GetSET Robotics workshop -- now, with cheap motor shields (Shallow Thoughts)

GetSET Robotics workshop -- now, with cheap motor shields

Last summer I led a one day robotics workshop for high school girls as part of the Society of Women Engineers' GetSET summer camp. I'm giving it again this year, on June 26. We're still lining up volunteers to help teach the workshop, and I'd love help from bay area women -- you don't have to be a robotics or programming expert, just willing to learn and play.

The workshop is based around the Arduino open-source microcontroller: we hook up Arduinos, then wire up LEDs, buzzers and other parts on breadboards and make them do things.

It's a programming workshop as well as a hardware one: most of the girls had a workshop the previous summer on Ruby programming, but that's their only exposure to programming. So it's a challenge to see how much we can cover in one day -- and a testament to the girls that they do so well.

Last year we spent the morning covering wiring Arduinos to the basics like breadboards, LEDs, pushbuttons and potentiometers. Then in the afternoon, teams worked on projects -- some of them wired together lots of colored LEDs, some worked with making sounds with buzzers, and one team built a robotic truck. I was hoping to be able to show them more motorized projects, and I'd brought several toy cars and trucks scavenged from thrift shops (radio controlled toys that had lost their radio controller).

But the wiring needed for the H-bridge to control the motor is complex, and the team that chose the truck project had their hands full getting the truck running by the end of the day -- forget about adding any bells and whistles. I wanted to make that easier.

So for this year, with a little more time to prepare, I'm wiring up some Arduino motor shields.

Shields are devices that stack on top of an Arduino. You can do all the difficult wiring beforehand, and just plug in the shield when you're ready to use it. The down side is that shields can be expensive -- motor shields typically cost around $25. That's okay if you're buying one, but if you're trying to outfit a classroom, that can add up pretty quickly.

But I found a way of building motor shields cheaply. The H-bridge chip I'm using, the SN754410, is $1.75 at Jameco if you buy 5 or more. Jameco also carries a proto-shield PC board ($4.25 in quantity) and stacking headers ($1.59). So that's only $7.59 per shield, plus shipping, not counting a few sundries like battery connectors that I'd already bought for last year's class.

Then I had to wire up the shields. I was all fired up about having a good excuse to use wire-wrap instead of soldering. But then I realized that tiny 30-gauge wire-wrap wire probably wasn't adequate for the current going to the motors. So I soldered wires for the motors, the power lines from the battery connector to the H-bridge chip, and from the battery connector to the Arduino's Vin. Then I wire-wrapped everything else.

The end result looks nice and clean from the top (please avert your eyes from my messy soldering underneath). There's no scary rats-nest of wires, like with the breadboards I used last year, and there's plenty of empty space on the board to velcro a battery or attach sensors like an ultrasonic rangefinder. I think this will work well and will encourage the girls to get some little cars zipping around the computer room.

I'm looking forward to setting up some simple projects I can combine with the cars -- light sensors, sonar or IR rangefinders, other ideas? I'd love suggestions from anybody, and I'd especially love to line up some volunteers (women only for the day of the workshop, please). Workshop day -- June 26 -- mostly means walking around checking on how the girls are doing, cheering them on, helping them debug problems by checking their wiring and looking over their programs (very simple code -- remember, they've never seen C code before).

And if anybody (male or female) wants to get together before the workshop and play with Arduinos, help me solder the rest of the shields, and brainstorm fun projects for the girls, please drop me a line!

The rough outline, handouts and wiring diagrams so far are at my Robots and Sensors Workshop page.