Minutes of the PARTS meeting on January 3rd, 2004

Monty Goodson opened his first meeting as PARTS President. The first topic was about PDXBOT.04 which will be on Sunday June 6, Doug Arnold was working on getting vendors, and will assist with the tech demos again this year. Then he spoke about and handed out a member survey. He stressed that PARTS is for the members. We need input to improve PARTS, and need members to get involved and volunteer. Monty Goodson brought up the question about joining RSA that will give the group federal nonprofit status. The southern robotics group has already joined. Monty mentioned that there was no meeting topic for this meeting, but for next meeting there will be a meeting topic.

Next Monty Goodson held a vote that would allow families to only pay dues for a single membership. All the attending members voted yes.

Pete Skeggs, a defacto PARTS representative to ORTOP gave a brief history of ORTOP and who started. He has been on the committee and is asking for volunteers for the pit area. He then sent around a volunteer sign up sheet. The event is on Saturday January 17 at Liberty High School. PARTS had a table last year at the state tournament and was well received.

Pete Skeggs started the show and tell. He told about a CPS C compiler for PIC that will do in circuit debugging at 115k baud and can look at change registers, and the stack for tracing. Infrared receiver board with 8 pin PIC for an oscillator. His son picked up $4 dollar LCD at Wacky Willie's to hook up to Oopic. He also showed a head mounted magnifying visor to help soldering surface mount parts.

Steve Davee told about an OMSI party for Mars Rover landing tonight.

Tim Weaver made prototype Micro-sumo wheels out of aluminum with his new Sherline lathe.

Daryl Sandberg brought some old Polaroid cameras. He also bought an LCD from Cascade for $5 dollars. He donated a handy board for the PARTS library. Thanks Daryl!

Larry announced that he is going to do PICAxe buy.

Tony? (Did on catch is last name) brought books for free to add to the library. Thanks Tony!

Brad Lewis showed a demo of an alarm he built and programmed with a serial port connection using a stereo Jack connector for alarm. The entire project took about eight hours. The PICAxe processor chip runs at about 2mAh. The cost was $27 dollars total.

Karl Boe showed a Steam engine and is now working on a boiler. He as been thinking of ways to use a controller to monitor steam engine performance. Here is the link for the company that produces the kit. Here is the place in Beaverton where he bought it.
Address and phone:
C.B. Schrock, Purveyor of Machinery
10006 SW Canyon Road, Portland, Oregon, 97225
Ph: 503/292-8916
He also is working on programming with NS basic, which is like visual basic. It runs on the PC and then downloads to the palm OS.

Paul Burkey demonstrated the Robosweep robot to sweep hard surfaces. It does not have a controller or sensors, it's just mechanical. He bought it at Safeway, but saw it for sale at Walgreens and Right-Aid, price $39.99 to $19.99 when on sale.

Monty Goodson has a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner.

Dylan McWhirter asked the PARTS group to participate in Da Vinci Day's July 16, 17, 18 web site at www.divinci-days.org

Chris Widener told about his ATV project. An R.C. pickup truck with camera, compass, sonar, and controlable up to 1,000 ft.

Monty Goodson added that the DARPA grand challenge for $1 million dollars has limited to as few as 19 contestants. A new international robot league challenge is being setup for another competition with the same amount of prize money.

Someone I did not catch the name was getting his PC ready to do programming, developing. Next need a development kit.

Larry Ossowski brought a walker robot that uses a Mark III. He purchased the parts for the robot from Home Depot or Low's. The cost was $80 not including the Mark III and compass. He is also worked on four-wheel robot that uses lithium batteries.

Did not catch his name, but he is building a Mind Storm LEGO with internal change drive for a sumo robot.

Mark Medonis is selling an Electro magnet for $10, and power supply 13.8 volts, 5 Amp peak.

Vern Vertrees and the others from Haunted House are interested in automation and robotics. Asked about soundtrack PROTOOLS which are free for different tracks.

Monty Goodson showed Hexapod robot designed by Casey Holmes which is built out of circuit boards it also uses a MEGABitty board for control. Need encoding for better control. Here is a link to some more information.

There was a Mini-sumo practice competition after the meeting.