Tea and Crumpets: A Summer in Science

Date: 15.8.13 Time: 14:28 Location: Hammarskjold House, Stanford University The penultimate day of the Digital Media Academy was similar to yesterday afternoon.  For students who had finished their robots, it was all about testing and gaining more control over the drive features.  There were also people who hadn't finished.  These people were aided by the finished students, helping everyone to better understand different problems that might arise as well as aiding the swamped instructors. Within the competition, there are many ways that you might be able to win.  Besides the obvious winners and consolation winners, there is also an award for the most creative design.  Of course, I went for that one. The afternoon was briefly interrupted so that I could go watch the Stanford field hockey team practice. I attended a camp last week at Stanford and was able to return the next week to watch practice. It is very important to find a balance, and...

Date: 15.8.13 Time: 21:20 Location: Stanford University We started Wednesday with working on controlling the drive features on our robots. Once given some basic code, we worked to determine which lines controlled which wheels in which directions.  Once this was finished, we were able to begin testing our robot.  The driving systems sometimes worked, but sometimes did not. Once we were able to make the robot preform preprogrammed code, we soldered on a Bluetooth chip. Once synced to the computer, this allowed us to control the robots drive features from our keyboard wirelessly. This is crucial for the competition because it allows us to control the bot from a distance.  The theme of the whole day was test, test, test. This is because robot control and understanding where and when your robot might fail are crucial for successful competition.  Since I have finished my robot, this means I have a full two class days to test! 

 Date: 13.8.13 Time: 15:45 Location: Hammarskjold House, Stanford University During the morning of the second day at the Digital Media Academy, we continued to work on familiarizing ourselves with the programming language of the Arduino.  Adding a servo motor to the breadboard, we worked with manipulating the motor.  Servos would be incredibly important pieces of our final robot, as they would be what moved the attachments. 7 Key Chord Keyboard Right before lunch we began physically assembling our robots.  The basic robot contains two wheels with motors and one prop wheel.  Attachments are then added to knock over the cups and pickup ping pong balls. After lunch we had a guest speaker who was a member of the design team for the groundbreaking Google Glass. He is a leader in the field of wearable technology. After a debilitating bicycle accident at the age of 15, he began tinkering in his garage. This led to his invention of a chording keyboard. ...

Date: 12.8.13 Time: 12:00 Location: Hammarskjold House, Stanford University This morning began my first day at the Digital Media Academy at Stanford University.  During this week-long program I will be studying how to build and program robots using the Arduino programming language.  We will have the opportunity to create pieces and attachments for our bots using a 3D printer, then create original code for the pieces we have created!  It is a great combination of learning existing standard programming language as well as having the opportunity to attempt original code. This morning began with some basic work, familiarizing ourselves with the Arduino.  We started by attempting to spell our names using Morse code and a LED.  We then added another LED and distributed the code across the two lights.  The first light would display the dots and the second would show dashes.  They would alternate according to the words they were told to show. Next we...