PIC Course DVD

PIC Course DVD.

Is is possible to teach an 8 year old how to interface and program microprocessors ?

Is it possible to teach a nine year old how to save the world ?.

Nov 2007

Started thinking about it.

Dec 25th 2007

1. 23 projects finished plus most leading articles. Development board, RS232, serial LCD and about 20 other PCB's done for course, populated and tested.

Jan 3rd 2008.

1. Asking for permissions to put data sheets onto DVD.

2. Need style, buttons, Have bar.

3. Waiting on Stepper board and DTMF chips.

4. Must order QT chips from Futurlec. Proximity .... water table ?.

5. Core circuit explanation and graphics.

6. Maybe do 18F stepper controller board ?.

7. Do PCB for x10 PPL frequency multiplier (done) .... or import 40 kHz subroutine from Les

8. Do mod and de-mod design for PMR remote LCD with auto error check.

9. Get samples of 3 and 5 way lockable headers (Mode Components). Re-lay dev board ?. IDC ?

10. Think differential board, heat, light, ultrasonic, movement.

11. Rack track for solar tracker

12. Start looking for a victim ! .

7th Jan 2008.

1. Add stepper motors and driver boards. Write software.

2. Add extra touch switch.

3. Finalise Mk II dev board.

4. Find Hall switch source. (done)

4th Feb 2008

1. Mk III board designed, built and tested.

2. Servo's tested. Sample servo u/s, get two more.

3. Stepper motor board tested and software part tested.

3. Electroscope PCB upside down !. Make new board.

4. Make Hall sw board ... last one ?.

5. All artwork now changed.

6. Only need Intro and dev board article.

7. Need 64 ohm speaker for 'play that tune project'.

8. Lidle's PIR sensor ?

9. Do I want to include coders / decoders /. Have chips.

10. Microboard carrier done.

11th February 2008

1. All hardware complete for 25+ projects ....

PIC being programmed using the RS232 board at rear. Powered from mains to 9v AC power supply. A 10 to 16 way adaptor PCB is behind LCD.

Development board running from 4.8v battery pack.

Micro boards for 25 projects. Reed switch, slotted opto switch, opto isolator, LM35 temperature sensor, UFO detector (electroscope), IR receiver, IR transmitter, Visible light detector, rain detector, Hall sensor, Hall switch, Servo adaptor, 500 mA logic switch. The gaps are for a touch switch etc..

Support boards. Top left to right, development bread board, stepper motor demo board, Logic driven siren, 18 pin adaptor board, 14 to ten way LCD adaptor, two channel motor PWM board. RS232 adaptor, serial to parallel LCD adaptor.

Cables. An assortment of cables of different lengths, jumpers, links etc.

2. I am profoundly deaf and found that a 64 ohm speaker output was a little low for me, so I made an enclosure to beef it up. It works very well !. The grill was the lid of a salt shaker !.

3. Next step is to move all of the course onto a DVD. This will include all of the sample programs produced for the projects, plus a library of Data Sheets.

1st March 2008.

1. Over 90% now transferred to CD. However discovered that the cable used to test 25 projects was wired wrong !. Hardware modified, all cables tested and it only needs 360 photo's and drawings to be changed to eradicate problem !

2. Decided that I ought to introduce a working ROBOT project as an end piece. Four sensor PCB built and tested for a line follower. Four channel comparator and indicator board also built and tested.

3. Looked at Mini Sumo robots and decided an obstacle detection system was required. Decided on an IR reflection system for line follower as a 6" detection range would be more than enough. Reason is that a motor with worm gears stops dead .... likewise an H bridge driven motor with reactive braking also stops dead. With the Mini Sumo class of ROBOT the problems are a bit different. Have laid out two PCB's for a dual conversion system to see what is possible.

4. Have lost connection with the web page.

5th of March 2008

Have re-established contact with this web !.

The course has looked at most prime movers .... except the linear actuator. This will be an important item for automatic ventilation of green houses etc, so I will knock up a design for a fairly powerful one. Also omitted is the solenoid, so for the sake of completeness I will include that too. You will have to take my word for it, but I think that covers every practical means .... except Mag- Lev. Do we have any junior wanna-be Braithwaites out there ?. Just in case you think this is boring ..... Mr. Braithwaite invented a 'shaded pole' electromagnet that could pick up copper coins !. OK kids, the question is would it pick up other non-ferrous metals .... such as gold dust ... from crevices in gold bearing river beds ?. OK Herb ... does that answer your question ?. Who could turn down a gold Hoover ?. Remember folks ...... you read about it here first Hi!

