Oct.27+ Video Tutorials

Enchanting project tutorials are mostly videos and very helpful.
So started experimenting with screen capture tutorials for IEC61499 / fordiac


Screen capture: CamStudio as .avi, but can easily be converted to Flash (.swf)
   Tutorials and other documentation online is helpful, like using 20 frames/sec.
   However the video file is still large, so still learning the best options to record.


Editing:  Windows Movie Maker for now.


More to come....

Oct.25 Follow-ups

3 Freshman EE labs (1 hour)
Today was the last of the 1 hour labs. Today two groups finished all exercises and had time to add in motors. An existing Lego "car" robot and mechanical arm robot has their motors plugged into the LMS with forte.  They first tried 1 motor and then had it go in circle with 1 motor forward and 1 motor backwards. The mechanical arm just rotated up /down.


Last week no one finished. Difference was this week started switching the LED on and off via touch and then adding in a second switch and SR FBs.  The last group had problems understanding/ remembering to take out the battery to turn off the LMS. Fortunately this has been changed to the push of a couple of key leading to the next item...


Buttons (and AVRctl):

• Debouncing was changed to only use the value.
• Decoding is only done now in the Button FB
• Right+Left Keys now turn off the LMS
• Code clean-up to match standards - so code review time again

Clock time differences:
The ecos numerator and denominator were changed to match the clock times for LMS found in both Lego and Lejos firmwares. New ecos is still being evaluated.

Oct.19 Freshman EE Lab

The following exercises were used with freshman electrical engineers for 1 hour lab.


Some of the basic concepts touched on were:

• Use of Touch sensor for control
• A blinky LED is to electrical engineering like Hello World is to  programming.
• Flip-flop via blinking LED, plus Set/Reset and Switch FBs
• Trigger on raising edge (turned on) and trigger on falling edge (turned off)
• In Ex.4 reuse of patterns to do something similar

Ex.1 was explained, most finished Ex.2, half made progress on Ex.3, but none fully finished.


Ex.1 Press Touch and LED comes on

Ex.2 Press Touch and LED starts to blink

Ex.3 Press Touch and LED starts to blink, then release Touch and the blinking stops

Ex.4 Press Touch blinking starts, then press Touch a second time and the blinking stops

Oct.15 Regression tests

Finally buttons and avr code clean-up is hopefully finished.

Alot of the testing was to be sure nothing broke due to clean-up.

Regression Test 1: Test as many LMS FBs as possible

• Touch turns on LED 2
• Enter turns on Motor and an LED 1
• If LED1 measures enough light then LED3 comes on. 
• If turn LED2 and point at LED1, then LED3 comes on.
• Or if room very light try putting finger over LED1 and LED 3 should go off
• Very sensitive to room's lighting and might flicker if room light close to light boundary
• Left +Enter turns off

Regression Test 2: Test all buttons

• Change numbers to test button combinations

Regression Test 3: Test Port errors are handled correctly

• Order of the inits is important so the errors / LEDs expects turn on or are ignored