If you’re using the FEZ or USBizi boards like I do, you’ll be interested to see a new SDK went online yesterday. Details can be found at http://tinyclr.com/forum/12/2491 and there are some really great new features included.
Posts Tagged Robotics
If you’ve been following the path of the Microsoft Micro Framework (and maybe talked with us at the ‘08 Austin Maker Faire) then you know that things have moved forward and open sourced a LOT. Well, today we just announced that the beta for .Net Micro Framework 4.1 has opened up on http://connect.microsoft.com. Take a look! Some very cutting edge stuff going on there!
With MRDS marching forward so quickly it’s been hard to keep example software up to date. I was very happy to loop back around and check the web site of my favorite MRDS book and saw that the example code has now been updated for the 2008 release. You can find the updates at http://www.promrds.com/ if you’ve got this invaluable book and want to get the projects in the book up and running with the 2008 release easily.
I2C to USB Adapter
Feb 3
This one’s as much for me as for the regular post.
One of the coolest thing about embedded development today is that there are so many parallels to the original PC development space. For instance the I2C bus is actually filling the old S-100 bus space, but unfortunately you really had to dive full scale into it to utilize this capability. Or you did – there’s a new (to me) adapter to allow you to connect I2C devices to a USB bus for prototyping and testing. http://www.acroname.com/robotics/parts/R286-USB-I2C.html Way cool – there’s some really nice devices that come as I2C so Now those are a lot easier to work with!
Catching up on my feeds – you’ve seen me typing and talking about one of the interfaces where bits and atoms meet up, that being rapid prototyping. Most of the time I’m talking about some of the “Grass Roots” efforts such as Fab@Home, but Wired Magazine covered the other side of it, the professional, super high quality prototype machines that are being used every day to do things like build dental implants (San Antonio) or other highly customized objects. You can see their podcast at http://www.wired.com/video/latest-videos/latest/1815816633/rapid-prototyping/3236261001 and see some of the really cool items they created such as a single assembly point drive chain by creating it already put together. (I’ve seen them created with no assembly points by just fabbing the chain on it’s side.)
Grr, I REALLY am impatient for the TechShop to open here in Austin!
Robots everywhere
Aug 21
Just a note – tonight I’ll be talking with the North Houston .Net group about Robotics Studio and some of the really interesting things you can do with it. We’ll be talking CCR, DSSP, and the Simulator, with some brief journeys into the VPL.
Unfortunately that means I won’t be able to make DorkBot 16 tonight – raise a glass for me there, and I’ll try to make sure I’m around for the next one.
Robotics Mediacast
Jun 23
If you’ve been following the Robotics Studio stuff, I’ve just caught up on a series of Robotics Mediacasts that I’d found. There are some nice things going on there around Robotics as an industry – but it seems they finished their run for now in May. Catch up on it as well at http://lis.epfl.ch/resources/podcast/
Angel Lopez was pointed out to me as someone who’s really gotten into Robotics Studio. I went to check his blog at http://ajlopez.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/distributed-agents-and-fractals-using-dssvpl/ and was incredibly impressed. He’s not only put together some great mathematical services for Robotics Studio to work with to create Fractal graphics, but has enabled the underlying CCR manager to handle the load balancing and DSS to make it all loosely coupled! Wow. And he’s got the code up on his Skydrive for you to play with as well!
With Wall-E coming up, it got me to wondering if something like this would help manage render farms! Let Robotics Studio handle the load balancing and throw frames at it! I remember how hard it used to be do to that with my old Lightwave setup that I had running for a while, this sounds like it would be a much better solution.
Way to go Angel!
The RepRap (Reproducing Rapid Prototyper) people announced last week that they had succeeded in creating their vision of a self replicating machine. Now my personal opinion is that they’ve jumped the gun a bit since they have just managed to create all the non off-the-shelf parts for their device, but it is great to see their progress! On Show #9, I talk just a bit about why the Fab @ Home guys (and by extension the RepRap team) got me interested in Robotics studio and the talks and shows that have come out of that.
You’ll probably recognize the hardware, but the software is new. 
