Day: April 30, 2004

An old friend from my days working at Intelledex is willing to collaborate with me on writing a book on Beginning Robotic Programming with Projects. It is time to start putting down some goals and scope for the project. This is my first pass. Nina is a published author (a book and a good number of magazine articles). She is a technical writer at ATS where I am currently employed and a wonderful friend.

Automation Controller: The automation controller project really needs to be broken up into three main sub-projects and a plethora of sub-sub-projects. I am just going to try to describe what I believe to be the sub-projects today. This can certainly change, but it is good to have it written down so we can have something from which to work. The three main sub-projects as I see them now are 1) A book describing how to buy, assemble, and program all the readily available elements of a robotic automation system, 2) a hardware kit containing all of the items used in the book, and 3) a home learning curriculum for homeschool students with timelines, additional explanatory materials, visual aids, knowledge worksheets, exams, and other appropriate materials.

The purpose of the book is to describe how to program a number of standard automation devices that can be controlled throught he serial port of a computer. It should be noted that robotic guidance and other machine vision tasks would be a great topic for volume two of this series. The following devices have been identified as being important to this project:

Stepper motors

Digital inputs

Digital outputs

Analog inputs

Analog outputs

After all the basics are covered, the accumulation of these devices into working subsystems is covered in the following way:

Conveyor controller

Temperature controller

Robotic aquarium w/fish feeder

Linear axis control

An XY table

Adding a z-axis

Supporting text file motion programs

A CNC dremel tool router

Robotic gripper

Robot arm

Supporting text file robot programs

Automatic hot chocolate maker/pourer

This weekend was a great weekend for new ideas. Lorena, Kelly, Christian, and I needed to go to pick up a metal cutting bandsaw to take up to my father in the Portland area this weekend, so we decided to do a little homeschool shopping and go the Washington Square mall while we were there.

Planning: When we homeschooled Kelly during her first grade year, we bought a lot of stuff at a place in Beaverton called Christian Supply. We went there first on Saturday, but were a little bit surprised that they had a much narrower selection of homeschool supplies than we expected. I think part of my disappointment was based on the fact that I have read a lot more about homeschooling now and know about the vast breadth of materials available to us via the internet.

Next we went to the mall. After eating our regular teriyaki chicken, Lorena and Kelly went clothes shopping while Christian and I sat in the Borders bookstore and read. Christian always reads the Foxtrot and Calvin and Hobbes books. I was looking for books on Python so I could read up on how to do my homeschool robotics project. The only thing I could find was a book on Python and HTML, so I started browsing the business books section.

Every now and then, when driving around on the weekend, I have tuned into a radio talkshow called The Dave Ramsey Show about personal finances. He has what I believe are great ideas on financial repsonsibility. I decided to take a look at his book The Total Money Makeover. It is pretty heavy on anecdotes and pretty light on actual methods, but the book’s ideas work for me. I read much of the book in the hour that I was sitting in the bookstore and was very inspired by the time everyone was ready to go.

On the trip home to Albany, Lorena and I talked about some of the ideas in the book. I think the idea of teaching those kinds of concepts about money to children as part of a homeschool program is a great idea. Kelly, Christian, and I have been talking about money, business, and financial planning for quite a while now. They really are intrigued with the idea of doing some investing.

The Moore Foundation has, as one of the core elements of their famous Moore Formula, the running of a “home industry” that fits right in with all of this, too. I will start thinking and planning a curriculum for the kids based on the responsible management of money and the responsible management of a business. My thinking is that I can use the GnuCash software program coupled with the ideas from Dave Ramsey and the Moore Foundation to come up with a great money curriculum for our homeschoolers.