makerspace

Project- Light Up Poetry with Chibitronics “Love to Code” Arduino Board

/ gravescolleen / 6 Comments

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Programming Goodies!

About two months ago, I was honored to get to receive a prototype of a “Love to Code” Arduino board that Jie Qi and Chibitronics are currently working on. (If you don’t know how much I love paper circuits and Chibitronics, then read this post before going any further.)

The first thing I had to try was to hack my own disco paper circuit from our Big Book of Makerspace Projects and get my disco dancing on it’s own!

Computational Tinkering

I LOVE how easy it is to map out a circuit and then clip this “Love to Code” board to the circuitry. I decided to try out an RGB LED and do a little computational tinkering to see how different sets of code would effect the blink.

It was so simple to dream up an idea and map it out with copper tape, that I began to get way too complicated in my design ideas. I had a few failures, so I started chatting with other makers about design ideas and brainstorming more ways to use this new technology. Suddenly I had it, I’d seen lots of black out poetry, but what about using lights to “light up” poetry?  I spoke with Josh Burker about tweaking this fun poetry idea and he made a super cool project with lights and poetry.

See Josh’s light up poem here.

Light Up Poetry

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I’ve been dreaming up multiple ideas for what I wanted my own light up poetry to look like, and I kept coming back to one of my favorite poems by e.e. cummings: “l(a” I absolutely adore this poem and how the words themselves look like a leaf falling, so I knew I had to make this poem as if the words were animated and portrayed the loneliness of a leaf as it falls to the ground. I wanted each stanza to light up separately and give the viewer some time to think and experience the words as the falling leaf. Initially, I wanted to have the circuit on the clipboard, then have a sheet with the poem and put a semi-transparent gold paper with leaf drawings on top. I made my circuit, practiced drawing leaves, and tested out the light.  Plus, I decided to incorporate my battery holder from sewing circuit club.

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When I started testing out my ideas, I found that the words would barely show through when I layered multiple papers. But I still really still only wanted leaves on the top layer and the words to not be visible until the light shined on them. I kept trying different types of paper and printing the poem darker…. it wasn’t working, but I didn’t want to give up on my idea.

I ended up making the poem into an image, flipping it and printing it so that the words were printed in reverse (or mirror image) on the back side of the paper. I mapped out a new circuit and hot-glued together a cardboard frame so the light would be able to diffuse a bit before lighting up each word on the top paper.

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My reversal trick worked, but I still wanted to harness the light from those little LEDs. So I made some foil leaves to aid in reflection, poked holes for the LEDs to shine through, and covered the bottom of the foil with scotch tape to insulate my copper tape traces and prevent short circuits. (And I ended up adding more LEDs to the template above)

 

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The pieces fit together and now the light gives off a magical glow of a hidden leaf under the drawing.
I hacked a simple fade code on my phone to light up each stanza and then light the first and last stanza together so readers would see the word “loneliness.” I’m pretty happy with the result! See below:

I have more ideas about lighting up poetry that I want to try soon, and I hope this tinkering will convince students (or teachers!) to play around with literacy in this way.

Coding and Paper Circuits

One of the things I really love about Arduino (versus something like Raspberry Pi) is the hands on aspect. But all the wires and breadboarding can be confusing when you are totally new to this type of making. I remember when I was hooking up my first Arduino project and I thought I had to match all the wires to the correct numbers on the breadboard so that it would look exactly like the diagram. I had no concept of what I was doing electronic-wise. I knew I had to hook wires from the Arduino to the bread board to the components, but I don’t think I really understood how any of it worked.
And I think that’s why I now prefer sewing circuits. Once I started sewing my circuits and programming and controlling components with e-textile boards like Lilypad, Flora, and Gemma, I actually started to understand how the wiring and coding was controlling the project. 
All of the coding and wiring made so much more sense when I had hands on experience with the components. That’s why I often suggest teaching students paper circuits before sewing circuits, and before programming with Arduino. I think these skills build on one another and students will need a solid foundation to understand how circuits work so they can pull those components off of breadboards and put them into projects.
I’m stoked about Jie’s new board because I think it will make it even easier for you or your students to understand how the microcontroller is working and I think laying out copper tape traces will make your learning visible. 

