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Unread 16-10-2013, 06:08
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RyanCahoon RyanCahoon is offline
Disassembling my prior presumptions
FRC #0766 (M-A Bears)
 
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Re: Looking for collaborators

Quote:
Originally Posted by matthewdenny View Post
our budget is $250-$700/yr
As you state, it's very hard to do robotics on this kind of budget. Are you able to seek additional grants to fund startup costs for your class, such as purchasing hardware kits?

Even though Arduino boards only cost $30, if you're going to do robotics, you'll need the motor driver boards, batteries, motors, mechanics and structure. I think about the simplest robotics kit you can get is BOEbot, which is currently retailing at $145. Splitting 4 kits across 25-30 students is going to be rough.

One solution to this is to offer a more complete set of virtual activities that don't require the robot hardware, allowing the hardware you can afford to be multiplexed more effectively.

The ROBOTC programming language offers a set of Robot Virtual Worlds for this purpose. The same language can also be used to target both Vex and Arduino controllers, and there's a full set of curricula. Downside: it's not freeware. If you're looking to develop your own free curriculum and tools, though, the virtual approach might be something to explore.

Full disclosure: I'm an employee of the CMU Robotics Academy, which helps develop ROBOTC, as my day job.
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