13th March 2008

1. Obstacle detector completed. Software done. Can change range sensitivity 'on the fly', so the same sensor can be used for both short and long range detection (1 meter). Made up mounting bracket. Also mounted same type of detector on a ST-9 servo to give 90 degree auto sweep. Now gives range and direction readout.

About life size.

26th March 2008

1. Playing with the idea of using Meccano gears for a robot chassis. The parts are expensive but at least they are available to constructors. Weight may be a limitation

A 4 / 5 / 6mm shaft worm and matching spur gear would open up some possibilities such as solar trackers, valve control, green house temperature control and general speed reduction for machine projects. Please note that the above photo shows the Meccano worm gear part number 32, but the spur is incorrect and should be the larger 1" spur matching the worm ... which is part number 31. If robots are going to catch on in UK something will have to be done to make a available affordable hardware components

2. For any motor reversing application I think an H bridge will be required. The problem here, is that cheap motors are usually very power hungry and many can draw up to two amps at stall. The twin channel motor control board project will suffice for the line follower robot, which has no requirement to reverse.

6th April 2008

1. Losing interest so decided to have a break and look at data loggers. The background is that they are already in use in schools from primary level upwards. Those on offer are a mixed bag in terms of functions provided, value for money and ease of use.

2. I decided to have a look at the problems involved in producing one and although the software is not yet complete ... the end result is below ....

The main processor board at bottom left is my standard multi-purpose PCB containing an 18F452 PIC, a DS1307 real time clock that produces year, month, date, day of week, hours, minutes and seconds. The PCB also has provision for up to seven 24LO256 flash eeproms. Sockets for two are shown, a plug in daughter board holds an additional five chips. Far right is the back up battery for the RTC, and can power it for about ten years. All of the analogue inputs ( and +5 volts ) are available on a ten way header. This means up to 7 analogue channels are available for logger use (one is used to monitor battery voltage).. Other spare pins are available for Digital 'event' recording. All functions on the logger are configured using a two button, multi-level system. The LCD shows the opening menu. Sub menu's selected from this are used to set up input configurations, data clocking rates and also to upload stored results to a PC for analysis using RS232. RS232 is becoming less popular for uploading data simply because most lap tops do not have Com1 and Com2 ports .... so a better approach would be to upload data via the USB socket on the PC or better still ...... use another type of removable storage media. I decided SD cards offered a lot of advantages, and have been thinking in that direction. I have been able to format an SD card using FAT16 and that works great. SD card sockets are a bit difficult to find, so I ordered a Futurlec SD card PCB which is pre- assembled with a socket, 'card present' signals etc..

Board Dimensions: 45 x 55 mm

http://www.futurlec.com/Mini_SC.shtml

Futurlec also do a DS1307 RTC mini-board, which fits in nicely with the SD card board.

3. I finally won some Meccano gears on EBAY, which I hope may lead me to a motor solution for a line follower robot ... and the linear actuator.

8th June 2008

1. Lost contact with my web space again !. I think I decided to call it a day at that point, but was presurised into having another look at the project. Eventually I came to the conclusion that this project was really only a small fragment of a much larger one .... much too large to do alone. Also there was a lot of criticism about the age group I was targeting, the senior citizens wanted in as well !. I have decided that what I lack at the moment is a good presentation in order to 'sell' the larger concept. I am going to get a laptop and attempt to do just that.

2. I cannot remember what I said before but basically this project is about creating the tools that would be required to tackle world problems. The idea was that the child gets to chose a problem to tackle and they then 'OWN' it. Any kid will be able to explain what that actually means. They then research the problem and assemble data from data loggers etc, brain storm and then decide what has to be done. Electronics is really only one tool that they will require to solve problems.

One thing that can be done right now is to create a list of problems that they can choose from. Two typical examples are the conservation of drinking water and energy. Every summer we get shown pictures of empty, dry cracked reservoir's and we are still flushing our toilets with drinking water !. Ask any kid and they will tell you that hot air rises, but no-one does anything about the temperature difference of at least 5 degree's Celsius between carpet and ceiling during winter. , In some homes I found eight degree's difference. We actually pay real money for the water and heat we waste !. There must be hundreds of examples like these. If you can think of any, please email me and I will add yours to the list.

