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About the Course
Robot Brain Surgery is a fun single-day course where students pull-apart an inexpensive electronic insect toy and attach a programmable 'brain' - a microcontroller board that allows them to control movement of the two motors as well as attach other components. After making the basic modifications, the students add an ultrasonic distance sensor, a digitally programmable RGB 3-LED strip, and a buzzer.
The aim is to get the students:
- Learning basic soldering
- Learning some simple drag-and-drop programming
Health and Safety
This course involves soldering, so the following precautions need to be taken
- Soldering irons will be kept off/unplugged unless being used
- Students are warned about the dangers of soldering etc (see below in the comments about running the session)
- You should be aware (as should the students) where the closest cold water tap is in case of burns
- Students wash hands when they go on breaks if they have been soldering
- Staff are always vigilant for inappropriate use of the soldering irons
In addition, please read the soldering risk assessment.
The Kit List
Student consumables (per student to take home at the end)
- 1 x Hexbug toy
- 1 x Crumble microcontroller board
- 1 x Micro USB cable
- 1 x 3xAAA switched battery pack
- 3 x AAA batteries
- 1 x Laser-cut circular mounting plate
- 2 x Pairs hook/loop 20mm dots
- 2 x Custom 4-track connector PCBs
- 11 x Small coloured hookup wires (2 each of yellow, green, blue, black,red, and 1 of white)
- 2 x Double-sided foam sticky pads
- 1 x Active Buzzer
- 1 x Strip of digital RGB LEDs (3 on each)
- 1 x Ultrasonic sensor
- 1 x Stamp card (to be created)
Student tools (one each, not to take home)
- Disposable plastic bowl (for temporarily holding the small parts when handed out)
- 1 x Computer
Student tools (one per pair, not to take home)
- Soldering iron with stand
- Small amount of solder (around 30cm wound in a loose loop)
- Small Phillips screwdriver
General class kit
- Hot glue gun with a couple of spare sticks
- Pair of scissors (for cutting hook/loop dots into pairs)
- One 5m extension lead per 2 students (for soldering irons/laptops)
- 1 x 4-way power board per 4 students (for soldering irons/laptops)
- Craft knife for helping students open Hexbug boxes
- 1 x Demo robot (with brain already surgically added!)
- Multimeter
- Solder wick
- 1 x Stamp
Pre-Camp Setup (By Tech Camp)
- Laser cut plastic mounting plates
- Test out ultrasonic sensors
IT Systems Check
- Crumble is installed, opens and can successfully program a board
- Student logins work for this website
- All videos work in the student guide
- Check following websites are available:
- courses.techcamp.org.uk
Preparing Yourself
Like any practical course you'll find this much easier to teach if you have run through it yourself as completely as possible first. Even if you're experienced with electronics and programming this will allow you to find out which parts of the course are tricky. Also, when we're running a course for the first few times there may be the occasional mistake or parts of instructions that are not clear and this is a great way of identifying them.
As a minimum, you'll need to:
- Read through this guide completely and be comfortable with it
- Try all of the programming challenges out with the pre-built robot
As a tutor you may not actually physically build a robot of your own (please ask the Technical Manager if unsure) for a couple of reasons:
- As an adult, the build process should be quite simple
- You would be better concentrating your time on the programming challenges
- There may be minimal spare robots at the event.
As the start of this course is tutor-led you'll also need to run through your delivery of the course a couple of times - ideally out loud, but at least in your head. If you are working with more than one tutor, you will want to decide between yourselves how to split the tasks/explanations in this initial part of the lesson.
Pre-course Setup
This workshop needs both soldering and work at a computer. As the instructions that the students need to follow are online, ideally the soldering equipment would be nearby the computers. However if space does not permit, and there are plenty of spare desks elsewhere in the room you could set up separate soldering and computing areas but be aware that there could be a lot of movement between the stations so this is not ideal.
If working in a classroom without computers (when using Tech Camp laptops) it is important that there are no trip hazards caused by laptop, soldering iron and extension lead cables. Generally if you have choice of classroom layout you will want to have the tables around the perimeter of the classroom, or at least small rows of tables coming out directly from sides of the classrooms (no side aisles) so that any cables can come from the wall to the tables without crossing a walkway.
For each student pair, set out:
- 1 x Soldering iron in stand
- 1 x Small loop of solder
- 1 x Hexbug
- 1 x Phillips screwdriver
The other components can be handed out when the students arrive. This both saves time in producing all the kits before hand but also gives you an opportunity to interact with the students, explaining what particular parts are, etc.
Rules for Students
- Students must use soldering equipment properly (see below)
- If they lose components they must find them! It's very easy for small components to be dropped, so looking around the work space (and on the floor) should be the first thing done when they claim not to have something. We have limited numbers of spares.
Guidelines for Tutors
Running a practical course like this is always tricky, but this course has some moments that you'll want to watch out for ...
- When students first start unscrewing the insect toy, make sure you keep an eye out on how they are going, circulating quickly amongst all of the students. They are liable to strip the head of the screws unless they press hard enough, and this will make it very hard to remove them later.
- For some students this might be their first experience of soldering so they need some direct instructions and some close supervision when they first try this out (see below).
- Don't give 'spare' components out to students - the supplied kit list should be stuck to.
- Don't ever give to the students the large reel of solder - always keep this in a tutor-only area and hand out small amounts as they need it. (It's not unusual for students to see what happens when they push the soldering iron directly onto the solder reel ... what happens is that the solder strands all quickly melt together and the once useful and expensive reel has to be binned, leaving you with a course to run and no solder to use!)
