[Butia-devel-list] [IAEP] XO robotics

[Andres Aguirre]

> Putting the XO on top of the robot appears to me as a cute photo op thing,
> not a necessity. It would be amazingly cool if the XO camera would capture
> images that real time were processed by the XO, or man a sonar sensor, or
> something. So far I don't think this is happening, and the XO on the
> platform feels like a pour la gallerie innocent gimmick.

In fact, the XO is part of the robot and there is a plugin for
TurtleBlocks that allows to use the camera as a sensor color. (see
followme plugin)
Also you could use better debugging tools using the XO, in contrast
with the option of running the program directly in the
microcontroller.
Also students have demonstrated an emotional link to their XOs. This
can be seen in the
“customizations” that they have made so turning their XO in a robot
puts childrens with an open attitude to learn.


> 1) the PCB were available
> 2) all parts were locally available, even better as kits, reducing
> shipping/customs issues
> I might agree on the "designed to be reproduced by any one".
> (their page says they are available locally, but give no details)
>

You could find some tutorials in
http://www.fing.edu.uy/inco/proyectos/butia/mediawiki/index.php/Construcci%C3%B3n_Buti%C3%A1_V1.8
in particular the PCB file for kicad (an open source eda software is
in our git :
git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/usb4all/code usb4all-code

Some days ago, we received a news that make us very happy, a school
have managed to build they own butia based robot from the scratch and
they documented all the process and shared it. Please see:
http://www.liceocarmendurazno.blogspot.com/
In particular this tutorial is very good!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzz_fLM2Rpk&feature=player_embedded and
is part of our objective as project. And I think is the difference of
a hardware libre project and a open hardware project.

all the best
andrés