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Small Electronic Logic Blocks - eBlocks
eBlocks writes "eBlocks are small low-cost electronic devices that can be easily interconnected for a wide variety of applications such as: detecting motion, light, water, sound or magnetic fields; triggering a buzzer, a light, an electronic relay or a lock. Devices can communicate wirelessly or can be controlled remotely via the internet or a telephone. The eBlocks technology has been developed by a professor at U.C. Riverside who is looking for inspiration on its best uses. Try out the simulator. Suggestions and comments welcome!"
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
When I was growing up around 1968 - 1969 Raython had a series of kits that you could build circuits with out wires by touching blocks together and the ground was a metal plate. Connections were metal contact with magnets behind that.
The Learning Company has had this since the early 1980 in a game called Robot Odyssey. You could wire stuff up and solve puzzles. I rember since I was on the conversion crew from the Apple II/IBM PC to Color computer.
Its a nice idea but has been done for a long long time.
Looks like a decent replacement for lego for my kids now they are a bit old (7) for technic.
Of course when they get old enough to be left unsupervised with a soldering iron in a year or two I'll be introducing them to the joys of roll your own serial and ISA devices, but up until now there doesn't seem to have been a decent stop gap.
Beep beep.
Remove the "Configurations with loops are not valid!" warning, and instead handle configurations with loops. It shouldn't be hard; if you're worried about someone setting up an "invalid" loop (like a NOR gate with its output hooked up to one of its inputs) then just make sure that the output of your blocks is lagged one timestep from the input.
I dont see how. Mindstorms are a microcontroller (big yellow&gray block) that attaches to sensors, motors, etc.. eblocks are not grounded in computers; they are pure electronics. Saying that Mindstorms and eblocks are the same is like saying a model steam engine is the same thing as a locomotive. or something. analogies escape me like, uh, oxygen or something.
This reminds me very much of programming a cheap (quasi-)PLC (programmable logic controller) we use at work often: a Siemens LOGO (pdf link). Basically, it's a device that has a bunch of inputs (8 digital, or 6 digital / 2 analog), and some outputs (4 digital), and contains a bunch of logic gates, comparators, and timers. You can make fairly sophisticated control systems using these.
We use them, for example, to control chemical injection systems. They have overrides based on filters backwashing, timers to dose to keep the pumps if they haven't run for a while, timers to prevent them running too long, etc. It's pretty endless what you can do, and these are only the lowest level of entry into the world of automation and PLCs.
Take the eBlock logic and timer modules, make them all software, and you have a LOGO. You still need the sensors and controls/outputs, but you can make some fairly complex programs involving hundreds of blocks, without the size of using hundreds of blocks.
The eblocks are a neat idea for educational purposes, but I'd see people quickly moving up to small PLCs (like the LOGO). They also definately don't have any use in industrial applications, though I don't know if that was the intent or not.
Speak before you think
Here's another solution, Phidgets:
http://www.phidgets.com/
They offer sensors, controllers, and more.
You mean battery life, right? I asked Dr. Vahid about it last quarter and he said they were working on other means of powering them, including a way to let blocks share power.
Years later, when I actually played with live components, could build my own cases, and could jack everything into a serial port did I truely fall in love with building things. (Forrest E. Mims, there is a spot in heaven for you.)
Hey, I'm the same guy who maxed out the capabilities on the lego mindstorms in 2 days. Come on are more than 3 inputs and outputs REALLY too much to ask for... The MIT handboard has 12 inputs, 4 outputs, and if you slave over a few pins from the LCD you can us it to generate a 16 bit parallel interface...
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
The UC Riverside engineering college has an ABHORENT graduation rate, when I was there it was 30%. The program was very tough, but there were also alot of professors who cared so little about their courses they taught *nothing*. I had one chem professor lecture on the heart medicine he was working on and iron refining techniques all semester, then he gave us a standardized test and the whole class failed. We'd never seen a problem worked on the board the entire course. Most of the lower division courses were like that, professors didn't give a crap. My graduation was delayed by a mechanical engineering teacher who flunked 80% of his class.
Contrast this with a professor like Vahid-- the entire class flunked his first midterm and he stopped the course and said "This is awful guys, I have never seen anything like this, ever. Obviously I'm doing something wrong because all of you shouldn't be failing like this. So I want everyone to take 5 minutes, write down what you feel is wrong with the course, turn it in, and then go home and take the day off and we'll come back tomorrow and go over the notes and see what we can come up with." And he was as good a friend and father to tiny tim as he promised.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
You could build all sorts of interesting projects out of those 200 in 1 kits they sold in the old days. They had water detectors, alarms where a circuit was opened, etc. Even low power AM band radio transmitters. The educational value was quite substantial. I started with a 150 in 1 kit, at the age of 7, and it provided me with most of what I knew about digital electrics, at that age.
Since then, I took on the real thing as I started in the development world.
(I posted a NULL by hitting return to early, on an earlier post. Sorry for the trouble.)
Though most will criticize Radio-Shack for lower quality, I did get some educational value out of it.
