Question: "What activities can we do from the "What’s a Microcontroller?" text using the parts included in the Boe-Bot Robot Kit?”
Answer: "Quite a lot!"
Teachers frequently ask this question, so we have made a list below, for your reference. It shows the cross-compatibility for using the "What's a Microcontroller?" v3.0 with just the parts included in the Boe-Bot Robot kits v3.0.
This is the hands-on activity list for the ActivityBot with BlocklyProp Educator Course. The course provides initial introductions to:
Many items you use every day have pushbuttons. Cell phones, microwave ovens, TV remotes, and computer keyboards might all have pushbuttons. Can you think of others?
Let's use a common pushbutton circuit and build a program for monitoring it with your microcontroller. Then, let's use a pushbutton's state to control LED circuits. LEDs are just one example of a device you can turn on and off with a microcontroller. Your invention might instead use pushbuttons to control circuits for motors, heating elements, or other devices.
This is the hands-on activity list for the 1-day ActivityBot Educators Course. The course provides initial introductions to:
This is the hands-on activity list for the 1-day Propeller Educators Course.
The Propeller C Learning System has five major components that the instructor will briefly discuss:
Many items you use every day have pushbuttons. Cell phones, microwave ovens, TV remotes, and computer keyboards might all have pushbuttons. Can you think of others?
Let's use a common pushbutton circuit and build a program for monitoring it with your microcontroller. Then, let's use a pushbutton's state to control LED circuits. LEDs are just one example of a device you can turn on and off with a microcontroller. Your invention might instead use pushbuttons to control circuits for motors, heating elements, or other devices.
In the second chapter of Robotics with the Board of Education Shield for Arduino, you will use the Board of Education Shield for building and testing circuits with Parallax continuous rotation servos, resistors, and light-emitting diodes. Along the way, you’ll start learning the basics of building circuits and making the Arduino interact with them.
The focus of this chapter was calibrating and testing the servos, and building indicator lights to monitor the servo signals. In addition to some hardware setup, many concepts related to electronics, programming, and even a few good engineering concepts were introduced along the way.
Hardware Setup
Electronics
Imagine that your cyber:bot is navigating a course, and there’s a dark or shady area at the end, such as a cardboard box garage. Your robot’s final task in the course is to stop inside that dark area. Or, perhaps you want the robot to search for and stop under bright light. There’s a simple phototransistor circuit you can use that lets the micro:bit module know it detected bright or dim light by comparing the ambient light to some specified level.
Imagine that your BOE Shield-Bot is navigating a course, and there’s a bright light at the end. Your robot’s final task in the course is to stop underneath that bright light. There’s a simple phototransistor circuit you can use that lets the Arduino know it detected bright light with a binary‑1, or ambient light with a binary-0. Incandescent bulbs in desk lamps and flashlights make the best bright-light sources. Compact fluorescent and LED light sources are not as easy for the circuit in this activity to recognize.
