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Welcome to the BlocklyBot wiki!

BlocklyBot is an after school program designed for 5th and 6th grade students. The object of the course is to construct a 'Mobbob' Robot that can be programmed via the 'BlocklyBot' Android application.

The course is setup in the following sessions (one day a week, 1 hour each):

Introduction to the Mobbob Robot and Administrative details.
Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) project using Tinkercad to design a phone holder/clip for the robot that fits the students phone. Each student will individually design a simple part comprised of 3 geometric shapes to create a 'sleeve' that holds their phone attached to their robot.
3D Printing fundamentals and using an FDM printer to print the phone holder/clip that the student designed previously. We will examine and learn about a 3D printer and use one to print a part of the robot.
Create a 'Bill of Materials' using Google Sheets to itemize the materials and cost of the Robot. Students will use a scale to weight the 3D printed parts and learn how to use a formula in the spreadsheet to calculate the cost of each item based on the cost of a spool of 3D printer 'filament'
Assembly of the servo motors and 3D printed parts to construct the robot.
Servo motor fundamentals and using 4 servos (2 hips and 2 feet) to instruct a biped robot to move forward/backward and turn right/left. Students will work in a group of 3 or 4 to examine the joints of the robot and come up with a simple list of instructions to make a specific movement.
Following a wiring diagram and soldering wires to the micro controller. Students will learn to 'strip wires', 'tin wires', and 'solder wires' to connect the servo motors to the micro controller.
Basic programming with Blockly. Students will learn how to use Blockly to control the robot in basic ways.
Advanced programming with Blockly. Students will learn more advanced programming constructs such as loops and conditionals.

The bill of materials for the robot is less than $30:

$4 - Arduino Nano Micro-controller
$5 - HC-05 Bluetooth Master/Slave serial board
$10 - 5V 1A 2200mAH USB rechargeable battery
$8 - 4x 9G servos

An Android phone or tablet is required from the student for controlling the robot. The advantage of using a phone is that it can be mounted as the head/face of the robot vs a tablet which would likely be too heavy and large for the same purpose. However, the student can still use a phone or tablet detached from the robot but certain functions such as sound, speech, or voice commands will take place at the tablet instead of at the robot. The phone must support Bluetooth 2.0 (Bluetooth 4.0 if using a DFROBOT Bluno Beetle micro-controller).

The BlocklyBot application is open-source (meaning anyone can see the code, modify it, and build it themselves). The application is currently very basic, but will continue to be updated to provide new programming blocks that take advantage of the phone/tablet display, microphone, speaker, and front facing camera if available however these are not required to perform basic movement. An 'unlocked' (meaning no data plan) phone/tablet with wifi/bluetooth can be easily purchased from standard retailers such as Amazon, Newegg, Bestbuy, or Walmart among others for as little as $30. A word of warning though... you do get what you pay for - you might want to spend a bit more and get something more featurful (Samsung makes some nice kid-friendly 7" tablets for around $100). There is nothing technical that disallows porting the BlocklyBot application to iOS for use on iPhones - I just don't have the hardware, time, or desire.

A bluetooth 2.0 micro-controller solution comprised of a Arduino Nano plus an HC-05 bluetooth 2.0 controller was chosen in order to keep the requirements of the phone/tablet to a minimum spec. A cleaner solution (but adding another $10 in cost) is to use a more integrated micro-controller such as the DFROBOT Bluno Beetle featuring an smaller form-factor Arduino with an integrated Bluetooth 4.0 (Bluetooth Low Energy or BLE) controller which makes for a smaller footprint, less hardware complexity, and less wiring.

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