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December 2001 Minutes

The newly elected officers are:

John Caldwell
Secretary

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November 2001 Minutes

Nomination of officers for 2002
Robot Demos
Show and Tell

John Caldwell
Secretary

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October 2001 Minutes

If you have a copy of this months minutes please email to webmaster@dprg.org. Thanks!

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September 2001 Minutes

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August 2001 Minutes

Officer in Charge: Clay Timmons
Attendance: 26 members, 6 guests and 7 1/2 robots

1 Eric Y. Tanner's has some very nice Handi board kits with 68C11 and charger for $79 They also have some very good Pittman motors for $11. Eric is working on some motor mounts for the motors

2 Terry Interface board

3 Frank E. Tanner's has Atmel Hardy boards in a development kit for $70. Frank downloaded some freeware that works well

4 Ed O. Ed is planning on using sonar tape measures for Can-Can

5 ? K-Bee Toys has some good motorizes cars called Silver Fox

6 David M. Demonstrated his Lego Mindstorm X,Y plotter; the pens are controlled by 2 separate motors. The plotter uses a Lego Techniques control center (Kit #8954). David got the kit through www.lego.com

7 Ron G. Demonstrated his 6 legged robot. It has 2 servos, each driving 2 legs. The 2 other legs are for balance

8 John C. Demonstrated his Can-Can robot that grabbed cans at the Spring RoboRama.

We circulated and signed 3 thank-you cards to send to the appropriate people at Bill Priest Institute and The Science Place. We discussed the walking robot rules: revised ruled will be sent out by September 3.

John Caldwell
Secretary

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July 2001 Minutes

We met in a large classroom #1080 at the BPI
There were about 45 people there.

Panels: Bill Boyer is obtaining the 1/4 PCV plastic paneling for us. It will be cut into 2'X2' squares and sold for less than $10 each to members. To get some show up at the PR Lunch Thursdays. at Collin creek mall or the next meeting Subject to first-come-first-serve.

T-Shirts for sale Both Monogrammed and Artwork T-shirts still available Get at meetings or Robot Power Lunch (RPL)

We discussed our calendar:

• Sept. 1: Labor day
• Sept. 8: Monthly meeting - RoboramaB Trials, course setup
• Sept.15: Roborama B contest at Science Place
• October 6: Monthly meeting - Table Top Robotics contest Include "Stick" (walking robots) contest if we have entries and rules
• Nov. 3: Monthly meeting - Freestyle Art/ Show-&-Tell event Show off what your robots can do. First time at club meeting, other events in public like Science Place

Tanner's demo: Frank will find out if we could hold a monthly meeting and demo at Tanners for fun.

• Free-Style Robot event.
• Junk-Bot Wars.
  • Duplicate controller and parts given to 2-4 teams. 4 hours later we compete.
  • Lego sets or Parallax BoE-Bots suggested as part used
• Line Maze contest like SRS uses
  • Good step up for line following robots
• Micro mouse contest - Kip researching rules (still no luck yet)
• Sumo and Mini sumo robot contest suggested. Use standard robot size as per North West robot and SRS sumo rules and DPRG Type A mini robot.

I was the only officer at this meeting and room was full but attendance was down. Must have been lots of people on vacation.

Robert L. Jordan
DPRG Prez. 2001

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June 2001 Minutes

43 members and guests, 18.5 robots. 5 guests joined!!

Dennis Draheim

1. Digital, Hall effect compass 3" x 4" $12 @ Wirz Electronics
2. RF radio transmitter and receiver 433.92 MHZ FCC legal $15 for the set @ Reynolds Electronics Indoor range over 100' uses a serial port
3. Electric piston using memory wire needs between 2 and 5 amps The 3" long piston can mover about 3/4" each cycle takes several seconds

Erick Khane

1. 6 mm PVC sheet makes a strong, light chassis We will try to find the cheapest source and make a group buy

Jon Williams of Parallax

1. ISD sound chip uses human diphongs; comes in male and female voices $59 from Parallax

Bill Boyer (Rodent)

1. Very nice 3 wheeler for quick trip uses motor and gears from Tanners, Basic Stamp and 9 volt battery. The chassis is angle aluminum He said "I'm tired of Legos winning Quick Trip".

