Our Christmas meeting had Lego Mindstorms as a focus with 30 people registered and attending the hands on session. Lots of new faces, young and old, and spectators swelled our numbers to well over 40 with a collection of $142.10c for Science Alive which will be much appreciated. Thanks to all who came along and especially those who brought Christmas food to share. A special thanks also to Science Alive and to John Wynard for arranging the Technology Room, the Mindstorms kits and tutorial materials. Next meeting is on Wednesday 18^th February 2009 6.30pm, focus on Robo Sumo. Feel free to email the list with additions and corrections to the report below.

The Mindstorms session in the Technology Room attracted many new faces and some traditional followers too. An interesting collection of about 17 robots were built and I saw all the sensors in use. John Wynard from Science Alive (and others) kindly provided expert guidance to the novices and much fun was had by all with some very good work being done. Howard and Rosemarie constructed a line following robot that used a single sensor in linear mode to follow a black line with great accuracy and no discernable hunting. Phil made a rubber band shooting robot. John showed us the new Robo football mat.

Meanwhile Andrew Errington our founding member back from Japan kindly hosted our show and tell session in the Seminar Room.

Soon, Gavin, and Alyssa brought along two Lego NXT Sumo Robots and a wrestling ring. These robots were superb and kept us entertained with their mean antics tossing each other over with large wedges and pushing each other out of the ring. Hopefully we can provide some competition for Gavin and Alyssa next time. http://mindstorms.lego.com/specialevent/WhatisLEGOSumo.aspx

I brought along my modular micromouse project now with 3 working ultrasonic sensors, Atmega8 micro, motors and rotation sensors all wired and tested and ready for the final integration. I also showed a maze solver solving from competitions as far back as 1988. The solver uses about 520 bytes of RAM ready for embedding in the AVR micro. You can see my solver code here if interested: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~rjtp/Micromouse/Simulations/

Hanno showed his balancing robot tidied up and ready for a 4 week marathon shop window display. Also Hanno showed the Parallax Prop Scope and Viewport. More details here: http://mydancebot.com

Peter and Sue Linscott brought along some of their robot kits. More details here: http://www.robokits.co.nz/

Carl brought along a DVD which I didn't get to see as I was putting away Lego robots. Thanks Carl, maybe I could see it next time?

Jill brought along heaps of family, friends and students and some very yummy cake. Thanks.

Ingolf Sander (Hanno's Dad) visiting from Silicon Valley spoke about HBRC, its roots in HBCC, the future of robotics and its potential applications in helping the aged and disabled. Have a look at Ingolf's Big picture here : http://www.ingrit.com/ingolf/big-picture/index.htm and also try making his jumping jack.

Richard Jones

Wed 17^th December 2008

This was our first trial of a new format meeting running from 6.30pm to 9.30pm to allow people of different ages to come and go. We had ages from six upwards and a total of 30 people attending with a gold coin collection of $24. Thanks to everyone who came and especially those who made the full 3 hours, well done!

Our next meeting is special, as it will be just before Christmas. Bring along Christmas goodies to eat and experience hands on Lego nxt robot programming. Wed 17^th December 6.30pm in the Technology Room at Science Alive. $4 per person, Limit 30 people, two per robot. Register on the email list or email richard.jones at tait.co.nz. To see if you are on the list go to: http://kiwibots.org/calendar-2.html Thanks to John Wynard at Science Alive for organising this.

We started with a DVD viewing of the Australian Robocup Junior competition held in 2007, and Jill Pears spoke about the recent Auckland Finals in which several Christchurch teams were successful. William kindly organised the A4 Back Line sheets that I brought along into a track for robots to follow.

Peter Linscott brought along one of his Tracked Robot kits programmed for tabletop challenge. It did a fine job of navigating the table. These kits are available from Peter at http://www.robokits.co.nz/

Our founder Andrew Errington has returned from his travels to Japan and promised to bring some robut related things once his luggage is unpacked.

Carl brought along a big yellow lawn mower ready to be adapted for robotic use. It could do with some of Peter Harris magic power control circuits, Peter will be back from his travels when the grass has finished growing :-)

Phil talked about the Arduino project and gave us some interesting links:

http://planet.nztech.org/ aggregates the blogs of New Zealanders

http://code.rancidbacon.com/ // It sure aint fresh meat

http://groups.google.com/group/tvic Meet like minded geeks over a meal

http://www.arduino.cc/ Simple Atmel processor board for artists and everyone else

Hanno showed his 2 wheeled balancing robot http://mydancebot.com/ performing on the table and floor and also brought along a line following car.

I showed the progress on my Micromouse. All the major design and construction is done, just the ultrasound sensor circuits to solder up and the control software to do.

Charles Manning gave us a wonderful talk about the insides of the Lego nxt and the structure of the firmware components of the Lejos project and his contribution to porting Java from the rcx to nxt platforms. Charles also gave us some tips about nxt sensors, his notes are here . Thanks Charles for a fascinating talk.