Category Archives: News

RBNV – Robot Builder’s Night Virtual – 10/27/26

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When

• October 27, 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.

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.