John Caldwell

1. We will publish the Draft rules for the Walkers within 2 weeks

John Caldwell
Secretary

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May 2001 Minutes

If you have a copy of this months minutes please email to webmaster@dprg.org. Thanks!

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April 2001 Minutes

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March 2001 Minutes

Bill James, our vice-president, filled in for Robert Jordan, president, who was out sick. There were about 38 people, 9? guests, 7 robots.

Two H-Bridge boards were donated by Parallax and are on loan to members for evaluation.

FireFighting contest is March 17th at The Science Place 12-4pm.

Parallax also donated a prize (forgot the exact name) which is a starter kit for robotics. It has tools, equipment, microcontoller, kits, etc. all in one nice package worth about $300.

T-Shirt contest! A motion was made and voted on to have the Parallax starter kit as a prize for the best artwork for a new DPRG T-shirt. Draw something robotic related with DPRG on it for the back of a T-shirt. Use only 3 colors. Bring a sample to the next meeting for the contest. The club will vote on the best design and the winner will get the Parallax starter kit. The winner of the starter kit will be asked for feedback on the kit. Write up the feedback for Parallax. They are considering making this a product.

Ed Koffeman will be giving a presentation on Make and Bake surface mount PC boards at the next meeting.

Mitchell James came to the DPRG meeting to talk about his new web site for collaborative engineering projects. Check out http://www.innertransit.org/ for more information.

Ed Koffeman brought an RC car he had modified for autonomous racing. The car uses Sharp IR sensors to detect when it should turn away from a wall. Ed uses vinyl moulding to outline a race course for the car to travel on. Ed was using the OOPic board but plans to switch to the Mini Robo Mind for speed. He also had a nice little ultrasonic sensor available from acroname. The sensor is cheaper than the poloroid sensor and detects from about 1&quot; to 9'.

Frank Elias had a question on a 555 timer circuit he was working on. The circuit was supposed to move a servo to three seperate positions, center, left, and right. He brought and oscilloscope and I think a few people helped him get it working right.

Clay Timmons had his robot with a new 486 single board computer for a brain. He plans to add sensors to the robot and compete in FireFighting.

John Drummond had his robot with Sharp IR sensors and bump switches. John has two IR sensors per side to detect not only distance to the wall but the angle relative to the wall. The robot has a keypad and LCD display for operation and debugging. He used the gearmotors with wheels from Tanners but they ran too slowly. To boost speed he built a DC-DC converter to step up the motor voltage to 24v.

Charlie Youngblood had a gripper arm from a medical supply company. They are used to extend a persons reach and would make a nice robot gripper. They come in various lenghts and cost $26. He also had a scrapbook page on robotics made by his wife.

Tom Day had some surplus parts including a toy RC car which he is donating for a prize for RoboRama.

David Martineau had a RAD robot which was acting flakey. The motor for the open/close arms would only open not close. He also had one of the little chrome CyberSpyder toys. It is controlled via IR remote and sequences of moves can be programmed. He warned about taking the CyberSpder apart that it was difficult to get all the legs back together correctly. David also had a lego robot that he hopes to add a rotation sensor to.

Travis Trotman had a lego robot he had entered in a Science Fair. He discovered how much better a rotation sensor works rather than just programming distance according to time. When the batteries get weak the time programming distances get messed up while the rotation sensor still works. Open loop vs closed loop control!

Clay Timmons

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February 2001 Minutes

The DPRG meeting and Tabletop Robotics contest was a hit!

Lots of visitors. Plano High School Physics class to build a robot for Firefighting and Roborama A. Collyville high school, others.

