Monthly Archives: November 2015

Programming, Robotics, STEM

Testing the Ozobot

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Experimenting with ozobots & cubelets
Dunkin works on one of the prototype tests for the ozobot. A few cubelets are in the lower left corner.

In today’s meeting we looked at ozobots & dug out the cubelets to try and get the Bluetooth control working. Technical difficulties prevented the cubelets from  working with the remote control app. But the ozobots were a bigger hit anyway with both the kids and adults there.

Ozobots are tiny dome like robots that have optical sensors that are used to follow lines. These lines can also program the little guys, through shapes and colors. Using a marker they will follow the line you draw but by using different color patterns they will change speed, change direction, pause, stop and even count.

Castlemaker kids try an ozobot on the maze they created
Path that the kids developed to test the ozobots. In this trial it’s not doing so well, but has a chance to redeem itself if it gets the square root of 1 correctly, otherwise it goes into the “imponderable death of doom.”

It was amazing to sit back and watch the kid’s creativity. After a brief introduction to the ozobot, the kids discovered much more on their own. Following mazes and lines drawn on paper, along with guessing which branch the ozobot would take dominated the afternoon.

The kids decided to “test the robot’s artificial intelligence” by creating questions that the robot could ‘answer’ by choosing the right path. The maze they created started with simple questions like 4 divided by 4, then progressed into more difficult questions like which country created french fries. There were plenty of death traps and black holes along the path for the ozobot if a wrong decision was made. They decided to conduct tests for both ozobots , you can watch one trial in this video. Of course the robot didn’t really evaluate the questions, just took a random path, but they still had fun.

Castlemakers_Ozobot_Maze
The final test path they created. You can see one of the ozobots following the line near the top of the picture. In this trial it picked the correct answer for 4 divided by 4 and even chose the robot vs. human path.

The ozobot color changing capability was a huge hit (different colored lines cause the bot’s LED to match the line color). They are somewhat sensitive to line width, but it’s not a huge factor. The large dry erase board attempt didn’t work well, the bot would eventually scrape off some of the marker then stop. Ozogroove, the dancing app, was pretty useless on a Nexus 7 – don’t bother to install it on that tablet at least.

We’re going to have to experiment some more with hand drawing the ozocodes, the programming language for the robot. It seemed to be inconsistent, sometimes working and sometimes not, even for the same color coded lines. Printed ones worked great. There’s also a coding language, ozoblocky, but that will be a future meeting.

3D Printing, Making, STEM

Model Rocketry in Putnam County

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Rocket launch picture
Rocket being fired from pad #2, which was for some of smaller rockets.

Rocket launching was the theme of the day last Sunday for the Castlemakers that could attend. Nick and Emily Adams extended an invitation to a Rocket Launch at their place south of US40. Four families, along with some invited friends and Castlemakers got to see a wide variety of solid propellant rocket launches in South Putnam County.

Pad #1 was used for some of the larger rockets. Up to size G rocket engines can be used without FAA approval.
Pad #1 was used for some of the larger rockets. Up to size G rocket engines can be used without FAA approval.

Amateur rocketry has been popular for years; many people will remember putting together Estes rockets as kids growing up. That still continues, with additional firms involved, with more gps units, cameras, electronics and even Arduino boards. Many of the tools used in a fab lab/ makerspace are being used! For an example check out the Carbon Origins effort (10,000 feet & Mach 2 before breakup); their story was detailed in a recent article. We didn’t see that kind of launch on Sunday, but there was a video of a Mach 1.5 flight Gus hit the day before at a site near Chicago (and he does a lot bigger rockets).

Gus Piepenburg mounts a camera on the side of number 13 before launch. It wasn't the lucky number of the day, the landing didn't go well and it will become number 14 with some improvements.
Gus Piepenburg mounts a camera on a model CM-10 Bowmarc before launch. The flight didn’t go well, landing in several pieces, and after changes it will become number 14.

What we did see on Sunday was incredible. There were four families that had built multiple rockets, all involved with Indiana Rocketry, and there were two launch pads and 4 towers to launch rockets. I noticed several with GPS units (one hit 2500 feet) and several had cameras. One even had the infamous 808 keychain spy camera, sometimes used in robotics, that had a 3D printed camera case on the side of the rocket.

The local Putnam County 4H has a rocketry group if you’d like to get more involved, or you can also contact the Lafayette-based Indiana Rocketry club which has even more information.