- Some of the battery packs briefly disconnect under power causing the board to reset. This is caused by a slightly too thick piece of plastic in the moulding inside the case. Grab the knife from the emergency toolkit and carefully remove it as shown in the picture, which should stop the problem!
- As always, if anything gets broken, flag it up to the Technical Manager as soon as possible so that spares can be checked if needed.
Tom's Terrific Tips (for Crumble!)
Just a few suggestions if a crumble programme doesn't work ...
- Do you have a 'Program Start' block connected to the rest of your code? Without one, it won't work.
- Do you have multiple 'Program start' blocks? If you have more than one, crumble won't know which one to use and even if there is an extra one that isn't connected to any other code it may well stop your programme working.
- Do you really not have multiple 'Programme start' blocks? Try dragging your mouse around on an empty bit of the code screen and you'll be able to pan around. It's possible that there's some extra code blocks hidden in an area you can't see them.
- Is Crumble saying 'Programming Successful' when you hit the play button? If not, something is going wrong - probably the board is not plugged in. Occasionally one of the USB ports can get locked out, so try another one first. Last resort, try resetting the PC!
- Could it be a bad USB cable? Try swapping a known working cable in.
- Check the code! Most of the time something doesn't work, it's software!
- In particular, check that you are using a 'Do Forever' loop where needed. It's easy to leave out but in any programme that needs to be looping around forever checking inputs and acting on them, you probably need one!
- It is possible to have Crumble programmes that are too long. The Crumble software sometimes looks like the cable isn't connected if this is the case. Try programming just a small block of code if you have strange problems that look like this
Running the Session
- Tutors introduce themselves / kids introduce themselves
- Optional welcome activity
- Explain what they will cover in Robot Brain Surgery and get them excited - they will learn about:
- How to disassemble a motorised toy and disconnect the motors
- How to re-connect the motors to a microcontroller board
- How to do some simple soldering
- How to programme a microcontroller to control the motors
- How to control other components like buzzers, LEDs and ultrasonic sensors
- Ask them how many have soldered before?
- Ask those who have to give some safety tips to the rest of the class. You will want them to suggest (or you) at least the following:
- Where the hot parts are - you need to be very explicit here, showing them the difference between the metal parts and the plastic parts and tell them if they touch the metal parts it will hurt!
- The irons must always be kept in the stands when not being used
- The irons must only be used to solder parts as per the instructions
- The irons must not be used to make 'solder blob monsters', melt plastic or other materials (it releases toxic gas as well as damaging things) or as a weapon!
- The irons must only be turned off after use
- If they do burn themselves they need to go to the closest water tap and run their hand under running water (show them where this is - the tap that is, not their hands ...)
- They need to wash their hands at the end of the session.
- Tell them that if they haven't soldered before, you'll be there to help and that they should let you know when they're ready to solder for the first time so you can help.
- Also mention that the hot glue gun is hot (funny that) and they need to be careful (and you need to watch out for any problems here as well).
Handing out the components
As mentioned, handing out the components as you need them may take up a few minutes of class time but it will allow you to explain something about them right at the start when you've got their attention. You will want them to put each part in their bowl as you hand them out, to keep them from being lost.
Here are the parts to hand out. The bracket text indicates some suggested things you might want to mention:
- 1 x Crumble microcontroller board (programmable over USB, has two bidirectional motor controllers built in, will 'remember' your programme which will work even when the programming cable is removed)
- 1 x Micro USB cable (suggest they try plugging/unplugging it into the crumble)
- 1 x 3xAAA switched battery pack
- 3 x AAA batteries (they can put these in the battery pack as you hand them out - good opportunity to ask if they know which way batteries should be inserted)
- 1 x Laser-cut circular mounting plate (laser cutting is pretty cool - mention something about this!)
- 2 x Pairs hook/loop 20mm dots (also called Velcro - used to attach battery pack to toy)
- 2 x Custom 4-track connector PCBs (makes connecting wires simpler - we'll use two of these - one for the motors and one for the ultrasonic sensor - could tell them how PCBs are made with etching/drilling/fibreglass, etc)
- 11 x Small coloured hookup wires (2 each of yellow,green, blue, black,red, and 1 of white)
- 2 x Double-sided foam sticky pads
- 1 x Active Buzzer
- 1 x Strip of 3x digital RGB LEDs (Can specify any colour on any of the LEDs individually - they work in a 'daisy chain' by each one sending the commands to the next one in the chain so they all receive their colour information. Could also explain what RGB means and how this allows us humans to see any colour).
- 1 x Ultrasonic sensor (Like a ship's sonar - uses time taken for sound to bounce off an object to work out how far away it is)
Now the students can:
- Unbox their insect toy
- Take it for a test drive before they give it a lobotomy (although you might like to warn them with infrared control someone next door to them might make their robot walk off the table if they're not careful)
- Start the disassembly process and work through their own guide
As mentioned before, when the students are removing the screws, check regularly that all is going OK and they're not stripping the heads. If you experience considerable problems here you may need to help them remove the screws.
Here's the link to the student guide ...
Extension Challenges
The students will probably be quite happy working on their own ideas, but if you want some more here are a couple:
- Make the robots dance - two or more robots programmed with the same code look quite cool when started together and running through the same moves
- You could make some sort of impromptu maze to navigate through - perhaps using items in the classroom
Packing Up
Your supplies should always be packed up as neatly as they came! This means:
- Components are in labelled bags, and grouped in bigger bags
- There should be no bags of unsorted components