5 Tabletop Robotic events:

• Quick Time for about 8&quot; robots (Type A)
• Quick Time for about 6&quot; &amp; 4&quot; robots (Type B &amp; C)
• Line Follower for about 8&quot; robots (Type A)
• Line Follower for about 6&quot; & 4&quot; robots (Type B &amp; C)
• Mini-Sumo for about 4&quot; robots (Type C)

17 & 1/2 robots & many ran in multiple events. Estimate of 62 people at the meeting. The room was full! Lots of fun & lots of winners

• Erick Yundt for being the Contest Coordinator & judge
• Vicki Taylor for her work on the Tallying software and for helping with the event
• Tom Day for help with the course & etc.
• Tom Day's sister for volunteering as a last minute judge
• Eric K. for writing software for the club to try
• Ralph Tenny for serving as a judge
• Course custodians John Caldwell, Eric Yundt, & Robert Jordan
• Julia Jordan for paperwork and tallying scores
• The Science Place for use of the facilities!
• I know I missed several people. Sorry! Guess I was having too much fun to catch all the action!

Clay Timmons' robot was a minimal robot vs. his laptop robot It had two transistors, named "2 tran", two motors, two batteries, a black veil and two photo sensors. It performed very well. Guess it was more of a "pocket `bot" sized robot.

David Peterson had Sarge 1 (DOA) and Sarge 2 that won several awards

We had lots of kids involved and they went away with prizes!
Dan Miner's daughters (Melissa & Christa (?)
Randy Manning (Frank Elia's kid)
Ed Koffman's boys
Kaylee Jordan

The Mini-Sumo robot contest(about 4"X4"robots) was so well received that several people pledged to make robots for the next contest.

Robert L. Jordan

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January 2001 Minutes

DPRG Meeting Summary 6 January 2001

There were 9 robots at the event!
About 30 people attended.

John Caldwell had name Tags available. Good going John!

New Officers re-introduced

Clay was absent due to an ill family member. We missed you Clay!

DPRG Calendar and Events was posted to the list Friday. We discussed dates and adding some dates.

Table Top Robot Contests
Robot size, weight contest and Rules
details was passed around. Info on list.
We had the tables setup at the rear of the room

First Table Top Robot Contests to be held Feb Meeting. It looks like there will be about 10 or more robots at the event. We discussed that the contest will have certificates and likely no prizes. We decided that the robot sizes should be Table Top Robot (TTR) Type A -8" square, Type B - ^' Square, and Type C 4" square. The TTR Type A (8"X8") should run the contest on an 8'by 8' course made from parts of the "photo paper" contest arena. We had this setup at the front of the room and it worked well!

Member Feedback:
Erick Wagner got us samples of the 6 pin, Light-to-Freq. TSL230 IC from TAOS (X-TI) company. Turns out Bill James lives next door to a company Officer. See Erick for some of the remaining samples

A special presentation was given by Jon Williams of Parallax Inc. He delivered the club a Parallax "Stamp Works" starter set worth about $300.00. He showed 5 different stamps and announced the future release of the Stamp 3, a long rumored Killer Stamp. It looks like it will have everything you could want on it, Dallas 1-wire bus I2C buss, etc.

Remember paid DPRG members with their name on the DPRG member list get a 25% discount from Parallax!!!

They have special every weekend you might want to look at to. I don't think we get discounts on special prices.

This week end the OEM BS2, $59 retail is $39 if ordered on from the website. 33% off!

David Peterson showed his little Camera gear-head motor driven Table Top sized robot. He reminded us to use bump switches or slip clutches on the wheels. His gears lost some teeth to a wall jam.

Kaylee Jordan showed off her BoE-Bot chassis painting and the Tyco Racin' Rats differential drive R/C car.

There was a URL sent out on the list previously for a BS2 Stamp hack to this car. It comes with a fast re-chargeable 4.8V battery - 4 1/2 N cells.- and charger. See Super Targets.

Ed Okerson has a Billy Bass motor driven Robot well under way.

Travis Toutman had a line following Lego robot

Frank Elia had his Billy Bot motor driven robot moving.

Charlie Youngblood found a neat R/C car at the Salvation Army for $.80 It had motors, wheels, steering, H-Bridge, and other goodies. He is building it for quick trip.

Dennis Draheim was back for lots of traveling. He had his "police bot" running again without the "red light" lid.

David, and others had some good stuff. I missed several people and robot I'm afraid! I'm sorry, there was a lot going on!

Table Top Robot Experimentation was shared on the new Table Top Robotics courses after the meeting.

Robert L. Jordan