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Robotics/Electronics Class - How Would You Do It?
MainerDood asks: "I have been teaching programming and networking at the high school and collegiate levels for several years, and now I am branching out into electronics and robotics for my high school students. I am keen on Linux and Open Source solutions where feasible, and would like to avoid using pre-packaged robotics/electronic 'kits' (ie: Lego Mindstorm). I have a minimal budget, like to tinker and have access to tons of old PCs... I would like to use them in these projects and buy the 'parts' where needed. I am envisioning an order of breadboards, diodes, resistors, etc. but not sure from where I should order, what a good basic startup setup should contain and resources I should refer too. I have found a bunch of links online and various resources, but I am curious to know how you would go about this... seasoned veterans and electronics/robotics enthusiasts - I am all ears!"
The submitter says he has a bunch of links, but this is for the rest of you :)
American Science & Surplus has a ton of cheap electronic components for sale. No breadboards, but they do sell LEDs, some resistors, motors, etc. They even have a whole "Robot Parts" selection, with items such as Windshield Wiper motors, etc. They also have a great (and entertaining) paper catalog, and their inventory changes very often. Lasers, high quality optics, weather balloons-- all sorts of fun, geeky stuff.
I haven't built any robots myself, but I have been ordering random bits and pieces for various projects for more then 5 years.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Most high school students are perfectly capable of learning how electronics work and how to build robots. The courses won't necessarly prevent a well-rounded education.
Building a robot is a great way to stimulate interest in math, science & mechanics, which applies to a wide variety of careers-- from high-level software architects to an auto mechanic.
In addition, if you limit this sort of education to the 400-level college courses, you exclude the majority of students who will never go to college, enroll in a EE program, or make it the 400-level college courses.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
You may want to look into theFIRST robotics competition. It is a tele-robotics competion for high school students held annually. This would give you something to teach towards. There may be FIRST-specific curriculums out there already, also.
Other than that, I wouldn't try to be too ambitous. Teach basic DC/AC circuits, maybe the basics of transistors, and program some PICs or similar in BASIC.
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
I see your point, but disagree with you. My High School electronics teacher was teaching us robotics. He essentially was working on his own projects but teaching us what to do why and how and having us do the dirty work. I learned enough in my first year to know I wanted to be an EE. I of course decided to major in alcohol and eventually dropped out to work in IT (hmmm correlation there?).
I don't remember enough of what we did to be of any use to the discussion though. I graduated in '93. I DO remember that we had 2 386 motherboards ( I remember thinking "I will NEVER need more power than that"), and some prepackaged gear sets. We could program in several thousand instructions for the Robot to follow. Sadly, it was a 2 year long project and I graduated before I could see the thing in action, but it can and has been done before.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Several of my professors have been teaching robotics classes to students for years. Before I explain their opinions, I should inform you that they are Computer Science professors, and their slant is toward programming robots.
Basically, their theory is that building robots is difficult work, and most of the students wound up spending more time cutting, welding and soldiering than programming. The Lego mindstorms kit (with a firmware hack so we can use Not Quite C) proved very useful for programming the lego robots to do various things. There's still plenty of room to learn about various mechanical and electrical systems with mindstorms, but you don't have to worry about dorking around with soldiering, which is a pretty risky business with the hot iron, nasty fumes and toxic chemicals. I've seen more than a few mindstorms hacks onto their electrical systems to add stuff. The one problem is that they're probably pretty expensive, even with a qualified academic discount.
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Coming from many years in programming I've recently been learning about hardware. Being of a lazy disposition I needed to quickly and cheaply build up a large stock of components. Nothing I hate more than not having a part on hand.
I picked up a breadboard locally and that was the last item I bought retail. Everything else came off ebay at ridiculous prices. The problem for me was usually I ended up with too many items.
The best thing about the cost is that I'm not afraid to break things. That burning smell doesn't mean I've blown $10 more like 10c.
For robotics you can go with the latest pic/stamp + prgrammer. But think simple, Z80 + EEPROM + SRAM gives you the same sort of thing at a much reduced price. For instance I picked up 100+ Z80 chips for less than $10.
Decide which controller you're going to use, I'd suggest Z80/6502 etc for cost reasons, but the low end pics are very reasonable as well. Once you have that decided, there are numerous emulators etc available for Linux for each controller. Cheap serial burner can be built for pennies, make that the first class. Kids hate theory.
Build the course around the controller and only delve into theory briefly. Show how to build a drive controller, light/ir/sound detector etc etc. Make one class cover a topic. Give weblinks so the interested kids can follow up in there own time.
Check out Zach's Cool Stuff. You might even be able to contact him for ideas. He is doing very similar stuff. Rather than building from a kit he chooses raw materials so people get hands on experience with fabrication.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
I had a robotics class in high school last year and it was rather fun. We used http://handyboard.com/ Handyboards for the brains of most of the robots we made. They aren't like mindstorms in that a bit of work is still required to use different servers and motors with it. The handyboards are programmed with IC which is Interactive C. IC is somewhat open source and has a linux version so we used it. The only downside is that they are rather pricy at $200 a unit. Some other robots we made were simple touch sensor robots using breadboards and servos(Servo motors are nice you should get lots of them as they can be used for just about everything!). This project came from a book called 'Mobile Robotics'. For another project we got an old floppy and cdrom drive and had to make a robot to win a race with them. Everything had to come from the floppy and cdrom drive all the wire/motors/switchs we only got tools to work with. This project was the most fun and likely the easiest for the teacher to manage as he didn't need to provide parts. You could do variations or even make the project more complex. One thing that helped a lot is that we started out working on simple projects and at a slow pace so that everyone in the class could participate regardless of having had an electronics course before. We often built robots in stages where we would make a robot with a touch sensor first and then go back and add light sensors and so on.