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英語で電気工作教室 Week 5
If week 4 was about assembling the robot from the SparkFun Pan/Tilt kit, then week 5 was about getting the completed assembly mounted and working.
This week, we were going to be sawing, drilling, soldering and tinkering!
After cutting a length of wood to act as the base, they decided they wanted to add some colour to the wood. Not sure if a whiteboard marker is the best thing to colour wood with, but it gave it a nice vivid red colour!
We then mounted our completed robots onto the base with a couple of small screws. Next it was on to making the robot controller, this consists of two potentiometers (aka pots) fixed to a wooden support. So again after cutting the various bits we glued them together with hot glue. Once this had set, we were then able to drill two holes in the top to allow the potentiometers to be attached but not before we had soldered the leads to the pots!
This actually proved be quite scary for the children, I think the heat of the soldering iron and seeing it melt metal spooked them a little Anyway once all the leads were attached it ws time to connect everything togther. So that meant running the leads from the potentiometers to plus and minus power rails on a breadboard and then running the remaining center lead to the Arduino. We then repeated this with the servos on the breadboard.
Once all those steps were completed and checked it was time to upload the program we had created on mBlock to the Arduino using a USB cable. You can see the completed robot in action in the video below.
https://youtube.com/shorts/HZgOCn6FISM?feature=share
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A Nice Cup of Tea in Shakujii-koen
As part of our other jobs at The Three Little Pigs cafe next to englishpool, we have recently started making a series of videos where we go out to the countryside and enjoy a picnic.
In this video we were at Shakujii-koen in Nerima, in the north western corner of Tokyo. It was the first time to visit the park here, and it was quite a revealation. The park stretches along two naturally formed ponds and was the site of the Toshima-clans castle a very long time ago. Up until the 1950s the ponds were fed by a natural spring until house building changed the lay of the land, and the spring stopped replenishing the water in the ponds. And judging by the size of some of the houses around the park it's not so difficult to see how they may have affected the topography of the area.
I have never seen such big houses in Tokyo!
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英語で電気工作教室 Week 4
Week 4 was all about building the robot. We are using the ROB-14391 pan/tilt bracket from SparkFun as the base of our robots. It is actually designed for mounting a camera on, hence the pan and tilt functions but for us it provides some really cool movement along two axes.
The ROB-14391 comes with all the parts needed to construct it, including the servo motors. So today was all about following instructions, and fiddling with tiny, tiny screws. Needless to say it was quite hands on so I didn't have a chance to take many photos.
Next week we will connecting the completed robot to the arduino, and making a base for it to stand on.
The printed instructions in the kit consist of six diagrams, in the style of Ikea assembly instructions, and were a little dificult to follow. Fortunately I had made a video showing how to build the ROB-14391 a few months ago, so we were able to watch this in the class to help us along.
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英語で電気工作教室 Week 3
A quick look at what we covered in week 3 of the English and Electronics course:
After a quick review of last week's contents and checking that the LEDs were working as expected when pushing the switches along to a colour song, we decided that the resistors we had used were too low a value as when connecting to the Arduino we'd be working with 5v and not the 3V supplied by the batteries. So we changed all the resistors to a higher value!
With this job completed it was time to connect the circuits to the Arduino UNO microprocessors. This entailed removing each push switch and connecting a jumper lead from a pin on the Arduino to the LED on the breadboard. We also removed the battery pack connection and connected the negative lead to the GND pin on the Arduino.
Next it was time for programming. After looking at all the available options for a programming interface for the Arduino, including Visuion, Ardublock, and miniBloq I decided that the mBlock visual interface would be the best fit for elementary aged students. It's based on the Scratch interface which many children seem to familiar with and it comes with support for connecting to the Arduino.
After explaining that we xcan control each pin on the Arduino using the program, and that we needed the pin to be set to 'high' to turn the LED on and 'low' to turn the LED off I challenged them to create a program that would light the LEDs in the order of the colour song we had used with the push switches. The completed code is below:
We then uploaded this to the Arduino UNO, which is such a breeze with the mBlock software that the children soon mastered the art of changing their programs and seeing how it changed the lighting patterns.
Finally we filmed a demonstration of the program in action which you can watch in the short video below!
https://youtube.com/shorts/1cRDnZWfdgw?feature=share
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Cream Tea at Komatoge, Hanno
Last week we took at trip to Kinchakuda (巾着田) near Koma station in Saitama. We then hiked to Tenranzan (天覧山), a small mountain overlooking Hanno city (飯能市) before catching the train back to Tokyo.
On the trail between Kinchakuda and Tenranzan we took a break for a Cream Tea. For those that don't know a Cream Tea is a traditional British snack time which involves drinking tea and eating scones with clotted cream and jam.
In this video Paul shows you how to have a Cream Tea in the great outdoors!
Enjoy!
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英語で電気工作教室 Week 2
A quick report on week two of our English and Electronics (英語で電気工作教室):
We had a quick review of the content covered in week one especially the names of the various components (switch, light, wire, battery etc) and the idea of an electrical circuit needing everything to be connected in orde for it work. This was helped by completing a worksheet to identify the valid circuits.
