Sunday, March 17, 2013

March BoRG Meeting

Our monthly meeting took place at HobbyTown, located at Cole and Ustick in Boise. We learned that the Learn to Make a Robot Class is progressing well and that we have an opportunity to help judge at the College of Southern Idaho next month.


At the Show and Tell James told the group about his 32-bit ARM processor board


He also introduced the group to the Raspberry Pi,an educational computer science product developed in the UK. As James informed the group, the Raspberry Pi is single board computer (SBC) and not a microcontroller. It can run applications written in Python, so it is a substantial step up from microcontrollers like the PICAXE.


Ed brought a Propeller board by Parallax and asked quizzed the group about their knowledge of this product. As we learned, the Propeller has seven microcontrollers and that gives it the ability to run seven processes simultaneously.

March’s meeting took place during Boise Code Camp and two of us spend time at both events. The meeting was also a general construction meeting and several robots neared closer to completion.


Here’s Rhett soldering the finishing touches to the CheapBot-14 robot controller. Rhett finished the robot controller before the end of the meeting and had time to write his first program.


Additional roboticists hard at work. A SumoBot was under construction here.


Lending a hand where needed.

The April meeting will take place at HobbyTown on the 20th. However, two members plan to help judge a robotics competition at CSI in Twin Falls.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Boise Code Camp

Boise Code Camp is this Saturday, the 16th of March. The event is free and open to the public. At code camp you'll learn the latest about software development and technology. The event takes place at Boise State University and begins at 8:00 AM. The venue is the Student Union Build (SUB) located at 1700 University Drive. Learn more at the Boise Code Camp website, http://boisecodecamp.org