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Beeps
Even though the Propeller chip can play WAV files and synthesize speech, sometimes a simple beep is all the noise you need to get the job done.
The first breadboard circuit we'll build for the ActivityBot is a simple piezo speaker.
It is very easy to make this speaker beep with a single line of code:
Setup from Previous Tutorials
In this tutorial's activities, the pushbuttons you add will be used to control the lights from LED Lights. You will also use the alligator clip probes to test continuity between pushbutton terminals and voltages at key points in pushbutton circuits.
Solutions
Questions
- Answer: 1 / 4 and 2 / 3
- Answer: 3.3 V. The two sides of the pushbutton are electrically connected and therefore the circuit is completed.
- Answer: A pull-down resistor “pulls down” the resting state voltage that the circuit applies to GND = 0 V.
- Answer: When a pushbutton is pressed and becomes connected to 3.3 V it is called active-high.
- Answer: The voltage applied to the circuit.
About This Tutorial
Robots have been in use for all kinds of manufacturing and in all manner of exploration vehicles—and in many science fiction films—for a long time. The word ‘robot’ first appeared in a Czechoslovakian satirical play, Rossum’s Universal Robots, by Karel Capek back in 1920! Robots in this play tended to be human-like, and much science fiction that followed involved these robots trying to fit into society and make sense out of human emotions.
IR Beacon-Seeking ActivityBot with BlocklyProp
This tutorial shows you how build an IR Beacon that your ActivityBot can seek, using BlocklyProp graphical programming.
Blink a Light
The Propeller microcontroller has 32 input/output pins, or I/O pins, labeled P0 through P31. The Propeller can interact with other circuits connected to these I/O pins, through programs that use these labels. A Propeller I/O pin can do three things:
Program the Shield-Bot and Remote
Prepare your Shield-Bot
- Build and test your BOE Shield-Bot, following at least Chapters 3 and 4 in Robotics with the BOE Shield for Arduino.
- Build and test the infrared LED/receiver circuits from Chapter 7, Activity 1.
- Download the IR Remote Shield-Bot Arduino Code
Review and Practice
Self-check
- In this activity, you:
- Built and tested a pushbutton circuit.
- Wrote scripts that monitored the pushbutton circuit through a micro:bit I/O pin.
- Wrote scripts that performed different actions that depended on whether or not the pushbutton was pressed.
- Did you successfully build the pushbutton circuit and understand the pushbutton pin map?
- Do you understand how current flows through the pushbutton circuit?
- Were you able to monitor the on/off states of the pushbutton circuit?
Chapter 3 Summary
This chapter covered BOE Shield-Bot assembly and testing. Assembly involved both mechanical construction and circuit-building, and testing used some new programming concepts. Here are the highlights:
Hardware Setup
- Mounting the servos on the robot chassis
- Attaching the wheels to the servo motors, and the tail wheel to the chassis
- Mounting the BOE Shield with the Arduino onto the chassis
Electronics