16th June 2008

1. Wrapped up the Meyer signal generator project. In order to check out the PIC DVD development board, I used it for the Meyer project it performed as expected, with no modifications required

2. I decided it would also be a good test to develop an SD data logger on the same board. Getting from PIC to SD card proved to be a pain, because everyone uses their own terminologies and labels. I had earlier purchased an SD card adapter PCB from Futurlec, but it does not address interfacing a 3.3v card to a 5 volt PIC, so I got side tracked into producing a daughter board, to sit on the back of the Futurlec board, to make it useable as a plug in module for the Kid's development board. I spent the afternoon trying to work out the interface !. Oh well, I have a PCB design laid out now and I may have a go at making up a PCB tomorrow .... domestic issues permitting.

19th August 2008

Last Friday I had a call from local government expressing an interest in the above project and raised the question of a demonstration. So On Friday I had to go out and buy a lap top computer to do the presentation ....... but was unable to get one with XP loaded !. So I have just had an extremely miserable weekend struggling with Vista !. My main problem was that my compiler would not work with Vista and kept hanging up every time I tried to do a compile. I eventually traced the problem to Vista's UAC. Every time I tried to compile the main compiler program tried to run the compiler but was stopped by the UAC. What took so long to find it was that the complete computer hung up and a restart put me right back into the hung up condition and no warning messages to suggest what was going wrong !. Another problem was that laptops do not have a serial port anymore and as I had in mind the purchase of a lap top I bought two USB to 'RS232' cables. When tested neither of the worked !. One was completely dead and USB would not detect it at all. The other adapter suddenly started to work after three days of messing around ..... it proved to be an intermittently open circuit cable !. I got a new cable today and the bootloader now works fine. At long last, I am ready to do a demonstration !. All I have to do now is find an 8 year old kid, the logic being .... no-one can say it would be impossible for an 8 year old to interface and program PIC's if there is a kid in front of them ..... doing just that !.

29th August 2008

Whoever it was who contacted me reference this project..... simply did not phone back !. So, I have spent the last two weeks trying to present the project to local government departments, Councils, Social Services, Youth Services, Police etc. It appears that every department has it's own agenda, which is forced on them from above and no-one that I have spoken to has the authority, to make changes. One police spokes person even suggested that preventing crime was not the same thing as crime prevention !.

My thoughts at the moment is that I want to move onto the Solar energy project, but would really like to present the finished PIC course to ...

a. A school.

b. A parent

c. A child

d. An MP

e. A prisoner

... before I bin it !

6th September 2008

With two ton of concrete to mix in a wheel barrow, I have been somewhat busy ... and tired Hi!. I have ordered a 3 x 3 meter square metal shed for the next project and have to lay a concrete base for it. Basically I have too many projects and need an 'over-spill' area for my workshop ... plus somewhere to assemble experimental solar panels for the next project .... Solar energy. I needed 240 empty aluminum drink cans to make the heat exchanger for a hot air heater and the brilliant local council re-cycling officer, found a source very quickly. Unfortunately the first batch were 'pre-crunched' to save storage space, but no problem, whole cans are on their way thanks to the same local charity. I have no wish to embarrass those involved, but thank you anyway !.

The good news on this project is that I now have a complete volunteer family, who have expressed a desire to do the 'course'. So that tackles 'B' and 'C' above. I have expended 9 months of my life to get to this stage and now I will find out what reality looks like. Nervous ? ... who me ?. How do we ever know if we have a good idea until it is tested and how will we ever know if that idea works .... until we implement it ?. If it fails, it will be because of my own incompetence and not I think, because a fatal logical flaw.

All of the meetings I have attended recently concerning this project started off by being mildly amusing with regards to the reactions of the listeners to my crazy ideas. Lot's of these people are experts in their own fields with many years experience. They are all well meaning people with their hearts in the right place and in positions that ought to allow them to bring about change based on their own experience. The reality is that they all have fixed agenda's handed down to them that offer little room for maneuver. The government creates ..... the government dictates .... the government frustrates .... and the problems do not abate. Tonight, more children will die at the hands of the mindless few, we adults created the problem .... and through inaction we allow it and condone it.

