Category Archives: Meeting Announcements

DPRG Monthly Meeting – Learning to Program a Robot Using AI – 10/24/2026

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The October 24th DPRG monthly meeting offered a workshop where participants received training and hands-on experience using AI to program a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller. There was a mystery Robot Motion Challenge, which turned out to be programming the session robots to do a break dance. The robot was modification of the robot kits used at the August workshop.

The participants came up with many good solutions. Some had the AI program score the dance to a specific song on YouTube. Another participant captured a picture of the table that was used and had the AI program a dance that remained inside an area of the table.

WORKSHOP CONTENT

Theory:

  • Workflow: AI Prompt Engineering -> hardware
  • Robot + RPi Pico overview
  • PWM and motor speed control

Hands-on:

  • Load and run an example sketch on the RPi Pico – confirm LED operation
  • Ask AI to write code. Run the code on the RPi Pico
  • Design a solution to “The Challenge” and ask AI to write code that implements your design
  • Test the code on the RPi Pico. If it works, test it on the robot. If it doesn’t, ask AI to help you debug it.
  • A link to the hardware used is  https://tinyurl.com/PicoAiBotHwBuild. The robot used for the challenge used two PNP transistors to drive the motors.

DPRG Monthly Meeting – “Hack-a-Bot Challenge” – 8/22/2026

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The scheduled tech talk speaker for this month’s DPRG monthly meeting had to reschedule at the last minute. So, our glorious leaders have cooked up something a bit different (and a lot of fun) for this weekend’s meeting.

With details intentionally vague, the event is DPRG’s first “Hack-a-Bot Challenge”.

The concept is simple. You’ll split into teams, be given a goal, work together on the project, and then after a couple hours work and some pizza, we will test your creations in a death-defying contest (for the bot!)

The only heads up I can give is that soldering will probably be required (bring one if you can, we will have a couple on hand otherwise), construction with cardboard, hot glue and duct tape a strong possibility. A few hand tools would also be advised. Microcontrollers will be optional, and 3v will be all the juice your franken-bot gets.

We will live stream as usual for our remote members so that they can enjoy the mayhem.

See you on thw 22nd (Saturday), at 10am at Dallas Maker Space!

Everyone is welcome!

Post Event:

For the competition, each team (locally, there were 5 teams of 3-4 persons/each and 2 remote competitiors) was given an inexpensive line-following robot kit that used a cross-comparative circuit that drove the motors using a simple transistor driver. The kit had two light-dependent resistors (CdS) sensors illuminated by LEDs to detect the edge of the line. Kit Amazon link is https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZH4XLQ3?ref=emc_p_m_5_i_atc&th=1 .

The challenge was to build a robot that could knock two plastic cups off a table, keep the robot on the table for 30 seconds after knocking off the cups, and stop. Scoring was 1 point for each cup removed from the table, 1 point for not following off the table, and 1 point for stopping. All the teams achieved 3 points, except for one which received 4 points. Some of the teams had to troubleshoot a PCB defect that prevented one motor from running. The event ran from 10:30AM to 2:30PM with pizza served while working. Everyone one enjoyed the event and learned something.

DPRG at Moon Day – 7/18/2026

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DPRG shared a presentation area with Iron Reign FTC 6832 team and Lovejoy HS’s VEX robotics teams 1082B and M at this year’s Moon Day event held at the Frontiers of Flight Museum near Love Field in Dallas.

It was the first appearance of DPRG’s 7-foot Robie mascot with improved neck mechanics and facial recognition at an event. DPRG presented an array of robots for event attendees to see and ask questions about.

Iron Reign showed one of their FTC robots and had a 3-D printer setup to produce moon and space themed earrings and key chains that they distributed to event attendees.

The Lovejoy VEX robotic teams demonstrated two of their competition robots and displayed the multiple awards that they won this year in state and regional competitions.

All three exhibitors were busy all day sharing information to event attendees, from young to old. A great time was had by all.

DPRG Monthly Meeting – ModLinker: A Different Approach to Robot and System Design – 6/27/2026

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DPRG’s monthly meeting for June was a presentation by Mark Dombrowski on ModLinker

Presentation Summary:  Meeting Summary (PDF)

ModLinker is an attempt to create a set of tools for making modular hardware systems, like robots, simple to create, reuse, scale, and share. The talk will be an introduction to the system followed by a request for beta-testers.

The beta version of the system is based around Raspberry Pi Pico microcontrollers and MicroPython. It is designed to be simple enough for beginners but also allows features for more advanced users.

DPRG Monthly Meeting – Unitree Go2 Robot dog (and maybe more…) – 4/25/2026

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Meeting AI Summary

The April monthly DPRG meeting featured a presentation by Sensori Robotics, who demonstrated their Unitree Go2 Robot dog. It was a chance to see a robot “dog” go through its paces. Sensory Robotics also discussed their pivot from robotic mowers to building research-focused, wheel-based, bi-manual humanoid robots that use physical AI software. Ross Melbourne explained that the shift to Vision Language Action models and zero-shot learning is driving massive funding toward humanoid robotics.

After the presentation, Sensory Robotics had a give-away of excess inventory from the Robotmow mowers that they have liquidated. The give-away included brushless DC motors, wheel motors, mower wheels, and various other parts.

The post meeting show-n-tell which is always an interesting time to share ideas. Tnis month’s show-n-tell included a demonstration by Jason of his animatronic robot prototype, ‘Endoskeleton’. Also, Mike Williamson made robot runs of his 495-gram sumo robot and his ROS barrel racing robot. They performed very well.

A pizza lunch was served after the meeting. Next month is Roborama!

DPRG Monthly Meeting – Show’n’tell, Swap-meet, Plans for Robie – 2/28/2026

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The DPRG will hold its February meeting at the Dallas Makerspace this Saturday Feb 28 at 10AM. There will be a buzzer on the door to admit attendees to the Makerspace. With the holiday season and the club’s annual meeting over, it is now time to start to build robots.

The agenda will be:

  •  Show’n’tell. Bring your robots to exhibit, demo, and talk about. This is great motivation to start this year’s project.
  •  Swap-meet! Bring anything you don’t want that you think someone else might. Be prepared to find stuff you want. This is a good opportunity to do some spring cleaning and concentrate your robot building efforts.
  •  Robie repair/upgrade brainstorming & planning. At the annual meeting it was proposed to start up biweekly in person work meetings to repair and upgrade Robie as a club project. Ideas and help are welcomed by anyone wanting to make him even cooler.

All are welcome to attend the meeting.

How to watch remotely:

• Join Google Meet https://meet.google.com/mwm-imzg-rss
• Join by phone: (US) +1 470-222-8542 , PIN: 334726924

DPRG Annual Meeting for 2026 – January 24, 2026

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The DPRG held its annual member’s meeting on Jan 24th. Due to the weather the meeting was held by Google Meet only.

AI summary of the meeting

The agenda was:

  • Election of officers for 2026
  • Brainstorm what members want the club to do in 2026,
    • Tech-talk topics
    • anything else – activities, competitions, etc.

The officer candidates for 2026 were elected:

President: Mark Reynolds

Vice-president: Paul Bouchier

Secretary: Doug Paradis

Treasurer: Steve Edwards

IT Officer: Pat Caron

See the AI summary for the results of the brain storming session of ideas for 2026.