STEMLabs

At our last meeting in Warsaw, a teacher asked about combining Hummingbird Boards and other STEMLab tools such as 3D printers and Vernier Sensors.  With that in mind I took a look at the Hummingbirdkit.com site to see if they had any ideas/tutorials for doing just that.  They definitely do! If you go to the site and choose the Tutorials button ( http://hummingbirdkit.com/learning/tutorials ) you'll go a list of great tutorials dealing with these topics.  Make sure you choose Hummingbird and other Maker Tools in the Find Tutorials Tagged option field and you'll see an annotated list of topics including Vernier Sensors, Makey Makey, Arduinos, and Squishy Circuits. I want to talk a bit about the 3D printing option.  When you go to the page you'll see a number of pictures for individual parts (gears, pulleys, motor mounts, led diffusers, etc.)  Clicking on the picture will also download the .stl file for 3D printing.  There are also two example projects: - ...

If you're wanting to get started with the Hummingbird kit, there are some great introductory projects for the Hummingbird board at these sites: https://blog.arduino.cc/2017/01/25/build-an-automatic-cat-treat-dispenser-with-hummingbird/ This site also shows how the program would look in the Visual Programmer interface. As you can see, the code is pretty simple.  The program begins with a blinking LED (this code doesn't show up in the photo, it's above the sensor block.)  Then you drag the Sensor block into the program editor, making sure the light sensor option is selected.  Once the program starts, the cat will see the blinking LED, swat at it (covering it up briefly making it dark) then the left column (Darker) actions will happen. First the led goes off, then the servo motor moves the craft stick gate up and treats move down the slide.  Then the second servo expression moves the gate back down, and since the cat's paw is no longer covering the light sensor, t...