30th October 2008.

My criminal record check paperwork came back OK, although I do wonder what protection it provides. Having a clean record simply means that I have not been caught yet !.

Still no kids for a trial run, so I have been working sideways, producing another two sets of hardware and software. I have also done the pre-course presentation, also a CD of 32 robot video's.

After lesson seven I planned to halt the course and let the kid tackle his first problem concerning energy conservation. The child has to invent something that will cut heating bill's. Since I will be guiding the child's thinking, it is predictable what he will 'invent' and so I have been making up a proto-type, which is naturally controlled by a PIC. It will be interesting to see how it performs this winter.

Now that I have three sets of hardware etc., I guess I had better have a go at writing the software for the data logger. The new 20 x 4 LCD has arrived, to replace the one I blew up !. Also, I bought 3 new multi-volt plug in power thingies today. A brand new mains distribution panel, had a dodgy arcing socket, which took out the two Wallmart style PSU's I had been using. It zapped the primary on one and the secondary on the other ..... I now have a protected distribution panel Hi!.

Some new components have arrived which may make interesting projects for the kids course, human and animal detectors, capacitive intruders detectors etc..

7th November 2008

Still waiting for some subjects. Today I did install the electronics in the 'kid's invention' device and it is now ready for investigation. As usual when one gets half way through a project .... better ideas appear, so a Mark II version is now on the drawing board. I have said this elsewhere, but when designing something, we first of all have to make it work. Step 2 is to then make it simple ... and in doing so reduce cost. In this case I have reduced the number of components from about thirty .... to four !. Simple is elegant.

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30th May 2009.

I was contacted by a Wiltshire family, who asked if their son could do this course. They live about 50 miles away so I suddenly had to consider distance teaching, changed a lot of things around and on May 27th the 12 year old boy turned up for his two hour induction course. The idea of this induction course was to teach him how to use the hardware, software, PIC types, inputs, outputs, pull up's (with strings of rubber bands attached to his arms !), boot-loading, PIC programming basics, some logic and basic program concepts, sub-routines, anti-static precautions etc..

I was a bit nervous about the induction because I had convinced myself over the last two years that it would all work, but there was a very good chance I had over estimated the receptiveness and abilities of children. After all, every adult I had spoken to about the course said it was impossible.

I had set up most of the theoretical material as a Power Point slide show and we did that first, stopping the show at different points to show real life examples to reinforce the slides. The boy was delivered by his grandmother .... who immediately tried to disappear. I had always considered that at least one parent should do the course along with the child, for my own protection and also to reinforce bonds within the family group. So I asked the grandmother to do the induction course with the boy, which she agreed to. The boy's uncle, who lives near me, was also present.

I still cannot believe how well the induction went !. I know very little about kid's but I assessed this one as 'above average', and the only problem I had was trying to slow him down !. After one hour had passed he had already demolished the first two course modules and written several of his own programs !. I think it fair to say, I was very pleased with the results of the induction. I then gave him a complete set of hardware and software for him to take and set up at home. There were no problems there.

At this point I should say that I had sent the boy the course DVD ahead of the induction and that this was a mistake on my part !. The next day he emailed concerning two problems he had and it became apparent he had not waited for us to do the course a module at a time and had zoomed off on his own !. I was not very happy about this because in the class room I would have verbally added a lot of information relevant to each module. With distance teaching I needed to put that information into print and issue it along with each module. I do have one means of slowing him down and that concerns the loan issue of the micro-boards required for many of the modules. As it was I had lost all control of what he was doing and was not getting the course checked out properly. He was already complaining that his own private programs he was now writing exceeded the 50 line limit !.

If you are in the same room as the student you have continuous control over what happens. Also you can see, by various means any difficulties the student might be having. With distance teaching you only know what they choose to tell you and the results of any tests you may give them.

It is obvious I am going to have problems staying ahead of this boy and need to slow him down. One idea behind this course is that kids are as smart as you let them be. They also have a way of seeing through the bull-shit and seeing things for what they really are. I made it quite clear to everyone that a student of any age will be treated like and adult and that I expect them to accept the responsibilities that go along with that privilege. For example if a child does not understand the meaning of a word that I use, I expect them to use a dictionary. I have used this same approach in the past when training African herd boys to be licensed aircraft engineers and it works. So when I decided to give him a project I did not plan on making it too easy........

