Category Archives: News

RBNV – Robot Builder’s Night Virtual – 11/10/26

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When

• November 10, starting at 7:30 PM Dallas time.
• Robot Builders Night Virtual (RBNV) meets each Tuesday evening.

How

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

Why

• Talk robots & related stuff.
• Make it easier for people to attend DPRG remotely.

Agenda

• Round table – everybody spends a couple minutes telling what projects they’re working on.
• Ad-hoc presentations – Whoever would like to show & tell.
• “Stump the club” Challenges – Ask for help if you’ve hit a roadblock in your project. Somebody in the club can probably get you pointed in a good direction – or even arrange a side bar session to help.

Note: We record a video of these sessions and post them on the DPRG YouTube channel. By joining the meeting, you’re giving consent to be included in the recording.

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.

Meeting Summary:  Meeting Summary (PDF)

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.

RBNV – Robot Builder’s Night Virtual – 10/20/26

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Meeting Video:

AI Generated Meeting Summary:  Meeting Summary (PDF)
Star Rewards  (★ = significant robot progress, ⭐ = robot progress and running on floor):
Stars are awarded by group during the meeting. –>
Mike Williamson – ★
Mark Reynolds – ⭐
Paul Bouchier – ⭐

When

• October 20, starting at 7:30 PM Dallas time.
• Robot Builders Night Virtual (RBNV) meets each Tuesday evening.