Robots and Physical Computing

Spooky Hot-Cross Buns - Sonic Pi In a previous post on another blog I discussed quick play with Sonic Pi ( see  https://computingnorthampton.blogspot.com/2020/08/quick-play-... PS3 Controller to move a USB Robot Arm Guest Blogger Hiren Mistry, Nuffield Research Placement Student working at the University of Northampton. How to use a PS3 Controller to... 10 most read post (July 2020) on Robots and Physical Computing Blog Popular Posts Speech Recognition in Scratch 3 - turning Hello into Bonjour! The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently released a programming acti... Speech Recognition in Scratch 3 - turning Hello into Bonjour! The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently released a programming activity Alien Language , with support Dale from Machine Learning for Kids , tha... Nuffield Foundation Researcher Placement Project: Further Development of Junkbots New blog  https://junkbotactivities.blogspot.com/  by  Muhammad Vadia on the Nuffield Foundation Researcher Placement Pr...

New blog  https://junkbotactivities.blogspot.com/  by  Muhammad Vadia on the Nuffield Foundation Researcher Placement Program has been working on developing a series of activities for the Junkbots project. These activities focus on using Scratch to develop coding skills by building up a simulation of the junkbot. These can be found at: What are Junkbots & intro to Scratch :  https://junkbotactivities.blogspot.com/2020/08/junkbots-introduction.html Activity 2 - Learning some new concepts:  https://junkbotactivities.blogspot.com/2020/08/junkbots-computational-concepts.html Junkbots - Understanding Scratch   https://junkbotactivities.blogspot.com/2020/08/junkbots-understanding-scratch.html Junkbots - Creating a sprite  https://junkbotactivities.blogspot.com/2020/08/junkbots-creating-sprite.html Junkbots - Moving the bot  https://junkbotactivities.blogspot.com/2020/08/junkbots-moving-bot.html Junkbots - Spawning some rocks  https://junkb...

In a previous post on another blog I discussed quick play with Sonic Pi ( see  https://computingnorthampton.blogspot.com/2020/08/quick-play-with-sonic-pi.html  ). In this post I am really just going to take it a bit further and some new features. The goal - spooky/moanful Hot-Cross Buns (the only bit of music I know the notes for), just so I can play a bit. So let us start with resources I have found useful, alongside Sonic Pi ( https://sonic-pi.net/ ); a really useful  webpage is  https://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/notes.html  to turn the notes into the MIDI number (60, etc)  So by the end of the last post I going to adding a techno effect on top of the tune: use_synth :prophet with_fx :ixi_techno do   2.times do     play chord(:b4, :minor7)     sleep 0.5     play chord(:a4, :minor7)     sleep 0.5     play chord(:g4, :minor7)     sleep 0.5   end   4.times do     play ch...

Popular Posts Speech Recognition in Scratch 3 - turning Hello into Bonjour! The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently released a programming activity Alien Language , with support Dale from Machine Learning for Kids , tha... Build your own Neuron in a Spreadsheet. Purpose:  To start to understand the basic idea behind how a Neural Network works by building the most basic unit a simple neuron using a sp... Dancing Kitronik's Game Zap - reacts to music You will glad to hear this is only a short post.   In an earlier post, Build a Disco Cube:bit that reacts to music ; the vibrations of music... Easy, Free and no markers Augmented Reality - location based AR For a few years, I have been a fan of Aframe and AR.js - these are fantastic tools for creating web-based Virtual and Augmented Reality.  No... 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 Jero...

The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently released a programming activity Alien Language , with support Dale from Machine Learning for Kids , that is a brilliant use of Scratch 3 - Speech Recognition to control a sprite in an alien language. Do the activity, and it is very much worth doing, and it will make sense! I  would also recommend going to the  machinelearningforkids.co.uk   site anyway it is full of exciting things to do (for example loads of activities  https://machinelearningforkids.co.uk/#!/worksheets  ) . Scratch 3 has lots of extensions that are accessible through the Extension button in the Scratch 3 editor (see below) which add new fun new blocks to play with. The critical thing for this post is  Machine Learning for Kids  have created a Scratch 3 template with their own extensions for Scratch 3 within it  https://machinelearningforkids.co.uk/scratch3/ . One of which is a Speech to Text extension (see below). You must use this one ...

You will glad to hear this is only a short post.   In an earlier post, Build a Disco Cube:bit that reacts to music ; the vibrations of music, makes the cube sitting on a speaker with the volume pushed to 11 (just to test it of course) react to the music. The accelerometers values in the micro:bit, in the three axis, are feedback to change the neopixels colour. Simple but good fun. With some very minor (and I do mean minor) changes it works on the Kitronik's Game Zap - eight pixels are altered at a time instead of five but apart from that nothing more. The code in python is shown below: from microbit import * import neopixel, random np = neopixel.NeoPixel(pin0, 64) while True:     for pxl in range (3,64, 8):         rd=int(abs(accelerometer.get_x())/20)         gr=int(abs(accelerometer.get_y())/20)         bl=int(abs(accelerometer.get_z())/20)         np[pxl] = (rd, gr, 0)   ...

Purpose:  To start to understand the basic idea behind how a Neural Network works by building the most basic unit a simple neuron using a spreadsheet. Objectives: - To see we can start building machine learning tools in commonly used software applications such as a spreadsheet without a lot of programming (though programming is good fun); - To see if we change a few values and it changes what the neuron does. What might be helpful to know before we start? Don't worry the video will mention these and show you them in action. In the press we see a lot of talk about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and one of these often mention is Deep Learning which is a form of something called a Neural Network. One way to think of a Neural Network is in our brains we lots of processing units called neurones, which are connected together to form a massive network of neurones, which is a neural network. What computer scientists have done is taken the idea and used it create an artificial...