Being the FRR web page is rather spotty on being updated with meeting photo...  I thought I'd try just updating quarterly with stuff that would of most interest.  So Here is the first quarter of 2008.  Hopefully in some order of how meetings and stuff had actually happened.


Don brought in this robot kit.  It's RF remote controlled and has a video camera


Dave showed this really cool Neural Network board and Camera.  The custom neural network chip can learn patterns and recognize them.


Daniel showed his Game Boy camera robot that tracks a laser pointer.


Joe showed his power regulator board.


Gregs Fire Fighter and Can Grabber robot in progress


To save money Gregs robot uses a PIC on a PC board thats been cut and hand wired to other custom boards.


Dave's nifty MP3 sound board.  Its fully programmable with a flash card.  The plan is the perfect robot voice and sound system.


Daves newest neural network experiments.  This set up uses a generic digital camera that has been interfaced to a neural network board.   The network can memorize a pattern and recognize it again again.  In theory any input device to the network would work.


Another view of Daves neural network test setup.  Lots of wiring, impressive results!


In preparation for the Fire Fighting contest we met at Joes house a couple of times to use his course setup.


Here is Joes SpongeAnator (sp?).  It's designed to put a wet sponge on top the candle to put it out.


The front of the robot,  it works very well.


Gregs second Fire Fighter.  The first robot design was proving troublesome so he has decided on another design.


This version of Gregs Fire Fighter uses a IR sensor behind a fresnall lens to detect the candle flame.  The robot is based on the chassis of one of Gregs earliest robots,  built many years ago.


Ed's Fire Fighter robot.  The robot uses an old PIR sensor that would have turned on a porch light.


Ed's Fire fighter uses stepper motors for drive and RF to talk to a laptop.


Though not a Fire Fighter William wowed us by building a robot from scratch during the evening!  The components are all based around USB Phidgets boards.


The laptop runs Linux.  The robot worked right away.  Though the long chassis showed turning problems.


At a latter meeting William has redone his Linux Phidgets based robot chassis.


The profile is now very compact.


The Phidgets boards will be mounted more tightly in the center of the robot.


Very compact robot laptop design.  William found some very nice light wire USB cables at a $1 store.