First Shanghai Maker Carnival

First day of the Shanghai Maker Carnival was today with exhibitors also attending from Beijing and Shenzhen.

It is part of the very large Creation Exhibition, an arts and crafts expo with about 200 exhibitors – #12, in Century Park Shanghai and runs from today Friday to Sunday 4 November 2012.

Today was a slow start as it was a work day and the weather windy and cool, especially by the lake, but I am sure tomorrow will bring lots more interesting items!

I prepared a small swarm of SwarmRobots running the new remote control code I just released. Some people surprised to see the SwarmRobots move, most were surprised to see group movement where each group does the same movements. A few people really “got” the demo mode.

Nearly everyone wanted to know why the remotes did not control just ONE SwarmRobot, or did not control ALL, but most struggled with the explanation of deliberate separation into different groups – until this was explained in Chinese! Maybe I should have stuck with my idea to use coloured flags and letters/numbers to indicate the groups, rather than just use the wheel colour! Main reasons I did not was it would transport harder and more effort to set up the flags at events.

Using standard TV/DVD remote to control robots – I thought people would instantly understand how to control the robots! Well as usual I was wrong, at least until you get people to think like controlling your DVD, then some get it, others takes some demonstration first!

The one lone SwarmRobot that was configured as an object follow SwarmRobot also raised questions – why not the same! It is good everyone understands that these are the same, but the idea that some behaved differently really raised some questions.

Several XinChejian members helped repairing battery connector wires and making more SwarmRobots. Some non-members also had fun finishing and making SwarmRobots – thanks guys!

SwarmRobot InfraRed remote control

The video shows three SwarmRobots being controlled by one InfraRed signal – sorry for the poor video quality.

Looking at ways to have some sort of SwarmRobot display for MakerCarnival in Shanghai in early November, found this AtTiny 2313 code which can decode RC5 IR. It compiled, loaded and ran (verified looking at serial data output), but it did not detect IR from several different remote controls tried.

Using this Arduino code, (which uses some really nice multi-protocol IR receive and transmit libraries) it was discovered that all the remote controls used where NEC protocol, not RC5! Research indicates the NEC protocol is very common in Asia!

Rather than find NEC code for the AtTiny, or write code decode NEC, I used the above library to send RC5 and now a SwarmRobot can receive commands and as the shows, several SwarmRobots can be controlled at the same time! Kept using RC5 because it actually sends two sets of information an ID and a command, so this really fits controlling robot X to do command Y, or group z of robots to all do same command.

The code is on GitHub: SwarmRobot AtTiny2313 and the Arduino transmitter.

SwarmRobot infrared object avoidance video

Success:- Using one InfraRed transmitter LED and four receiver LEDs for 360 degree object avoidance. The program logic is very simple at present.

Unfortunately the setup is not yet reliable – works one day but not the next and there are still some initialisation issues.

Biggest issue seems to be that there are huge variations in the functionality of IR receiver LEDs and we have not found matching data sheets for the two types we are using!

Swarm Robot competition winners announced at World Maker Faire

Xinchejian SwarmRobotsThe fantastic capability of the XinCheJian SwarmRobots has been recognised with 2nd placing in the AFRON $10 robot competition Traditional (Roaming) category. The announcement made at World Maker Faire today (via Wired) awarded first place to Harvard’s research group and third place by to MIT University. XinCheJian’s high placing against such prestigious competition highlights just how good XinCheJian’s SwarmRobots are!

The SwarmRobots are still under rapid development with work progressing on coding object detection and inter-robot communications using the already developed InfraRed shield. Work is also underway on wireless charging and a Atmel 32u4 version. It has been a lot of fun to be part of this team as can be seen in these videos!

Swarm Robot competition entry and workshop

SwarmRobot with new IR shield PCB
SwarmRobot with new IR shield PCB

Just put in a huge effort to enter the Xinchejian SwarmRobot into the AFRON competition.

Also used the assembly instructions created as part of the entry to help run a  workshop with other Xinchejian members making SwarmRobots. The workshop was pretty successful, although our preparation was lacking a bit with an untested PCB that just arrived and was assembled for the first time during the workshop and a different power switch that did match the board!

Definitely time for a more relaxed pace – exploring the Lophilo and a few other projects!

Barcamp Shangahi Fall 2012

SwarmRobots
Three Xinchejian SwarmRobots

Had fun at Shanghai Barcamp Fall helping to show off Xinchejian’s SwarmRobots. It was great seeing how all the children (young and old) explored the robots ability and asked heaps of questions!

Also helped with a presentation about Xinchejian’s SwarmRobots and the AFRON $10 robot competition and I gave one presentation on one of my favourite topics “Instantly turn your project into a kit” available in Libre Office odt and as a power point. It has a LOT of pictures and includes three video picture shows, so it is around 10MB!

Hello Lophilo

No “Hello World”, no blinking LEDs yet, but the Lophilo LEDs are controllable through the example shell scripts!

Lophilo signed board #2 All LEDs on.
Lophilo signed board #2 All LEDs on.
Lophilo signed board #2 1 LED via shell script and button push.
Lophilo signed board #2 1 LED via shell script and button push.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First impressions

  • more in the box than I expected – already almost complete, extremely professional!
  • WOW – signed board #2!
  • it is a very complex PCB
  • it really is a computer (ahem you have to push the on button, not just plug it in “:oops:”)
  • I can’t wait to get stuck into the FPGA – have several projects in mind
  • I can’t wait to get into the cloud9 environment
  • I can’t wait do heaps more

The new Lophilo board has also been run through most of the test procedure successfully. The tests that have not yet been completed are due to my poor Linux skills!

The training that is included with this version of the Lophilo will help fix that and get me up to speed with the FPGA.

LittleWire programming Xinchejian SwarmRobot AtTiny

LittleWire programming Xinchejian SwarmRobot AtTiny via Arduino GUI
LittleWire programming Xinchejian SwarmRobot AtTiny via Arduino GUI

The LittleWire was mainly purchased to support Ihsan as he has been very open, providing a lot of really interesting information about his build process and design and it has also been interesting seeing the DangerousPrototypes community helping that process and even building many variations.

But now it looks like it will become my main and highly used programmer and in high demand for the Swarm Robot project, so I might have trouble finding time to play with all the other modes it has!

Thanks Ihsan!

Been busy @Xinchejian!

Xinchejian Swarm Robots and the new motor driver PCB, IR shield and the Afron competition entry.

Helped run the Xinchejian Advanced Arduino course and getting PartKeepr  setup for Xinchejian.

Plus of course Lophilo– see post before this one!

Enjoying lots of extremely good presentations at Xinchejian – here is a link to this weeks sound and video processing, Nixies and LED cube and Haxl8r!

Nixies
Nixies on display at Xinchejian

 

 

 

 

And there are several other major projects actively being worked on, but none are yet into any state to talk about!