"Your task is to invent a machine that will measure the exact frequency at which visual acuity starts to deteriorate when the human body is subjected to vibration, ie helicopter pilots". When your machine is complete I want you to test it on humans of all ages and tell me if the onset frequencies mentioned above, are age related !."

That should keep him quiet for a couple of hours !. It will be interesting to see what he will come up with. When he was writing a program during induction he suddenly stopped and said "I could teach my sister to do this". His sister is eight years old !. So, that is now two of us who think that the course will work with 8 year old's. I have asked their mother for permission to include her on the course. It would be very interesting to see how she performs on an induction course.

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20th June 2009.

The 'impossible' has happened ... I now have a school that is interested in the project. Really, it was a product of volunteering to be a 'scientific ambassador' under the Stempoint inititiative. The general idea is that you make yourself available to schools, if the need any assistance with school projects etc.. This school has a science fair coming up and they needed a 'rent an act' to fill out the program. On my side, I thought it would be a great opportunity to get the PIC project tested. After working in total isolation for the last two years on this project it was a daunting prospect to discover I was about to find out if it worked or not !.

Suddenly I have had to question everything I have done and more than a little panic crept into the equation !. For example switch bounce can be a pain in electronics and I questioned whether I had covered it adequately, with only one example each of hardware and software de-bounce. So yesterday I decided to include a second hardware solution, in the form of our old freind the RS flip-flop. I decided to make an example up on a MicroBoard, which turned out a bit bigger than previous MicroBoard examples.

The toggle switch is at bottom centre. The RS flip-flop is made up of two 4001 NOR gates, with pull downs to ground. The link above the 4001 is to reverse the polarity of the output .... ie I was too lazy to work it out Hi!, but it does give the option of reversing polarity of the output pulses. I am still naive enough to be impressed with simple circuits such as this and have been sitting here trying NOT to make it work Hi!. For most operations switch bounce does not really matter, but in counting and pulse measurement applications it does .... and it is often 'challenging' to de-bounce in software when the bounce period can vary between nothing and 250 milli-seconds. If you disagree, would you like to bet your life on it ?.

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21st June 2009.

Decided to add an intelligent LED display chip MicroBoard, as they have application in high ambient light levels. It connects to the standard 6 way block on the dev board and takes it's power for both logic and LED's from that board.

The boards can display the numbers 0 - 9 plus the letters A - F. The character displayed depends on a four bit binary output from the PIC, and makes a good introduction to the binary counting system and right to left notation. The four bit port is set up such that bits A = 1, B = 2, C = 4, D = 8. This results in the binary value of 1 (0001) results in a one on the display etc.. A value of 10 (1010) returns a 'A', 11 (1011) a 'B' etc. The decimal points have not been utilised. The pinout for the module is ......

Pin 1 = +5 volts

Pin 2 = Data input Bit A

Pin 3 = Data input Bit B

Pin 4 = Data input Bit C

Pin 5 = Data input Bit D

Pin 6 = GND.

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22nd June 2009

I had originally planned to use the 16F877 PIC throughout the course, but it is becoming evident that if a child wants to 'invent' something then It would probably be better to choose a smaller PIC and make up a custom PCB for it. One problem of moving to a smaller and more practical PIC is the number of pins available. For example the 18F1320has 18 pins, 15 of which are available for control purposes. If we wanted to connect a standard LCD onto this PIC, we could do, but it would only leave 9 pins left for control purposes. Running out of pins is a frequent happening !.

It is very useful to have an LCD connected while you are developing a program and very useful for fault finding, so it is fortunate that we can make a serial LCD that uses only one pin !. This is particularly useful on small PIC's. The LCD can be plugged in for development and fault finding and then removed when you are happy with the program. So today I made one up that can be connected to any PIC board.

There is a small PIC in the box which clocks in the data from the 16F877 one byte at a time and then prints it out. Parameters such as baud rate, pulse inversion etc can all be controlled in software, but this is transparent to the user. The photo is not too clear, but the black printing is of good contrast in real life. The serial LCD gets it's power from the Dev board. The LCD has two lines of 16 characters. The right hand character after the 'z' is a flashing cursor, which can be switched off in software. Which pin on the 16F877 is used as the serial data pin can be set in software. This is an example of two PIC's communicating with each other.

