Summer Curriculum Camp Presentation

I was asked to do a presentation on my robots for teachers at a summer curriculum camp at the Cattaraugus Allegany BOCES.  I gave an hour presentation and answered a lot of questions about the robots and what I have learned building them.

 I really enjoy sharing the different robots that I have made and trying to get more people to do them in schools.  Here is a link to my presentation that I made to help show the different robots I have made

Presentation

I will also have a booth at the Fredonia Mini Maker Faire at the end of October (https://makerfairefredonia.com/) , and I have a booth at the Rochester Mini Maker Faire the weekend before Thanksgiving (https://makerfairerochester.com/).

Quirkbot

Here is my review of the Quirkbot robot for Strawbees.

Here are a couple of videos that were taken while I was first exploring the Quirkbot

Go here to learn more about the Quirkbot.  I highly recommend this robot!  http://www.quirkbot.com/

Meccano Meccanoid G15-KS

I took a bit of a summer break from writing for my blog, but now I need to share some of the projects I worked on during my  time off. 

 My Meccanoid robot  didn't have good directions on how to put it together.  Sometimes you would have to go back and take one step apart because the directions did not explain it that well.   You would have to pay close attention to the drawings because that’s all the directions really gave you, and sometimes they were hard to see.   It was quite confusing but when it was finished, it could do a lots of impressive things.    It knew how to tango and do ballet, responded to my voice, and told jokes.  It took me about 12 hours to put together but on the box it said for ages 10 and up.

Now into the positives.  One positive thing about it would be that he does have some very impressive skills end I can also program him using only motions.  I think it is pretty cool that I can control him with my phone.  You can also by extra  servos to put on him and the extra  servos will allow him  to move more like an actual human.   His knees do not Bend which is good because if they did the robot would be even more expensive than it already is because it would have to have a bunch of sensors say it's going off balance or something like that.

When we got the meccanoid, his “brain” was dead so we called the company and they sent us a new one quickly and then later we lost the power cord and the company set us a new power cord without charging at all, which was great customer support.

   You can also take apart the “human-like” meccanoid, and rebuild it as a dinosaur. I think that's pretty cool because when you make the dinosaur his tail will actually wag back and forth.   I think it looks sort of like a velociraptor when you put it into dinosaur  forum.  I  brought it into school and all my friends thought it was cool.  Most of my friends don't like robotics that much but  they liked meccanoid.