Robots and Physical Computing

I was lucky recently to invited to participate in a podcast on wide-ranging topics with Drs Michael Opuku Agyeman and Triantafyllos Kanakis. The discussion roamed around computing, physical aspects of computing, social benefits of technologies, industry 4.0, our research and a whole lot more. Good fun. The podcast can be found 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

Popular Posts Moving Eyes with an Adafruit Adabox kit One of the things I enjoy is a subscription to Adabox from Adafruit, receiving the box and very soon before that finding out what the main ... 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... WebVR 5 Playtime: Augmented Reality to display Videos In previous posts ( post 1 , post 2 ) I have raved over the brilliant combination of Mozilla's AFrame and Jerome Etienne's fantastic... starting with NVIDA jetson nano This is the third of a planned occasional series of posts on playing with some of the current AI specific boards for Intenet of Things ... 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...

Popular Posts Playing with Adafruit Circuit Playground BlueFruit It is always a moment of excitement (perhaps I need to get a life) when the Adafruit Adabox arrives, this time is no exception with the arr... 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 ... Adafruit PyPortal from Twitter to weather I have had the Adafruit PyPortal for a while and finally got around to playing with it. The PyPortal cames as part the Adabox011   1.... Most popular post on the Robots and Physical computing Blog in 2019 The top 10 most popular posts viewed during 2019 Popular Posts Lego Robot and Neural Networks An overview of using Lego... 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 that...

I have had the Adafruit PyPortal for a while and finally got around to playing with it. The PyPortal cames as part the Adabox011   1. Getting going PyPortal contains a  colour TFT  touch screen; speaker;  NeoPixel;  sensors for light and temperature sensor;  microSD slot; ports for I2C and pins for either analogue or digital; with built-in 8MB flash memory. It  uses  both CircuitPython and Arduino. In this post, CircuitPython is used. A more detailed overview of the device is available at  https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pyportal   To set it up I started from  https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pyportal/updating-your-pyportal , I already had CircuitPython installed so skipped ahead after updating the firmware to PyPortal CircuitPython Setup and then the enjoyable bit Internet Connect!   2 From Twitter to Weather Time to play. There is an interesting example, developed by John Parks ( ht...

The top 10 most popular posts viewed during 2019 Popular Posts Lego Robot and Neural Networks An overview of using Lego RCX  robots for teaching neural networks present at workshop in 2011. Derby presentation from Scott Turne... How to videos... Web based Augmented Reality Video 1: How to produce a simple web-based augmented reality application. Video 2:  Using AFrame and AR.js to create AR - this tim... 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... 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 ... starting with NVIDA jetson nano This is the third of a planned occasional series of posts on playing with some o...

It is always a moment of excitement (perhaps I need to get a life) when the Adafruit Adabox arrives, this time is no exception with the arrival of the Adabox014. Inside there was a great mixture of things for making snow globes based around two devices TFT Gizmo and the Circuit Playground Bluefruit; this post is considered with an initial play with the Bluefruit. Bluefruit is a small Circuit playground with the addition of Bluetooth or more accurately Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). If you have played with the Playground express it is very similar. To experiment I wanted to play with the neopixels on the board through Circuit Python,  The starting point  https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-circuit-playground-bluefruit/overview  to get a bit of background and then to follow the links to how to get it all happening with Circuit. Task I wanted was to use it, using circuitpython on the Mu editor to control random colours cycling through all the neopixels and in r...

Sphero have a track record of making well sort of fast spherical robots (along with a few Star Wars ones) in a recent kickstarter campaign they have a released a tracked robot   https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sphero/sphero-rvr-the-go-anywhere-do-anything-programmabl/description  - RVR and it is still fast and fun.   It does seem to be a step up, they are allowing more customisation with a expansion port and on-board power, aimed at connecting other pieces of hardware, for example, Microbit and Raspberry Pis.Even without these it is not short of sensors and lights  The simplest way to program it is still through the Sphero Edu App and its block programming providing a quick way to get going. This feels (to me) like a move towards the more 'traditional' robot hobbyists market - and that is fine. It comes almost completely built, so it is soon ready to go out of the box which is nice. I am interested to see what re...