We then looked more closely at LEDs, I had a selection of red, green, blue, orange, yellow and pink LEDs for us to use. But what do LEDs need to keep them happy? That's right, a resistor. So we looked a various resistors and using a color code chart were able to read the values. For example red, green, brown bands indicate it's a 250Ω resisitor, brown, black, brown band equal a 100Ω rsistor and brown, black, black bands will indicate a 10Ω resistor. We used a magnifying glass to help see the bands!
We then moved on creating a bank of buttons to control the various colour LEDs. For this we used an electrical breadboard, so firstly we looked at how the breadboard is wired before using nippers to trim the buttons, LEDs and the all important resistors before placing them in the breadboard to create valid circuits.
Once we had checked that the various LEDs were inserted the right way round, and all the circuits were working we proceeded to push the buttons to light up the LEDs. We either called out colors and the children had to press theright button or we made up modified color songs and they had to follow along!
We finished by discussing what we had learned today, and packing the completed circuits in a bag so the children could take them home and play. Next week we will be attempting to automate those buttons by connecting everything to an Arduino.
You can also watch a short video clip of the LEDs lighting up as a student pushes the buttons following my commands (more or less...)
https://youtube.com/shorts/mwYyK7sEMEE?feature=share
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At the Park
Here is the video for the At the Park book we are currently using in our Saturday Kinder class. As is usual with the Potato Pals series it's one of those catchy tunes that soon has the children up and dancing along!
As a side note, this year we discovered if you turn the 'ride on the see-saw' page upside down Chip appears to be at risk of plummeting into the abyss
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英語で電気工作教室 Week 1
A brief report on week one of our English and Electronics (英語で電気工作教室) class:
We started with introductions and a safety talk then we looked at various components we will use in the course, for example switches, lights, LEDs, motors, batteries, wire etc. After trying to remember the names of these components in English we completed a worksheet about the symbols used to identify these parts in a circuit diagram.
We then looked at how electricity flows around a circuit. We identified the positive and negative ends of different batteries and measured their voltages using a multimeter---good chance to practice numbers. The idea of a complete circuit was a little difficult to grasp...all the components must be connected to each other to form a circle...with no gaps!
To reinforce the idea of a complete circuit we used the Snap Circuits board to quickly create a circuit using a battery and a light. We then expanded this to include a motor, push switch, on-off switch and an LED.
We then finished the lesson reviewing what we had learned so far, and looking forward to week two!
What's this Spider Called?
This spider is a relatively common sight in englishpool, and also in my home, but what is it called?
Well up to last week I had no idea of what kind of spider it was but then one of our elementary students brought one into class with him. Normally this would have the effect of the other students jumping around and making a commotion but not in this class! In fact one of the girls proceeded to tell us all about this kind of spider:
It's Japanese name is haetorigumo(ハエトリグモ) known in English as a 'Jumping Spider'.
As the name suggests it can jump. The surprising thing is that it jumps in order to catch its prey, literally jumping on the potential meal and catching it. Because of this method of catching prey it doesn't need to make a trap so you never see spider webs.
A big thank you to the student for enlightening us all, and needless to say we let the spider go! Especially as they live off a diet of flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, stink bugs, and ants so not only are they clean but they also provid a vital service!
The 5 Senses: What Can You Hear? (Or, how to create a crackling campfire sound using bubblewrap!)
In this video Paul shares with you an amazing sound effect one of his students created while they were looking at the five senses (sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste.)
Did you know that by popping the bubbles in a sheet of bubblewrap you can create a realistic crackling campfire sound?
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What Sound is this?
As part of today's elementary school class looking at the five senses (sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing) my students discovered this sound:
What can you hear?
Do you know what it is?
Cream Tea
Here is something to brighten up your weekend. Watch as Paul shows you how to, eats and finishes a Cream Tea in just over 1 minute.
A 'Cream Tea' is a kind of Afternoon Tea, usually two scones served with clotted cream and jam, all washed down with a pot of tea.
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Robot Time
As part of our English and Electronics course (英語で電気工作教室) I've had great fun building these mini-robots using only an Arduino Uno, Sparkfun's Pan/Tilt Bracket and some connecting wires.
While the bracket build can be little complicated for young students, there is a real sense of acheivement once completed. Hooking the bracket up to the Arduino is as simple as making sure the servos have got power and then connecting the control wires to the correct ports on the Arduino.A few cable ties help keep everything tidy! The pan/tilt bracket really needs to be mounted on something or it will just keep falling over. In this case I used a piece of wood to mount both the pan/tilt bracket and the Arduino Uno.
On the software side, the stuff that controls how the robot moves, we would usually use the mBlock application. This is a block based coding system which is easy for young minds (and old!) to understand. Although in this video, which is intended as a demonstration, I used the Arduino Servo Library and modified the basic sweep program.
The slowly pulsating LED lights are not controlled by the Arduino, they have their own 'chip' and were salvaged from a children's toy. As this is intended to be used as a demonstartion I thought the lights added a bit more excitement!
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At School
Also in our Satuday Kinder class we've started on the second book in the Potato Pals series, At School.
Here is a video from the books creator, Patrick Jackson, so you can practise at home.
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