Join DPRG on February 22, 2025, 10:00AM CT, at the Dallas Maker Space for a presentation “KiCad for Robots” by DPRG member Doug Paradis. The presentation will step through the process of using the EDA tool KiCad to develop a printed circuit board (PCB). The presentation will have four parts: intro to the KiCad interface, building a schematic, laying out the PCB, sending the design to the PCB manufacturer, JLCPCB. KiCad version 8 is used during the talk.
Attendees are encouraged to download KiCad from https://www.kicad.org/download/ before the meeting so that they can follow along on their laptop.
Separate from the presentation, will be a DPRG club vote on electing a new Vice-President and filling the new position, IT Officer.
Pizza will be served at the meeting at Noon.
DPRG meetings are open to the public and all are welcome to attend.
The meeting can be joined remotely by clicking the Google Meet “Quick Join” button below:
The annual meeting is where DPRG handles important business, and members have a chance to share their views concerning club direction. It is important that members try to attend.
There will be no DPRG December meeting at the Dallas MakerSpace. Also, the RBNV meetings for December 24 and 31 have been cancelled. DPRG wishes everyone a good holiday season and New Year. The next meeting is RBNV on January 7, 2025.
In place of the December meeting we will have a robot power holiday lunch at Kelly’s Craft Tavern on Preston just north of highway 121 on December 30. It will begin at 11am and you can arrive anytime before noon, when lunch will be served. We will have a private area to socialize in, capable of holding up to 20 people, and we will have waiter service for food and beverages.
Please RSVP here if you haven’t already done so. We’ve got about a dozen RSVPs so far. Reservations
Everyone is responsible for their own tab.
Location:
3191 Preston Road, Frisco, TX 75034
Join DPRG on October 26, 2024, 10:00AM CDT, at the Dallas Maker Space for a group meeting. The Canadian RoboColumbus Plus Competition to be held in the Stoney Creek, Onterio area has been rescheduled to coincide with the local competition in Farmersville on November 23rd.
At this month’s meeting, Dallas area competitors in next month’s local RoboColumbus-Plus competition, are encouraged to show-and-tell the current progress of their robots.
Pizza will be served at Noon. The meeting is open to all.
note: The featured image of this article is part of an inside DPRG running joke with our Canadian members.
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 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:
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.
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.
Join DPRG on July 27, 2024, 10:00AM CDT at the Dallas Maker Space for a Swap Meet and social gathering. There will be no presentation this month, however there will be pizza. Members are encouraged to use this opportunity to socialize with other members and guests, and to dig deep into their hoard of robotic parts and offer them for swapping. This is a great opportunity to get to know other members better, prove that you aren’t really a hoarder (you just like shiny), and maybe pick up something interesting.
Join DPRG in a virtual meeting held on June 22, 2024, at 10:00AM CDT for a presentation by Bob Cook, winner of the 2023 SRS RoboMagellan, on how to use AI to detect traffic cones. Bob will cover everything from data collection to building a model and loading it onto a small board computer. This is a great opportunity to see in a practical manner how a model is built.
Chat Record: Chat record (PDF) Star Rewards (★ = significant robot progress, ⭐ = robot progress and running on floor):
Stars are awarded by group during the meeting.
No stars rewarded this week
Robie’s Highlights:
• Ray C. – Described his appliance that links his robot to his laptop via Serial using a ESP-NOW.
• Brief discussion of Wixel.
• Jon H. – Showed his progress on a new robot based on Adam Savage’s Star Wars robot prop.
• Discussion on Roborama rules.
• Discussion on sensors used by Mike W. on his 3 unit ToF sensor’s with 8×8 senssing array per sensor.
• People discussing problems (whining) they were having with their robots pre-competition.
• Paul B. offered basic PiDog program for Quick Trip on GitHub to encourage participation.
When
• May 28, starting at 7:30 PM Dallas time (CDT).
• Robot Builders Night Virtual (RBNV) meets each Tuesday evening.
Join DPRG at the Dallas Maker Space on April 27, 2024 at 10:00AM CDT for a presentation by Brady Pamplin on how to design printed circuit boards and have them made professionally. Use the DPRG Door Bell for entry. Pizza will be served during the meeting. Meeting will also be streamed over Google meets (new link:meet.google.com/mwm-imzg-rss Join by phone: (US) +1 470-222-8542, PIN: 334726924) for remote viewing.
