Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #02341
To: Richard Piotter richfile@rconnect.com, beam beam@corp.sgi.com
From: Dave Hrynkiw dave@solarbotics.com
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 22:45:13 -0600
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: BEAM Wokshop '99
At 01:53 PM 4/8/99 , Richard Piotter wrote:
>Regarding the Kits, do the participants buy them there and build them,
>or is it something they get for a participation fee, or are they
>donated??? I've yet to go to one. I'd like to try to go next year (even
>if I have to ride a bus)! When and where are the next event(s). What
>does it cost to go, and how much $ should I expect to need to eat/build
>kits (or does building come before eating??? :)
The Los Alamos National Laboratories procures funding for this as an
educational outreach program where they invite in local (and not so local)
students to come and get involved in electronics and robotics. The program
pays for all the distributed kits which the student can keep. They even
provide adequate tools to build them at the workshop, although anybody
attending is encouraged to bring their own suitable tools.
It's truly an amazing workshop, where the kids get to come and work through
a full gauntlet of simple to complex (and often alpha/beta versions of our
kits designed for the workshop) kits, and get them for FREE. In the past
there was a much more "gimme gimme gimme" attitude where the students
whipped through each kit trying to get a full collection before the 2 days
were up, but I am glad to say that this year that attitude was at the
lowest ever. Students who really appreciated each kit for what it was and
did a good job assembling it were quite abundant.
The Saturday parent/child session was a huge success this year.
Approximately 100 kids put together Sundancer Magbots and SolarSpeeders,
learning about the basics of soldering, solar energy, and BEAM. Being the
"Chief Troubleshooter" at the event, Saturday was the easiest on me as the
parents usually MADE the kids fully read the instructions before coming up
with a "what do I do now?" type of question! 8>
Paul Argo and the Los Alamos National Labs should be congratulated on
organizing such a generous event, and I encourage all participants to send
him a personal email of thanks. The more positive feedback he gets, the
more likely he can arrange larger and better events next year. Send it to
pargo@lanl.gov.
The things we're hoping to see more of in the future are more educational
sessions where there are lectures on the hows and whys of BEAM, rather than
just a big kit-assembly session. There was a bit of that at the 1998
workshop, and it was well received. Unfortunately, there wasn't the time,
personnel, or facility for it this year.
As for the kits, the two new ones were the "SunSeeker" Head Mechanism (1
degree of freedom - left/right), and the "ScoutWalker II" (4 motor bicore
walker). The SunSeeker will be available from Solarbotics shortly, with a
ball-park price around $100 (yet to be fully determined). The ScoutWalker
II had some fundamental design flaws in the PCB that have to be corrected
before we can release it, but it's quite close to coming out of "Beta".
Hint for kit designers: don't attempt to finalize PCB layouts just 2 weeks
before workshop deadlines. Especially on only 6 hours nightly sleep and a
new baby in the house. Baaaaad plan!
We have shot tons of photos and have some already to go up on our website
as soon as we're done catching up with back-orders and email backlogs. Give
us until after the weekend for our first online updates in months!
Regards,
Dave Hrynkiw
Pres, Solarbotics Ltd.
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Um, no - that's H,R,Y,N,K,I,W. No, not K,I,U,U, K,I,_W_. Yes,
that's right. Yes, I know it looks like "HOCKYRINK." Yup, only
2 vowels. Pronounciation? _SMITH_".
http://www.solarbotics.com
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