Making in ECE – LEGO MINDSTORMS

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Jennifer Kraemer (Early Childhood Education) and I are collaborating on a “Making in ECE” class, which will be one of the capstone/MAtC classes in our maker certificates.  As part of that Jennifer has been working with a LEGO MINDSTORMS set, and recently built a little robot.

Jennifer Programs Robots

We sat down the other day to work with the EV3 Programmer app. It reminds me some of Scratch, with a drag-and-drop interface and functional blocks, and we set out to address a classic Logo sort of challenge: have the robot draw/drive a square.

Lego Mindstorms EV3

Having never before used the app, and having no prior programming experience, Jennifer was able to program the sequence, complete with looping logic, and topped off by a few embellishments!

Students Doing Science

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Whenever we do a flight day, we try and have at least one student taking photos and documenting the process.  Here are some Folsom Lake College students at our most recent BAP field day doing science – taking GPS coordinates, shooting the balloon with the laser rangefinder, and logging data.

Doing Science - GPS

Doing Science - Range Finding

Science - Data Logging

Photos from BAP Field Day

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Helping students rig the balloon, with the 3D printed picavet in the foreground:

Preparing for Launch

Lowering the rig to clear the canopy:

Bringing the Balloon Down to Clear the Canopy

Nothing better than doing real science in the field with students (plus wearing a sweet safety vest):

Dowell and Pittman: Men of Science

Additional photos and datasets at the project blog dolookdown.org

The Garden From Above

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FLC's Garden From Above

Field day with Jason Pittman’s (Geosciences) mapping class yesterday. We flew the 3D printed picavet for the first time. After we worked the wetlands, two student volunteers agreed to walk the balloon up into campus, as I wanted to get shots of the garden. That little patch of green in the dry area (above) is the garden. Image below from a different flight for comparison.

FLC's Garden as Seen from Above

The entire dataset can be found at the project blog (DoLookDown.org), as well as the images from our 2014 and 2015 flights of the same area.  When I find the time, I plan to redesign and 3D print the picavet from the ground up, shaving some additional weight.

The holo3000 Molecular Visualizer

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Max Mahoney (Chemistry) and I have been collaborating on a volumetric display for the 3D visualization of molecular models. We developed a pretty sweet prototype, and then Max had the idea that instead of one big monitor, wouldn’t it be easier to just have 4 identical small monitors?

Sketch of Molecule Visualizer

Indeed I think it would be.

holo3000 Molecule Visualizer

The video can be sent from the computer to a 4 way HDMI splitter, then sent to 4 identical monitors – maybe 7″? – each rotated 90 degrees. No special software to deal with, no creation of a special 4plexed version of the video. An elegant volumetric appliance, at least on paper…

3D Printing Tinkertoy-to-Lego Interfaces for Early Childhood Education

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Jennifer Kraemer (ECE) Removing Support Material from 3D Printed Parts from the Free Universal Construction Kit

Jennifer Kraemer (Early Childhood Education) was in the lab today, printing up some new connector pieces from the Free Universal Construction Kit.  I used the K’NEX-to-Lego connectors in a workshop over the summer, and Jennifer is planning on printing many more pieces for use next week for activities with her ECE students.

Jennifer Kraemer (ECE) Printing Parts from the Free Universal Construction Kit

Side note – I’ve been really impressed with the performance of the Printrbot Simple Metal. It’s been getting a fair amount of use lately, with the aquaponics nozzles and Max’s molecules and molecular visualizer and the picavet parts, and it just seems to go and go without being fussy. That said, I have my eye on a Formlabs Form 2. I’m especially interested in the castable resin. It would be great to get a metal pour going in the fall!

Update – 3D Molecule Visualizer

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Working with Max Mahoney (Chemistry) on a molecule visualizer, and we had the opportunity to throw the prototype on a 30″ monitor. The results are encouraging!

30" Monitor-scale Volumetric Projection Prototype

30" Monitor-scale Volumetric Projection Prototype

30" Monitor-scale Volumetric Projection Prototype

Next up: Max is going to render a custom molecule video.  We’ll format that for the system, and assuming all goes as planned, work out the enclosure issues, which will likely involve some CNC work.