioned page[1] and the page describing the built-in  functions [3 ], I found a great help. All the images were PNGs, the player characters were produced using  https://www.bitmoji.com...

I recently tried out a new (well new to me) robot Codey Rocky - and yes I am going to tell people it's name is Rocky- for STEM outreach activities. I trialed it at recent Girls in STEAM event at the University of Northampton, UK and along with Red the Nao , it seemed to be positively received. This is a slightly feline looking robot (it is the ears, though a bit hard to see in the image above) produced for the company MakeBlock. Programming it is most easily done through an app on a tablet (see below). It is very Scratch-like and the children seemed to pick up on that quite quickly and started producing their own code, the example below is one example they produced. One group decided to set themselves the challenge of getting Rocky to travel along a line of them and they succeeded. Admittedly the challenge is not very hard, but the interesting point was they both decided as a group what to do and made it happen. Rocky has many programmable features, moves around on ...

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For a few weeks I have had this kit - Smartibot - waiting to play with - finally got around to it. A cardboard-based, app-controlled, AI-enabled robot kit - now that is too tempting! The kit comes with the parts for one of three models,  including a unicorn robot. A battery pack (takes 4xAA batteries not included), two motors, a bunch of nuts and bolts, 2 screwdrivers, 3 plastic balls, 2 wheel hubs, bunch of elastic bands and a very cute control board. The rest is cardboard including the wheels. The control board seems under-utilised for this task, even on a quick scan; on their kickstarter site , they show it controlling 4 DC motors and 10 servos.  I was initially concerned it wouldn't have the rigidity needed; it does (even after being accidentally dropped down a flight of stairs)  The app is free to download for both Apple (see below) and Android. The AI bit initially (certainly on IoS) comes from a cool routine that uses a phone's camera to mov...