It is amazing what young people can do if the get away from the TV and use
their mind. :)

Steve Keller
keller@theramp.net


> -----Original Message-----
> From: pic microcontroller discussion list
> [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Matt Calder
> Sent: Thursday, May 07, 1998 10:51 PM
> To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: There is hope...
>
>
> Piclist,
>         I got this message from a high school student I was helping for a
> science project he was involved in. The project is a competition where
> points are earned for performing a task ( I think it was to move a ping
> pong ball into a cup) using as many changes of state (chemical to light,
> light to electricity, etc ...) as possible. Read this, and if you can
> believe it this kid came to me a year ago wanting to know what a
> transistor does.  All I did was show him PIC web pages, helped him to read
> schematics, and gave a few assembly tips, the rest was all youthful
> curiosity, and persistance of effort on his part. There is hope for the
> future yet.
>
>         Matt
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Subject: How Science Olympiad is going...
>
>
> Hi Matt:
>
> I just thought I'd write you and let you know how our Science Olympiad
> project with the PIC chip is going.  I finished the PIC chip circuit a
> while ago and have been constantly changing it ever since.  Basically,
> there is one main controlling PIC that runs all the motors and everything.
> It is connected to a 4-to-16 Demultiplexer for output and a 16-to-4
> Multiplexer for input.  Also, there is a two line serial connection to
> another PIC to run an LCD screen.  The output demultiplexer's 16 outputs
> connect to a stepper-motor-driver, motor drivers, servos, and some
> transistor/relay circuits.  The stepper motor driver is really great
> because it only uses ONE pin!  I made it with a 555 timer, decade counter,
> and motor drivers.  Each motor driver runs 4 motors, so they are really
> nice.  I also managed to get servos to run pretty well.  I can only run
> one at a time the way I have it set up though.  The input multiplexer has
> a lot of different things connected to it also.  There is a Photocell
> circuit, Infrared Phototransistor circuit and Solar cell circuit.  I used
> Op-Amps for those circuits and they work really well.
>         I managed to get 10 messages on the PIC chip that controls the LCD
> screen before the lookup table problem we encountered a while ago started
> happening.  I made it so the LCD screen could output numbers too, and i
> made a simple timer so the LCD can show how much time has gone by. Since
> there are only 10 messages, the messages aren't very specific (ex.
> "Running Module", or "Waiting for input" instead of "pumping iodine into
> starch", or "raising ramp").  The serial communication is something like
> 1000 baud, i forgot exactly.  I could probably make it go faster but it's
> fast enough for me right now so i left it alone.
>
> Anyway, in the Regional competition in March our machine took 2nd place.
> A maximum of 30 action transfers is allowed on your device and we had only
> finished 20 for regionals so our score was much lower.  The "computer"
> worked perfectly though, so I was happy.
>
> We finished building all the action transfers for state and had a perfect
> device, but at the competition there was one glitch.  In one of our
> transfers, a servo opens a valve and salt falls through into a cup that's
> on a lever.  one side of the lever gets heavy and the lever tilts just
> like a see-saw and contacts on the other side of the lever touch each
> other.. the computer reads it and goes on... Anyway, the servo opened the
> valve and the salt didn't fall through, it got stuck somehow.  That one
> glitch cost us a medal and we ended up 4th place.  We were all very upset
> because we had dedicated every moment of that last month of our lives to
> this machine, and we even stayed up until 3:45am the night before
> competition calibrating things and got 30 min. of sleep.  Regardless, our
> team did well in all of the events and won the competition, and we are on
> our way to nationals in Michigan in 6 days.  The Mission Possible device
> is now working PERFECTLY and we hope to get 1rst place in the entire
> nation in that event.  We built a box around the thing and are shipping it
> UPS in a few days.
>
> I'll be sure to let you know how we do!  Thanks a lot for all of your help
> with the electronics and learning the PIC chip.  I really appreciate all
> the time you spent helping me.
>
> Matthew
>