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23rd June 2009

The human body emits the same amount of heat as a 100 watt light bulb and this makes it possible to detect it with a Passive Infra Red (PIR) sensor. They also be used to detect animals and other sources of heat. I ordered a miniature sensor for the course several months ago and today decided to make up a cable and test it.

This detector can now be plugged directly into the Dev board. You will note that I have also started using a thicker ribbon cable to make modules a bit more child poof. The remarkable thing about this detector is it consumes less than 50 uA, which means it can easily be powered by small cells for remote applications. It has a range of between 5 - 7 metres, with an acceptance angle of 140 degree's, which is not bad considering it's small size.

Also came up with a solution to the non availability of insulated header blanking / polarising pins.

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3rd July 2009

Started looking for someone to make the PCB's for the course. In the process I noted an H bridge PCB, which I thought might be suitable for a line follower.

It features the dual L293D H bridge, which is very popular for small line followers and small Sumo class robots. By removing the two bottom terminal blocks There would almost be enough space to include a PIC on the same sized layout and eliminate a second board. The next time I get really bored I may have a go at doing one, perhaps with a 16F628, which is included in Proton Lite. I am a great believer in using enough gun, and the 16F877 might be a better choice.

For any school that does not yet have robot's two applications jump at you. One is a simple robot like the line follower and the other is a solar tracker. Oddly enough both applications have the similar board requirements. The L293D is rated at 600ma, which is on the low side for a motor that has to move the mass of a medium size solar panel so perhaps I also need to do one capable of 5 amps., A solar tracker makes a nice visible, self powered, stand alone project.

When LED's first came out we used to couple two together to make a bi-directional data link for fibre optics. It always interests me to find that everyone know that if you put two volts across an LED ... you get light out !. How many people have wondered if the opposite is true, ie if you put light into an LED, do you get a voltage out ?. The answer is that you do !. In sunlight it can be as high as 1.7 volts, which makes it ideal for the sun tracker project. I did see an interesting article on the internet, that uses green LED's for this, as they have the greatest voltage output. This morning I decided to knock up a four LED sensor array to have a play with. I have made provision on the sensor PCB to either have a two or four sensor LED detector array. This is about life size.

On a practical tracker the sensor array has to do several job's. The first is to track the sun, within a degree or so. It also has to sense when it gets dark to allow the panel to be 'parked' at a safe angle, particularly in high winds. Also it needs to detect dawn in order to tilt the panel from the west parking position,, to east and point it directly at the rising sun.

We need two such sensing arrays since we have to control the angle of the panel both in elevation and azimuth .... two H bridges and two motors. What's in it for us ?. Well by making sure the panel is always pointing directly at the sun, we increase the power output from the panel by about 30% - 50%. This not only applies to photovoltaic panels, but also to solar air and water heaters. If we also add solar concentrators, we can further increase efficiency, possibly by 20% - 50%. If you look at the cost of panels, the gain is well worth having.

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22nd July 2009.

A time of great change !. Up till now the whole course has been based on the free Lite version of Proton. The first student very quickly exceeded to 50 line limit and I realised that I would have to do something about it. So I have decided to move to another compiler which has no limits and is free. This means a complete re-write of the course.

I finally managed to present the course to a secondary school Head of Science. She liked it and wants to adopt it for the new term. Unfortunately no one can adopt the course because the hardware only exists in prototype form !. Since then I have presented the project to another secondary school and they too want to adopt it !. Also during this period a new company appeared on the market selling excellent quality boards and kits, mainly for application boards. Unfortunately none were suitable as a training board for the project The project required something different in order to meet the 'no maths', 'no physics' and no 'electronics' knowledge requirement, so I designed a new double sided development board that was still capable of using the plug in MicroBoard idea. I am now trying to find some via rivets to complete a pre-production prototype. I would hate to order 100 boards and find I had the same number of rejects Hi!.

Also in the same period I was accepted as a Science and Engineering Ambassador (SEA) to schools and now have a pretty ID card and badge to prove it Hi!. On the plus side it does introduce me to schools. SEA's work under STEMNET, which is little more than a dating agency between schools who want professional advice or assistance, and the SEA volunteers. What is expected to happen, is that perhaps a school is running a science fair, or other event and wants someone to fill in gaps in the program, then a SEA can volunteer to do it. I jumped the gun and ended up answering a schools request, before I actually did my induction or filled in the application forms. What followed was an example of the Wizard of Oz syndrome .... no-one gets what they asked for ... instead they are given what they need !. I wonder if they will ever forgive me !.

