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