Makerspace, Part 2: The Plan.

Last week, I finally got to have my first meeting with the middle school Technology club I'm working with to create the Makerspace. We talked about what a Makerspace was, how we were planning to use it in the school, and the various bits and pieces of old projects that I brought to show what kinds of things could be made in a Makerspace. Basically, it was a condensed version of this post, with a few pictures from Big Hero 6 and Iron Man 3 as reference points.

Good movie...  but it was no Wreck-it-Ralph. 

At the end of the meeting, I had ever student write down on their slip of paper the top ten things they wanted to be able to make/learn in the technology club. Over the weekend, I looked through all the answers I got, and came up with the five main units that would be the most useful and interesting to kick off the Makerspace and the Tech Club. The Technology club has two types of meetings - "Class" meetings, which teach skills like the one's seen below, and "Business" meetings, where we'd focus more on the Makerspace itself, and where members would have time to share the projects they've been working on (THAT is for a different post). But the introductory skills are important for the students with little or no experience. So here's what I've put together: 

1. Programming

 This is the obvious one, but I've put it as the first unit because it's a vital skill so many of the other projects the students were interested in, and because it doesn't require expensive materials. I'm working on lesson plans for a programming intro class for Scratch, which will hopefully give enough of an introduction that the students will feel comfortable working on Codecademy tutorials or learning from other online resources

2. Robotics
These kids love robotics almost as much as I do. The issue here is limited time and materials. I'm planning on doing two classes with Mindstorms Ev3 - one for building, one for programming. I'd also like to incorporate robotics into an Arduino introduction later on - I have an RC car that I robotized with an Arduino that would make a good example.

3. Circuitry
While I'd actually prefer this unit before robotics, the littleBits are one of the more expensive items in the budget, and, while I have an Ev3 kit at home that I could bring as an example, the same isn't true here.

4. Computers
This is kind of a catch-all unit. Here I definitely want to have a class on the Raspberry Pi, but I also want to bring in some of the other Technology Club Alumni to teach classes on things I'm not as familiar with, like App programming and Web Design. (It's interesting to see how our individual interests were foreshadowed through Tech Club and the technology class. The ones who spent all their time on the iPod touches now program them, the ones who spent all their time tweaking Powerpoints and Tshirt designs have gone into 3D animation or computer graphic design. And yours truly MAY have turned in a final paper analyzing potential uses for robots that could create their own languages after researching this. I really should post it here if I can find it.)

5. 3D Printing
I have never had the opportunity to use a 3D printer, and I could not be more excited to learn. That's why this unit is last - I know the least about it, and I need that time to learn. I'm planning on getting the Printrbot kit, and using Google Sketchup and Autodesk inventor to do the modeling, since our school system already has that software.

These are the things we decided would be the most useful. I've said before that you don't need expensive tools to make a Makerspace, and I stand by that statement. But good tools make making more accessible, and especially in a school setting, that's important. And tools cost money.

About $1,300 worth of money, not counting shipping or storage.

I'm looking at a couple different ways of doing money-earning.  For the more expensive kits, I've talked to my sponsor about using DonorsChoose. It seems like a great program, and I'd appreciate the help in offsetting the cost. However, with finals rapidly approaching, we haven't had the chance to talk to the school administration yet. So I've started with some simpler money-earning opportunities. Right now, I'm creating kits for making small light up ornaments to teach younger kids about the basics of circuitry. The kits would also be good for making a string of lights, good for teaching Parallel vs. Series. Plus, who doesn't love holiday themed illumination? Here's a picture of the prototype. I'll be posting a tutorial soon.

I'm selling the kits to local scout troops as an end of year craft project and my goal is to raise about $100 to start off with.

And finally, while I can't expect to rely on donations, I had the opportunity over Thanksgiving break to collect some of my great-grandfather's old tools for use in the Makerspace, which I cleaned up and labeled.

It wasn't anything too fancy - just screwdrivers, wrenches, a level, things that would be useful for building or disassembling small projects. But that toolbox has officially become the first thing in the Makerspace.

It's a long road ahead, but we have a plan. Let the making commence!

PS: One last thing. One of our main concerns with the technology club is the participation of girls. I was one of two girls out of about fifteen people at the clubs inception, a ratio that improved a little  the next year, I suspect because both of us were so active in the club. Now, she's actually come back to help with my project. But we still see the same problem. There were only two girls at the meeting and about twenty boys. Do any of you have suggestions for getting more girls involved? 

Practice Project with Mindstorms

It turns out I prefer busy summers to boring summers, but I also tend to go a little overboard. So if this poor blog seems abandoned, that's because it is! But it's time to fix that.

This project was supposed to be a  sort of automated set of drawers. A grid would sit over them, holding the drawers. The two motors could move to a certain "coordinate" to let the third lift the drawer. Overall, I was able to make it work well in concept. But I'm abandoning the project in its current form for now, just because the limitations of the Mindstorms kits and my own time and resources have made it difficult to complete.

I've noticed that the Mindstorms kits are optimized for compact robots. The pieces fit together with a fair amount of wiggle room, but if you aren't wedging anything inside that would allow them to move, you're fine. However, if you want to build a machine with a longer arm protruding from it, the leverage can cause connections to bend or even snap open. This made my plan of having one motor moving a bar holding the others difficult. As you can see in the video, the bar twists the motor holding and makes accurate movements difficult. 

Another difficulty I had was with the Mindstorms software. What I was looking for was a way to input a command from my computer that would trigger a method in the robot. While there is a Bluetooth connection option for the brick, it doesn't let me contact the brick with a command while the program is running, as there's no text input function. In the end I settled for inputting a "code" through the pressure sensor, so the robot would move to a position dependent on the number of times I pushed the button. This worked fairly well. This is the code I wrote that does just that.

The awesome people on the Google + Makers forum suggested I use MIT App Inventor, which lets any android device communicate with the brick through Bluetooth. This is a great idea! BUT, I regrettably have no android device on which to test this capability. I'll have to cross my fingers for my birthday. 

The video shows the last test I did of the robot. The design is... Not great, because I had to keep dropping and coming back to the project, and every time I would get halfway through fixing a problem, and have to stop for the next camp or class.

The robot did better in earlier tests, before the bars started rubbing the nubs away on the Legos holding them together! Great. And now that I'm trapped between eschool, drivers ed, and another super secret  project (coming soon!) that requires lots of time commitment, I decided to give this project a break. I'd like to come back to it at some point later, probably using an arduino and an upright set of drawers. I've got a few ideas written down. But for now, I'll just consider this project a good exercise in programming and design, and 

move on.
Up next: an upgrade to an old robot, a super secret project, and a book review to finish up the summer.

Useless Lamp - Mindstorms EV3

For our final project in one of my classes, we had to create an art piece based on a movement we studied. I picked Dada, and this is my project, Lamp. Here's a video of it in action.

I built the project using two mindstorms large motors and a pressure sensor. There are two halves to the mechanism - the "useless box" half, and the half that controls the lamp. The lamp in particular I used had a wheel switch that I had to to try three different ways of operating, finally taking it apart and reworking it as a button. The box decorations are made of vinyl and fabric I had lying around the house. I'm only going to talk about the mechanisms involved in making your own useless lamp. The rest is up to you.