Our beginning association: “Robotic and microprocessor technology”

Today I will tell you about my unusual experience. On the creation of the association (in the common people - the circle) on robotics. The plot of the story begins with my short teaching experience at the university as an assistant, while I was teaching microprocessor technology. So, somehow the university retained a good memory of me and recommended it to the children's center. At that time I was already working in another position, in another place, but teaching children such interesting things ... There’s no time for refusals. In general, somehow agreed on the weekend.

Acquaintance with the cabinet was about, as the author (I noticed his article much later and was moved by similar problems). There was no 12 V network, only 220, but otherwise the layout is not bad: a couple of good instruments, a computer, a board.

I will not spoil the mood of everyone and tell you how I went to school calling people to people - it was a very tedious task. I'll start with the pleasant - the first classes.

I mixed the program of the circle from the manuals on microprocessor technology and various articles on arduino.ru. During the first lesson, he explained the basics of electricity to the children, assembled a dummy of the traffic light and began to program it. It immediately turned out that many people have the same problems with programming, as they were in high school, children under the 9th grade have an understanding by explaining the algorithms using real examples, the code does not read. Some individuals were divided into groups of interest, someone went into the design, someone in programming. During the first classes we found and reanimated a robot inherited from the old circles. Here is a video of how it worked:

Immediately after understanding the basics, they began to design the first robot, lessons 2-3 were devoted to gearboxes and methods of transferring electricity to engines (connected through an engine driver and why this was necessary), the idea was standard, driving along the line. There was a shortage of gearboxes, motors, batteries and other consumables. They were assembled on the basis of the arduino nano microcontroller, the first engines of the robot were hacks of servos, since I did not have other engines with gearboxes, the platform was sawn out of wood. Through long trial and error, the first workable sample was assembled:

Further, taking advantage of the moment, he explained to the guys how to communicate with the computer through a com port:

We devoted the following 4-5 lessons to various sensors. As a result, the upgrade of the robot appeared, as a result of which he was able to stop at the obstacle:

Finally, after 2 months, we received new wheels and engines with ali. We decided to completely reshape our creation, we carved a new platform.

It turned out we have such a handsome man:

The program we have there is slightly lost, and even one food. Now they have smashed the power of the engines and logic, corrected the code, did not record the video, but it became much better to move. By the way, the route was made by children from Watman and black tape.

Just at the end of the work we had a rally, in which the children won first place! I was very happy with the first fruits.

Then they tried to assemble a bluetooth robot, the platform was as follows:

Unfortunately, the robot with us has not moved further than this species, since there were problems with the engine driver, maybe we will try to restore work on it.

Along the way, one pupil of the 4th grade assembled the electronic game “accuracy”, here is a copy of this:

Since until now we were still studying the sensors, I began to explain to the children that it was possible to create not only robots, on what they were studying, but also various smart devices and devices, a prototype of a moisture and soil temperature meter collected with students was an excellent illustration :

We also managed to show off in a humorous rally with the following video:

After that, the summer holidays began, during which we had to work a little bit, because the children did not want to stay at home. With the two most active, we started to build a three-wheeled platform for the robot based on esp8266. The program for him is a completely new sample, they wrote a kind of interpreter - a coming line of 1: 200 & 3: 200 format, etc. disassembled and executed. The first digit is the action (direction), the second duration. They wanted to record the intermediate result, but I can’t remember about it at the lesson, we are very passionate about it. The main result of this project will be the Youtube broadcast, where users can control the robot with their comments. While this is all in development and 90% ready, we can’t find a broadcast room and good internet.

I really hope that I will find like-minded people and teachers more experienced than me, I would like to talk with them! Also, if there are guys under 18 in Volgograd, welcome to our free state supplementary education institution.