Interested in setting up the Arduino IDE to work on Ubuntu 9.10?

Head over to codetorment for a step by step guide for Ubuntu 9.10 32bit edition.

Last Saturday we had a special edition of our weekly meet up. We asked our members to bring some of their robotic creations, and that was totally awesome. I’m proud to say that WCRS we have skilled and creative robot builders.  We are looking forward to challenge our robot builders in our next annual RobotGames .

Thanks everyone who made the show and tell event a success.

Botone, Created by Terry, was driving around nicely, using an Arduino, a ping sensor & 3 servos

A robotbuilder proundly showing an autonomus roverbot that he built and programmed

A new locally made product, from G-Prime, a very handy power supply board for robots,

Mini-sumo wrestlers upgraded with a laser cut sheet metal chassis kit

An arduino powered rover, built around an acrylic chassis

Kids are so quick learners, and Lego Minstorm is perfect to get started

Dave is telling how his BEAM walker robot is working

there was a lot of action and projects of all kinds on display

Curious to see how we use all that new space ?
We are using it every Saturday morning, as we host a buildfest/meetup where WCRS members and guests can meet and have discussions.
Not only that,  we are introducing new enthusiasts  to robotics as well.  This includes, for example- soldering lessons, Lego Mindstorm  programming/debugging, and discussions about new components and technology available on the market for hobbyist robot builders.
We are proud of the recent meetup we had.  It was busy and fun, and a lot of skills and knowledge were shared between members and newcomers.

Come and Join us!

Crowd all along the new bench

Folks having fun soldering electronic components

young new robot builders in action

Collin was showing us the brain for his new robot, a powerfulll 1 board computer, powered by high performance lithium batteries

Mindstorms NXT Lego in action

New work area now available!

This the new work space we built and design, at the Aerospace Museum. (Map) .

The main feature is the the professional type work bench with shelves.   We reorganized our society area by opening it up totally.  We are now fully integrated with the Aerospace Museum.

We also received, from the Aerospace Museum,  a nice brand new display case, waiting to have something in it.

Everybody has totally enjoyed the new space so far,  it is so comfortable, functional and convenient.

Come and have a look yourself;  we meet there every Saturday morning from 10am to 12 pm.

Thanks to everyone who helped to complete the project !

A science fiction festival,  a robotic society… lets put them together and there we go.

And so we did last Saturday, by offering a demonstration for the public of Con-Version25.  We put our robots in motion, explaining-  how they behave, what is their duty, how they are built.

To promote the Robot Games 2010,  we had a mini sumo wrestling fight and  Micro-tanks mine sweeper driving around in the crowd . We Also had a member’s new creation, a mini replica of Johny 5, from the movie Short Circuit.

We also introduced our new RS Media, from WowWee. He is a humanoid type of robot, with walking capablities and other features like multi media and customizable routines.

It was a very good experience  and we are looking forward to Con-version26

RS Media humanoid type robot.

Mini sumo on the wrestling ring

Mini sumos escaping from the ring to meet people

Download it For Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux 32Bit.

Arduino Software Release Notes

0017 - 2009.07.25

[documentation / examples]
* Many new and revised examples from Tom Igoe.

[core / libraries]
* Updated LiquidCrystal library by Limor Fried.  See reference for details.
* Updated Firmata library to version 2.1 (rev. 25).
* Replaced the Servo library with one (MegaServo) by Michael Margolis.
  Supports up to 12 servos on most Arduino boards and 48 on the Mega.
* Improving the accuracy of the baud rate calculations for serial
  communication (fixing double-speed problems on 8 MHz Arduino boards).
  Thanks to gabebear.

[environment]
* Synchronized with the Processing 1.0.3 code base (rev. 5503), bringing
  many improvements (listed below).
* New icons and about image by Thomas Glaser (envis precisely).
* Support for multiple sketch windows.
* The serial monitor now has its own window.
* Comment / Uncomment menu item (in Edit) and keyboard shortcut.
* Increase and Decrease Indent menu items (in Edit) and keyboard shortcuts.
* Support for third-party libraries in the SKETCHBOOK/libraries folder.
* Libraries are now compiled with the sketch, eliminating the delay when
  switching boards and the need to delete .o files when changing library
  source code.
* Arduino now comes as an app file (in a dmg) on the Mac.
* Adding the Arduino Nano w/ ATmega328 to the Tools > Board menu.