Jose A. Molina published a new build:

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Exactly with kids marketing is everything. Math goes down easier if you coat it in coolness.

 

I got one perhaps too many kids. lol 28 in one group. i need to get a lapel mic or im going to lose my voice trying to be heard. lol

 

We have 4 Completed spiders and 16 partially completed ones. im learning as i go so im modifying my teaching techniques to deal with the vast difference in ages i have. Grade 6 - 12th is a wide and varied group.

 

Definitely. I am going to leverage the kids who finished their phase1 project to help the younger kids. im still waiting on several component orders for Phase 2. Plus i have to prep some laptops for Arduino ide and FreeCad. theres no rest for the wicked. You can tell several are all-in already. they tend to hover around Roberta and ask endless questions. I've made a few rookie mistakes especially in not checking some equipment was ready before class started. but i think i got those issues sorted.

 

It's not really related to the Spider Robot directly.
But after Collecting parts over 1 and 1/2 years little bit per paycheck i have finally assembled my Robotics Club Parts Library!
There's enough parts to make 30 to 40 robot spiders and who knows what else once the kids get to imagining.

 

The kids have started to see im not going to build the robots for them. they seem to be breaking off into smaller groups some are focusing on learning to code some are focusing on the physical body of the robot some are designing a central chassis in the 3d modeling program. my plans seem to be on schedule to get them fully owning their spiders. that's blue team. red team is looming. the big team has consistently been harder to keep on track. fingers crossed.

 

Introduced the Big group to basic intro arduino today. got lots of blinking LEDs all over the room. But my goodness there was chaos. if you are a teacher
May your carefully laid out plans survive first contact with students. My goodness am I DRAINED. Next its buttons and after that motor drivers and motors. the spiders are simple so it won't need deep deep arduino knowledge. Small Steps small steps..

 

So i've been watching this channel for months. Nerdville NERDVille
Yesterday i realized the same dang 18650 lithium cells the guy is harvesting from laptop batttery packs fit insde the cellphone charging packs i bought to power our robots spiders. I have years of collected old batteries! Usually a battery pack will fail when only a single cell or bank of cells goes so each battery packs can have between 5 and 1 usable cells! I need 22 cells for 22 spiders so im automatically saving $100, $200, or even $300 depending on the vendor i checked the cell prices at!

 

The chargers have the protective circuits. Well they say they have protective circuits.
I have ordered an imax b6 to do more thorough testing. But initial signs point to success.
I've charged 3 cells and im going to do discharge testing with the imax.
When i go to charge a larger number of reclaimed cells ill move the whole thing to my garage at home where i have a concrete floor and can vent better in the event of an explosion.
right now im only doing a small umber of test charges.

 

Thank you. The kids are super excited but i need to constantly adjust direction. they are all starting from zero. I can already see them specializing in an effort to get ahead of the opposing team. TinkerCAD and MS 3D Builder are super student friendly so the modelers are making small but real progress. we've already burned a few arduinos. The Programmers will have the heaviest lift i think. Because we meet once a week per team I've started making take home kits for the programmers. and tinkerCAD is web based so the modelers can work from home. This only works for kids with home computers tho. home computers are still not universal which i find depressing. if it becomes an issue ill cobble together some Linux boxes from my PC piles to give to my kids. The 6th graders need the most hand holding and their attention spans aren't fully developed so they tend to wander off mentally. In any case it will be fun for them even if we don't achieve 22 spiders. but im a stubborn man so im pretty confident we'll make it.

 

This week i am introducing the kids to MIT App Inventor | Explore MIT App Inventor
The idea being that the kids will design and write apps that will serve as the remote controls for their esp-12f controlled spider robots.
The tuesday group really enjoyed it the Thursday group is the more challenging group with its very High enrollment so im crossing my fingers i can get the kids thru the helloworld app presentation im giving them without having classroom management issues.

 

Success! The big group paid attention and the ones who checked out were respectful of the others who were all in on making cellphone apps.