At the end of a long period of working in total isolation, one has to face the reality of the real world. Ideas that seemed great long ago , now have to face the test.

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30th August 2009

I decided to scrap two and a half years work !. It was really the result of another school saying that they wanted to adopt the project. As I mentioned above, no-one can adopt the project because the hardware does not exist in quantity .... and there was another thought niggling away in the back of my mind and that was the Proton compiler costing £100. I really needed a low cost compiler solution, for a single PIC type. The security dongle for Proton has been cracked and is available as a WAREZ download, so I thought Crownhill might jump at the chance to extend the life of Proton with a low cost single PIC version, but they do not appear to be interested in entering the education market.

There are dozens of BASIC compilers available for PIC's, but an investigation showed only two that were suitable for this project. The one I have chosen is Picaxe Programming editor, which is a bit 'kinky' but will do all of the important things that Proton will .... and it is free !. Picaxe is also more suitable for this task, because it is intended to be an educational tool, for which a lot of free third party software and support is available. Some of the less desirable issues can be solved by careful chip selection and by making the undesirable bits transparent to the user ... ie children. That is the reason I have binned the Proton based project and am now creating one based on Picaxe.

Although a lot of the Proton based hardware is compatible with Picaxe, I decided to scrap the lot and start again. It also became clear how best to implement the project in schools. It will be introduced to eight year olds in junior school and then a seamless progression will follow in secondary schools. Having decided that it made it easier to decide what kind of hardware was required at both levels and this has boiled down to two different development boards. The first using the 14M Picaxe chip for junior schools.

For secondary schools the development board is based on the 28x2 Picaxe chip, which also covers SPI and I2C buses along with other 'goodies', including a decent amount of memory (32K).

Now all of you experts out there may think that the tracks widths are excessive, but there is a reason for this. The first versions of these two boards were both double sided and the intention was to get them made in China with plated through holes etc.. For many reasons, I was getting no-where with that solution and I needed one that would allow me to get the first batches made in UK, at low cost. Now there is a contradiction !. Unfortunately none of the printing companies around my neck of the woods have a UV cured ink flatbed printer, so I had to think again. At meetings with the printers it was suggested that a possibility was to screen print the tracks and pads along with the normal artwork layer !. Another company pointed out that if one could print out bar codes using screen printing, then tracks and pads had to be possible. The two PCB's shown above were made using the photographic method, but it is hoped that the same layout can be done by screen printing. The latter is a relatively cheap and fast process, that can print not only tracks, pads, solder resist, flux and even solder paste ... as well as the layout and graphics layer !. So the next task is to try it as soon as I can get my hands on some light sensitive emulsion for making the screen's and some ink.

Another problem I am looking at is drilling the holes !. The answer is an NC drilling machine and I have 95% of one made up in the workshop. The aim is to be able to make up enough hardware for the two schools, that already want to adopt the project. Also I now have examples of the end product, to demonstrate the project to other schools.

I now need to start re-writing all of the modules and lesson plans to accompany the hardware and redesign the 50 or so, mini sensor and output boards. None of this work needs to delay the introduction of PIC's and programming because the Picaxe programming Editor also has a simulator.

Another concept is the creation of a national virtual tutor and examiner system, that runs the whole 40 module course. At the end of each module the child sits a test set by the virtual examiner, from a random selection of questions from a national question database. When the child passes a test it is automatically credited for the pass, this is documented and an instruction given to the virtual tutor to issue the next module to the child by email. The course thus runs itself.

I have incorporated into the project three different methods of 'braking' a child's progress, if it becomes too rapid. This happened during an early test of the system with a 12 year old and it is important that the child dwells long enough on each module to absorb all of the content. Since this is not learning for learning's sake, children will periodically be given real life problems to solve and this can also be used to regulate the individual child's progress.

Tomorrow I need to make a PCB for a serial LCD, for use with the above PCB's. What a time to run into the crazed ink problem again on the positives !

30th October 2009

The reason I have not added anything since August is because I have been busy doing things rather than talk about them Hi!. First I have made up s screen printing board along classical lines, stretched my first screen, ordered some light sensitive emulsion, which arrived yesterday, so I am getting close to my first try.