Man, this is a great idea as a learning tool but totally impractical for production purposes. In the end of the paper, section 8, the author writes that this could be used for things like detecting speeds of vehicles on streets or detecting water leaks. There is NO way that such large-scale applications could be made inexpensively with separate individual components like these. I work in the semiconductor industry and margins on commodity components like these would become are razor thin. It's like that because nobody will spend extra money if they can get away with it. Any engineer worth his salt would rather design it right rather than get it done with these kiddie building blocks.
Just my $0.55 (US inflation, 1774-2008, for $0.02)
OK, I don't want to rain on his parade, it's a cool idea, and really good for people who don't want to work with proto-board or wire-wrap. I just see one BIG problem.....cost.
Having been into PIC's for a while now, I'm finding that cost is the final frontier when using/building small electronics. I can't imagine any of these building blocks being sold for less than $10-$15 each, and that's for the simple functions. By the time you get something really interesting going, it's gonna cost a LOT of money for all of the modules you'll need. MUCH more than it would to buy a PIC Demo board with programmer, LCD, and all the other features they throw into the box. From the links, it looks like he might have one of these processors in his boxen.
Here's a simple cost breakdown for one of the modules shown in the photo that I saw on the site:
1) Electronics: no less than $2 for any of the functions listed. PIC's are run from $2-18 in small qty, depending on features.
2) Wire: Sounds trivial, but it's gonna be $0.50 to attach two wires to a circuit board... That's a minimum for boxes that only have 2 wires, scale accordingly.
3) Packaging: small molded plastic box in qty $0.50. I know, I've been pricing them for my products.
4) Custom circuit board: minimum of $1.40 for small 1.5" X 2.5" 2-layer board.
5) Assembly: gonna cost $3 to stuff 20 small parts on that panelized board. No way around that, unless you've got a lot of spare time and are good with the iron.
6) Potting: gotta hold that stuff in the small enclosure. It's gonna be $0.50 here too.
7) Packaging/testing: it's gonna cost something to test and put that baby in a box. My estimate is at least $1 for each unit.
Really cool, but it looks really expensive.
For a cost comparison, you can purchase the PICDEM2+ board, with In-circuit debugger and development environment for $229.00 (digikey #DV164006-ND). You can also download the demo C compiler for free and start hacking immediatly.
With the features on that board, you can do 10-15 modules worth right off the bat....
AVR is a similar option, as is the 8051 and Z80. There's lots of small demo boards available.
If you like PLC type logic, try one of the cheaper units from Keyence or DirectLogic...these units are about $150 with all the features shown and more.... Both have high-speed counters, large memory and at least 8-in and 8-out....
Bottom line is this, don't be afraid of tinkering with parts...it's fun, cheap, and you'll learn a lot more by actually reading the datasheets and soldering wires yourself.
Happy tinkering
I would have one battery block you could plug in anywhere in the setup, rather than have each block have its own battery. If you have 37 blocks hooked together, how do you know which one has the bad battery? On the downside it makes the connectors and wires bulkier by one power line, and requires n+1 blocks while before you had one. but it beats having to buy 37 batteries every year and take everything apart to replace them. Cheaper too because you can use smaller lighter, unopenable boxes.
(Assuming that you have a PIC or other smarts per block): You should have some way of plugging in a computer interface block and have the entire circuit topology displayed on your computer: each block can query all its neighbors to ask what they are and what state they are in, and what their neighbors are, etc.
Have user-programable blocks. Maybe a full PIC development C compiler etc. is required, or you can write your own little-language (or better yet, one that already exists) to lower the bar for beginning programmers. That way, when someone wants a block that shows red when the cat flap has had an exit more recently than an entrance, it can be programmed up, rather than requiring the development of a new cat-flap module.
[karmawhore]Everything should be open source, with a Linux development system, of course.[/karmawhore]
Servo motor blocks, motor blocks, etc. Maybe make a Mindstorms interface.
Here are just a few glaring omissions from their catalog...
Today, the same kind of kids are learning how to deal with computers, learning to program, and their universe can be largely defined as "things that can be done on a computer", including learning simulations for things that can't be done on a computer. For them, the world IS the network and things that don't happen there are somehow unreal.
This has been happening for long enough that we've got grownups who can't see the value of a space program because it happens in the physical world, not cyberspace.
Cyberspace is important, but it, too, is based on physical artifacts. These artifacts are manufactured and their raw materials have to come from somewhere. How many people can look at a PC and figure out where it physically came from, down to the mines from where the steel in the cases came from?
IMHO, we need more educated people who understand how to deal in a technological way with physical things.
There is no way to build electronic things that work without dealing with physical objects and their mechanical properties.
Anything that encourages kids to get involved with electronics will provide the kind of education you appear to favor.
One other thing. Looked under the hood of a modern automobile? Physical, mechanical, electronic controls, and software. It's the perfect example of the combination of mechanical and electronic devices you're going to see in most "mechanical" devices these days. If you want kids to learn mechanical design, these kids have to learn electronics anyway.
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