Monthly Meeting Recaps

Recaps from the Central Illinois Robotics Club’s monthly meetings. Although we haven’t posted any meeting recaps lately, we are still meeting every month!

July Monthly Meeting at Germantown Hills Library

Our July monthly meeting will be held on July 11th at the Germantown Hills Library. It’s location is 509 Woodland Knolls Rd, Germantown Hills, IL 61548. We are holding the meeting here again since it worked out well last month. Meeting time is 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM. The meeting will be held in the meeting room. All people interested in hobby robotics are welcome to attend.

July 5, 2018 at 8:48 pm | Monthly Meeting Recaps, Uncategorized | No comment

Monthly Meeting Recap 1/10/2018

Meeting notes from the first meeting of 2018.

Attendees:
- Peter
- Karl
- Bruce Stott
- Mike
- Manish – New member
Show & Tell:
- Peter had several items:
  - He recommended checking out the LG robot fails at CES 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQMtbWwbduA
  - He received a communication from Jsumo regarding their latest product, the Xmotion robot controller on indiegogo. This is an arduino-compatible controller with integrated high-current H-bridges. Good for sumo and other small robots. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/xmotion-all-in-one-controller-for-robotics-robot-arduino#/
  - He reported that he installed ROS2 on Windows. Basically it works, but is arduous to install and limited compared with ROS for Linux.
  - He brought a 3d-printed container that opens only after being manipulated to solve a maze. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:201097
  - He brought a book he recently read called Invent It, Sell It, Bank It! by Lori Greiner from Shark Tank. It reminded him that he prefers product design over sales/marketing/business.
- Karl had made much progress on Wheel-E, which he demonstrated.
  - He had the Leddar mounted and communicating over CAN with the Raspberry Pi.
  - He had dead reckoning functioning based on encoders and a yaw rate gyro.
  - He drove Wheel-E around, showing the Leddar point cloud in Rviz. It could show Wheel-E moving in a fixed frame of reference (based on position from dead reckoning), or show Wheel-E as stationary and the point cloud moving around.
  - He demonstrated startup of the ROS system, which involves many steps in a particular order. During the meeting he created a launch file that automated some of the steps.
  - Here is a link to videos of the robot driving around and its Leddar output displayed on a laptop.
- Mike showed some 3d-printed filament cleaners/oilers that he printed to use up a couple meters of filament at the end of a spool. The interesting thing about them is that they are a hinged box with clasp that print as a single piece. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1692395
Presentation:
- We ended up talking a lot about Wheel-E, so we saved the technical talk till next time.

January 18, 2018 at 9:14 pm | Announcements, Monthly Meeting Recaps | No comment

Monthly Meeting Recap 12/13/17

Attendees:
- Peter
- Karl
- Bruce Stott
- Mike
Show & Tell:
- Karl – Showed progress on Wheel-E CAN bus architecture. He has removed the BotBoard and replaced it with an Arduino and CAN shield. He also added a CAN hat to the Raspberry Pi and created a CAN protocol for communication of Wheel-E parameters. The Arduino reads RC pulses, encoder counts, etc., and transmits them over the CAN bus to the RPi. He brought Wheel-E and demonstrated remote control operation using the new CAN architecture.
- Peter – Shared his 3D printed creations. Among them were a double slider crank mechanism, and a “straight pole curved hole” illusion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm-lCSPBdp4).
- Bruce – Showed his stripped down Battle Wheels bot to be used as a wedge RC Antweight, though it weighs 15.6 oz now without the wedge. There are opportunities to reduce the weight some, but not much.
Presentation:
- - Officer Elections.
    - President
      - Bruce Stott
    - Vice President
      - Vacant
    - Treasurer
      - Peter
    - Secretary
      - Mik
    - Webmaster: Website, Slack & Facebook administration
      - Bruce Stott
    - Librarian
      - Mike
    - Other? No.
See more from the January meeting

December 16, 2017 at 5:56 pm | Monthly Meeting Recaps, Uncategorized | No comment

Monthly Meeting Recap 1/11/15

Robot Show & Tell

Mike Dvorsky displayed his ugly Christmas sweater and accessories. The sweater was red with a black and white pattern and a pair of robots knitted into the front. Mike added a strip of red and green LED’s covered with silver see-thru tape over the eyes, a wearable microcontroller, and some software to sweep the LED’s left and right. He then modified a pair of sunglasses with a micro-Arduino, a battery, and a strip of RGB LED’s to mimic the robots on his sweater. Mike and his son have also been busy on his 3D printer. His son printed out a 5″x5″ logo for the band Twenty One Pilots. The logo used multiple pieces printed in 1 of four different colors. Each piece was fitted together like a puzzle. The end effect had multiple colors weaved through the logo. Mike has also been working with his 3D printer to develop enclosures for the various boards he is working with. He developed a parametric model in OpenSCAD to vary the size, standoffs, and openings for any enclosure.
Peter Campbell passed around his new heat gun he got for Christmas. He also demonstrated a countdown timer that he programmed in C#. The countdown program counts down the number of days until the next CIRC meeting. When it reaches 1 day remaining, it then counts down the hours, then the minutes. The program pulls the dates for the next CIRC meeting from the circpeoria.org website.
Brian Oleson unboxed his new Hakko digital soldering station which he received for Christmas. He also informed the group about the upcoming Robot Revolution exhibit being developed by the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. He also previewed his winter project of building a RC plane from scratch using the plans and web series Maker Hanger by Make Magazine.

Announcements

Next Monthly Meeting will be held on February 8th. The Location is to be determined.
CIRC will be participating in Engineering Day at the Peoria Riverfront Museum on February 22nd.

See more from the January meeting

January 17, 2015 at 6:13 pm | Monthly Meeting Recaps | No comment

« Previous Page — Next Page »

Central Illinois Robotics Club