RBNV – Robot Builders Night Virtual – October 15, 2024


When

• October 15, starting at 7:30 PM Dallas time (CDT).
• Robot Builders Night Virtual (RBNV) meets each Tuesday evening.

How


• Join Hangouts 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 – How to Debug with JTAG, and ROS2 on a Rpi Zero 2W – September 28, 2024

Join DPRG on September 28, 2024, 10:00AM CDT, at the Dallas Maker Space for two presentations made by DPRG’s own Scott Gibson and Mike Williamson.
 

 
GitHub Link:  ROS2 on Rpi Zero 2W
Mike presents his “ROS2 on Raspberry Pi Zero 2W” project – the cheapest way to experiment with ROS2. ROS2 is a set of open-source robotic middleware and tools.
 
 

 
Scott’s Slidedeck:  Develop and Debug with JTag and VisualGDB
 
Scott shows us “How to Debug with JTAG” for microcontrollers and even the Raspberry Pi. JTAG is an industry standard for testing, debugging, and programming electronic devices. This presentation will introduce you to true debugging, versus beginner methods such as adding print statements.
 
 

These presentations are a great opportunity to be introduced to both of these powerful techniques, which will improve your robot building skills. Pizza will be served at the meeting.

More Details about Presentations:

Debugging using JTAG – Scott Gibson
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“I will be using visual studio (code , community, or the full version will work)  I will be using it with visualGDB plugin. VisualGDB has a trial period but is a package that is purchased. I will be reviewing two different arm families. The LPC series from NXP and the stm32 platform from ST. I will mostly cover C code from my robots. And show some coding bugs I have run into.” Scott previewed his talk at the Robot Builder’s Night Virtual; video clip of his preview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQRFLpQ_vis&t=60s

Scott provided this document that shows what you should install in order to debug with a JTAG interface:
 
 
ROS2 on Rasberry Pi Zero 2W – Mike Williamson
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This project installs the Robot Operating System, ROS2, on about the cheapest ($15) platform that can run it, and connects an LED and an SR04 Ultrasonic range sensor and makes them work. If you’ve got $20 to spend on self-improvement, this is good value. If you have an old Raspberry Pi 3 lying around, or a 4, they will work too (and run faster).

Per suggestion at a monthly meeting, we will likely have a few sessions on ROS2 that will each be shorter in length than usual, possibly presented by different speakers, which will build up from the basics. This is the first one (and the first time we’ve tried this). The intent is to eventually aggregate them into a composite video that covers the topic.

Mike provided a github repo with a README that shows you what parts you need, and what to download:

A direct link to the wiring diagram and parts you need is:
https://github.com/mikew123/ros2_pizero2w_dprg_ws/blob/main/images/Schematic_DPRG_ros_demo_2024-08-23.pdf

 

DPRG Monthly Meeting: Intro to CAD – August 24, 2024

Slide Deck (DesignSpark Mechanical / 3D Printers): Slide Deck (PDF)

Join DPRG on August 24, 2024, 10:00AM CDT, at the Dallas Maker Space for dual presentations highlighting two perspectives on how to get kickstarted into learning computer aided design, CAD. Learning CAD can be daunting, and beginners are often overwhelmed. Presenters Jon Hylands and Doug Paradis will show two approaches using different CAD programs: onshape, an excellent web-based CAD program, and DesignSpark Mechanical, a simplified version of SpaceClaim Engineer.

Both presenters will be stressing “How do you get started?”.

The presentations will use a simple pendulum example proposed by Paul Bouchier and follow up with a slightly more complex bumper design. Again, overcoming the hurdle of getting started and the mindset used versus the mechanics of the programs will be the emphasis of the talks.

This is a great opportunity to finally figure out how to get started in CAD and meet others with similar interests. Pizza will be served at the meeting.

Note: If you want to follow along with the presentations you should have an account with both onshape and DesignSpark, and have the free version of DesignSpark Mechanical loaded on your computer.
onshape registration
DesignSpark Mechanial Download and registration