Crumble

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peterwaller
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Crumble

Post by peterwaller »

I recently received an email from Mindsets Online about the crumble controller board.
It is designed for schools to promote science and the idea of coding.
Though not yet available from them you can get them from Redfern Electronics.
http://redfernelectronics.co.uk/shop/
I bought one to see if I can get my 7 year old grandaughter interested and I must say I am impressed.
The ability to write code by just dragging the instructions into place and then varing both the item controlled and what you want it to do is very intuative.
http://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble ... g-started/
The board has two motor drive outputs which at the moment have forward, reverse and stop but will include speed control soon.
There are 4 input output lines and some small addon boards call sparkles.
These contain the WS2812b chip which is an RGB led with full built in controller.
These can be set to any colour and they are daisy chainable upto 32 in line so with just one output you can individually progam any of the 32 LED's to any colour.
The boards are an the large size because they are designed to be connected via crock clips (supplied) but they can also be soldered.
At the moment the programs can't be save or reloaded but that should be available any time soon.
Once you have the code ready it is transfered to the board via a USB cable (supplied) and once loaded the board retains the code even without power until you reprogram it.
My granddaughter has had a quick play and seemed interested so I am building it into a smallish vehicle that she can program to do things.
As the sparkle boards are a bit large for this use I have ordered some of the chips already daisy chained on a flexible track from ebay and I think they will just connect straight in and be programmable.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/0-5m-WS2812B- ... 233d046aed
Even if she doesn't really get into it at least I am having fun and you never know maybe some coloured lights might start to appear on my robots.
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peterwaller
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Joined: Fri Feb 15, 2002 12:00 am
Location: Aylesbury Bucks
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Re: Crumble

Post by peterwaller »

I have mounted the crumble board onto a 3cell AAA battery holder and fitted connectors for the motor drive and LED controls.
I have built a basic 2 wheel robot chassis which this sits in and have it all running.
Just need the software release with save and load functions then I can see what my 7 year old grandaughter can make it do.
Image
Image
You can't see in the video because the LED's are too bright but the front ones are white and the rear ones red.
http://youtu.be/T06Noym6bqU
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