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How to Start a High School Robot Club on No Budget

2013-12-09 Dan

AndyOrbit asks, “Hi. I’m a high school teacher with a few students interested in Robotics. Anyone have some advice on how to get a proper Robotics club started with virtually no funds? ”

Hello! Great question.

Perhaps your new robotics club isn’t just a robotics club – it’s a young business people’s club disguised as a robot club.

I started a business making robots because I needed a way for my robots to pay for themselves. Building a robot is very very similar to building a company. Each begins with a plan, is built by humans, and eventually should become mostly self-sustaining. It gives feedback, it reacts, and is very much like a living thing. The successful ones generate an energy surplus that they use to grow.

So how does this apply to your club? The young people need to find an opportunity where an achievable robot would fill a need for a price below what people are willing to pay and above the cost of the machine. Then it’s “how many can the club make?” That leads into all kinds of adventures in design for manufacturing, mass production, outsourcing, and probably butting heads with the school board over who owns the rights and the profits – all valuable educations that won’t come from FIRST or VEX.

Also, I made this poster for young people to start learning about robotics. I hope it helps.

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Vancouver Hackspace Timelapse Nov 2013

2013-12-05 Dan

A Panning time lapse test of the new “Malcolm” Pan/Tilt head we are working on right now. The Malcolm has better than 0.01 degree precision and is good for time lapse videos, star tracking, gigapan images, and more. Help us develop new applications and get a reduced rate on your purchase.

Curious fact: in this video the camera is taking a picture once a second and the robot is moving three times a second. It could be even more smooth!

Click ROB-0017 Malcolm Pan/Tilt Robot for more details.

Special thanks the Vancouver Hackspace for being our guinea pig.