Friday 29 August 2014

AGM – Northampton BRANCH


NOTIFICATION OF ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING – Northampton BRANCH

I have pleasure in drawing your attention to the Annual General Meeting of the Northampton Branch of the BCS, which will be held on 30th September 14 at the

The University of Northampton 
Avenue Campus 
St George's Avenue 
Northampton 
NN2 6JD,

 Doors will open at 19:00 hrs, The AGM will commence at 19.30hrs.

I would be grateful if you could make every effort to attend this important event in our calendar.



Copies of the last AGM Minutes and Officers’ reports will be distributed at the AGM.

Your Branch committee needs your support to continue in its work for all members.  We urgently need new committee members to help us run our events as in previous years.  We would be grateful for all nominations to join the committee using the forms included.

Nominations are sought for the Offices of:

Chair, secretary, treasurer, and all other members of the committee

Please note that, according to Branch rules, nominations for the election of Chair, Secretary and Treasurer must be signed by two Branch members and lodged with the Secretary (Name and address) at least 14 days before the date fixed for the Annual General Meeting that is before the [Date].  The consent of the nominee must be lodged with the nomination.

Following the AGM, there will be a students prize giving, plus a review of last year, and discussion on the coming years presentations.

Refreshments will be available from 19:00 hours

For details of the above events and others, please visit our website http://northampton.bcs.org/

Yours sincerely,


Barney Duffy
Chair

BCS, Chartered Institute for IT - ……. BRANCH



Nominations for the Branch Committee for 20../20..








THIS FORM MUST BE LODGED WITH THE BRANCH SECRETARY AT LEAST FOURTEEN DAYS BEFORE THE DATE FIXED FOR THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, THAT IS BY [Date], AT THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS:

[Branch Secretary’s name and address]

Wednesday 27 August 2014

Raspberry Pi Junk robot in action

Video showing a Raspberry Pi controlled 'junk' based robot, junkbot, in action. All controlled, via a RaspberryPi, by Scratch or ScratchGPIO programs.




More information about this project can be found at:
http://junkbots.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/junkrobot


Related Links

 




 



If you would like to know more about the Junkbots project contact scott.turner@northampton.ac.uk. The views and opinions are the authors and should not be taken as representing the views of any organisation the author is associated with.

Friday 15 August 2014

Raspberry Pi Robot from junk


Figure 1
In previous posts the idea of adding some programming into the a 'bot' made of junk, a junkbot, was briefly discussed (http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/physical-computing-junkbots-with-brain.html) and the use of LEGO to do this was discussed in a recent post (http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/controlling-lego-junkbot.html)

In this post the aim is to discuss using a Raspberry Pi and Scratch to do this. Including:
- Choice of motor controller card for the 'bot'
- Provide an example of a drawing junkbot controlled through Scratch and Raspberrry Pi


Choice of interface/Controller card
The card choosen was the 4Tronix PiRoCon card  (http://4tronix.co.uk/store/index.php?rt=product/product&product_id=182). Selected for four reasons
- Price is reasonable (in my opinion).
- Fits straight onto the Pi through the GPIO - no extra cables needed.
- ScratchGPIO has it as an addon so it makes programming it even easier (see http://cymplecy.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/pirocon-from-4tronix/).
- Others are using it for robot projects.

Use it is quite easy plug the board directly on to the GPIO connector of the Raspberry Pi (4tronix provide some advice in section 15 of http://4tronix.co.uk/blog/?p=22 on mounting the board). The only other changes that were needed were because the motors were not powered through the DC input jack, changesto the jumper settings next to Vin Connector (see http://4tronix.co.uk/blog/?p=41 for layout)  were neededto reflect this.



Example: Drawing Raspberry Pi Junkbot
Now for the fun bit get the whole thing to draw (see Figure 1 and the video at the end)!

The junkbot itself is made up of a drinks can, three supports (we used LEGO here but it equally could be straws, sticks), a pen/pencil, and a  motor and broken propeller combination to create an unbalanced motor.

With the Raspberry Pi off, the the motor's wires are connected to the controller card at the connections for MotorA and the battery is also connected. Turn the Pi on and run ScratchGPIO5plus.


Figure 2
Figure 3





Figure 4















The first task is to make the variables AddOn (which will be used to tell the program we are using the PiRoCon card) and MotorA for the motor (see Figure 3).

In Figure 4 the program can be seen, essentially the left and right key spin the junkbot clockwise or anticlockwise by setting the Motor to either +ve or -ve values from 0 to 100. The space bar is used to stop the motor.

As it moves because one of the supports is a pen it draws. See the video below to watch it draw a squiggly line - control is still a challenge.
 The bot was developed by Hayden Tetley and Scott Turner. Hayden's time was paid  for through the Nuffield Research Placements  Scheme (http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/nuffield-research-placements).

Related Links

 




If you would like to know more about the Junkbots project contact scott.turner@northampton.ac.uk. The views and opinions is the authors and should not be taken as representing the views of any organisation the author is associated with.

Controlling junk with LEGO

In a recent post (http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/physical-computing-junkbots-with-brain.html)  adding Mindstorm NXT brick and motors to a drinks can to produce a junkbot was consider as an idea. As a new stage for the Junkbots project (http://junkbots.blogspot.co.uk/ ) some preliminary work has been done into this.

Up to this point the junk bot building has largely being about building a moving (or drawing) 'bot' moved by vibration - limited control, but fun. A Nuffield funded bursary student, Hayden Tetley,  has being working within staff from the University of Northampton on whether LEGO NXT or Raspberry Pi based solutions can be incorporated with the bot to add some control of the movement (still by vibration).


Idea One 

Is to add a LEGO NXT brick, to move a junkbot similar.The motor and broken propeller combination in the earlier junkbots is replaced with the NXT brick and LEGO motor. A good potential feature is it a self-contained unit with power and control together, as well as being potentially fairly simple to set-up. This is the focus of this post. 

Here are some videos showing idea one in action using LEGO motors, brick and the software that comes with the LEGO Mindstorms NXT (LEGO):





For more information on how this was done go to: http://legojunkbots.weebly.com/uploads/3/7/2/2/37227791/nuffield_nxt_mindstorms.docx or http://legojunkbots.weebly.com/

Idea Two

Is to do a similar approach as idea one but keep the motor and broken propeller combination but control the motors via a Raspberry Pi. This will be discussed in another post.

Details of the work will be published on the Junkbots Blog (htttp://junkbots.blogspot.co.uk/ ) as the project progresses.



Tuesday 12 August 2014

C Programming online teaching material

Another new Open Education Resource (OER) has been made available by the Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies, School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton.


C Programming


Click here for the resource: http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19192
Author: 
Created: 11 August 2014, by School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton
In this material you will be introduced to some of the principles of programming, and specifically learn to write fairly simple programs using a programming language called C. An idea central to this material is that programming is about problem solving; you write a program to solve a particular problem. It is hoped that at the end of the material you should see that there is nothing magical or mysterious about programming. One of the features some people like about programming is you are making the computer do what you want. During the programming exercises, do not worry about making mistakes. In this material you will be expected to try out programs and eventually write your own. The target audience is anyone who wants to learn a programming language or is looking for some assessment questions around programming. The material was originally aimed at second year engineering students at the University of Northampton.
Published: 11 August 2014, by 
Keywords: C Programming; Programming; Problem solving; Computer science; Computing 

Click here for the resource: http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19192



views are the authors, and may not reflect the views of any organisation the author is connected with in any way.