The decision to completely re-do the children's project caused a lot of work. All of the hardware had to be redesigned from scratch and that is now 99% complete. There were two major items outstanding, a serial LCD and a USB to TTL download cable. The challenge was to get the price of both below £2.50 each. The LCD I finished about two weeks ago and the download cable I got working two days ago, so that was a milestone for me. The original aim was to get a basic kit together for less than £20 .... and then I moved the goal posts and cut it down to £10 !. If the screen printing of PCB's work then I think I have succeeded. A kit consists of the BASIC compiler, the Junior school training board, a five LED plug in module, a PIC micro-processor, a battery pack and cable and the USB download cable. The serial LCD will be available as an extra.

This is what the finished basic kit looks like. As you can see I have used a small profile LCD and the driver board behind it is the same size. The Junior school training board now has an anti static discharge button ... BUT I want to make a couple of more changes. At the moment I am not using output 0, and I want to add another output socket especially for the LCD to plug into and that will leave five general purpose 500mA outputs.

I also did a board for the Farmer, chicken, fox and bag of corn problem in lesson four. One slide switch represents each object and which side of the river the object is on. There is also a decision test switch. It plays a tune with a successful solution and rude noises otherwise.

It can also be used as a general purpose input board.

The future.

The project has been a lot of work and not a little expense, but it has kept me busy for the last two years. I have done everything, I said that I would do and I am sure that the whole project will work just great, if it was given a chance. Further to that I had a teacher visitor a few days ago who I sat down in front of a computer and within two minutes she had written her very first program. She agreed that an eight year old child could also do it and that I had not used a single word that an eight year old child would not already know.

Over a month ago I emailed the headmasters of seven local schools, with an illustrated write up of the project, offering them a demonstration and the free loan of equipment to try it. Not one headmaster has replied. I have therefore created a project that every school needs, but one that no one wants. I could try and break down this wall of apathy, but it would less painful ...... to simply bin it.

Take up the white mans burden,

the savage wars of peace.

Fill full the mouth of famine,

and bid the sickness cease.

And when you goals are nearest, the ends for others sought.

Watch sloth and heathen folly,

Bring all you hope to naught.

Rudyard Kipling.

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Do we teach quantum physics to eight year olds ?.

A recent decision to include a LASER module into the junior school course raised some interesting questions. Quite simply the average LASER can be switched on or off and that is as about as difficult as operating them gets. The problem arises if a child asks how a LASER works, because we have to delve back into quantum physics to find an explanation and there and only there lies the relatively simple answer that we can give the child. The enigma is that most adults do not understand quantum physics, cannot formulate an answer, so the question is should we expose a mere child to any part of them ?. I think that we should, for the following reasons.

LED diodes and LASER's are capable of producing light of almost any colour. Now children can produce that light, by connecting the light emitting device to a power supply and they WILL get a light consisting of a colour, or mixture of colours.

What are you going to say, if the child asks what makes light coloured ?. You have to admit that it is a pretty good question. In the past the child would be told, "You do not have to worry about that, as it is very advanced and you would not be able to understand an explanation ... just wait until you grow up and then you will learn all about it ". The chances are that they NEVER will, because you will have destroyed any further interest in the subject.

Children need answers when they ask questions. The mere fact that they ask a question, means that at that point in time they are interested in an answer, later will be too late, as their minds will have moved on to other questions, and other desires.

So the child's question remains ..... what makes light coloured ?. The simple answer that a child would not be able to understand, is that the colour depends upon the wavelength that the electron has to fall, from one excited state to a lower one. Oh dear, that means you also have to explain away multiple electron orbits, energy levels, the concept of 'relaxation', of the emission of strange little packets of light or energy, that suddenly seem to to be very important to the way that whole universe works. Does it have to be that impossible .... or would a cartoon tell the whole story ?.

Now if one could find another Einstein, along with Einstein's sense of humour, then I think it possible that the whole subject of quantum physics could become understandable, to we mere humans. I am sure that children will be able to show us adults exactly how it all works. A child may have the ability to make 'understandable', that which has no meaning.

Consider the following. Another Planck, Einstein or Bohr etc, cannot exist in the future unless the seed of their existence is sown now. Unless gifted children are exposed to the outstanding questions of the universe, how can we expect them to produce the answers to those questions, that no-one else is asking ?.