Plum Geek Wink Robot Review- More Love for Arduino

/ gravescolleen / 1 Comment

colleengravesposts-10In my last post, I discussed my laborious journey toward learning to program Arduino projects. If only I’d had a wink robot by Plum Geek! This cute bug-looking robot was actually designed to help educators teach students the Arduino programming environment (see Wink for educators).

The lessons developed by Plum Geek are a great way to teach students the basics of Arduino, help them begin programming LEDS and motors, and then start learning harder CS concepts like: conditional statements, Serial.print functions, sensors, and more!

Check out the great lessons here!

The big difference in learning Arduino this way, is that with this pre-built robot, students could focus on learning programming before learning to put together electronic components to build their own robots. Even though one of the things I love most about Arduino is the hands-on element, I’ve found that teaching kids to hook up components AND learn a programming language is a bit too much to ask at first.

Cost 

69.95- Compared to other robots I’ve previously reviewed, I think this is relatively low cost.

Pairing

This is not Bluetooth pairing like other robots, but of course, you are programming in the Arduino IDE on a computer, so you need to hook up Wink to load programs and watch how changing the code changes the robot’s movements! Most standard laptops are able to download Arduino, but if you can’t download the software (ie you have a Chromebook), you won’t be able to program this robot. (For a long time there was a great site called Codebender that allowed you to program Arduino boards via the web, but it is shutting down.)

Functionality

For any Arduino project, it can be complicated to download the free Arduino software  and then install the proper libraries, and FTDI driver (if you don’t have installation rights). However, Plum Geek does have some great video tutorials to walk you through this process. If you are new to Arduino, it’s important to understand the Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment aka open-sourced software) and the idea of libraries.

You can install “libraries” specific to boards (like Wink or the Hummingbird Robotics kit) and components (like Neopixels). It’s basically a library of “sketches” (which is a term for program) that you can easily upload to your Arduino board. For those new to Arduino, the Arduino board is a microcontroller that controls other electronic elements. When making and developing Arduino projects, it is common to hook up motors, sensors, LEDs, and control them with Arduino sketches. The great thing about Wink is that it is pre-built with an Arduino board, and LEDS, motors, and all components are already soldered together. So this little robot will still teach students how to: program LEDs, control movement with motors, incorporate sensors, and  begin to work with and understand conditional statements.  (Which your kids are already learning if they are working with Scratch!)

Best Age Group

You won’t like me saying this, but it really depends on the kid! I’ve taught some willing 5th graders how to control an LED utilizing the Arduino IDE, but I’ve also had high school students look at this learning environment in fear!

For schools, it really depends on your school culture. At Lamar Middle School, many of my students came to me already knowing how to use Scratch Programming, so looking at code in Arduino wasn’t too far of a stretch. However, at my current school, most of my students have not heard of Scratch! (EEEK! Which is why I’m currently catching up students by teaching all incoming freshmen to create some basic games. )  So if your students are already coding in Python and working with Raspberry Pi then your upper elementary students COULD work with the Arduino IDE. However, I see this robot more suitable for middle school to high school aged students.

(Note: Plum Geek’s webpage does say age 7 could complete the first few lessons. I’ll have to try them on my 7 year old to test that out….)

Usability

Once I figured out the correct way to hook up my robot for uploading programs, it was simple to upload code and test my bot! (But be advised that if you hook it up the wrong way, you could burn out this little guy!) When following the lessons, it’s pretty easy to play with the code, problem solve, and even start debugging when Wink doesn’t do what you want him to!

Flexibility

This robot is specifically made to help students learn Arduino. Even though it’s purpose is to teach students about coding, it can still be tied to math and physics concepts.

Longevity

As long as you don’t hook up the programming cable the wrong way or step on your robot because you think it’s a real bug, then this is a quick and sturdy little robot. See my videos below to see it in action!

 

Final Thoughts

If you are wanting to get a lot of students involved in Arduino programming either as a class or an afterschool robotics club, then I think this is a great starter robot for you!

I have to add a shout out to Brian Pichman of Evolve Project for telling me about these little guys! Thanks for sharing, Brian!