Purpose:
Due to the pandemic this spring (2020) and the resultant move to remote or online teaching many features of my class have to change. One of those changes is a need for labs to take place at your home and not at the school. This means that whatever equiment and tools you need to execute the lab have to be in your hands or available to you. With that in mind there are a couple of things you can do to be ready for the start of the term.
The robot you will be working with for this class is a 'simple' Arduino based three wheeled car. I have experimented with a few and the Qbot from HiWonder (or from Amazon) seemed like a good compromise between price, functionality, and complexity. I have enough of these robot cars for everyone in the class but if you would like to purchase one yourself so you can keep it when the class is done I have provided the link(s) above. One of the challenges with these devices is that the manufacturer tends to change models or even go out of business with alarming rapidity. If this particular robot car is no longer available there are others that behave very similarly. If you want I can point you towards them. If you decide to purchase one for yourself please let me know - thanks. Remember -- it is NOT required for you to purchase the robot!
Download and Install the Arduino IDE:
To talk to our robot car and control it we will be using the open source software known as the Arduino IDE. This is a software package that you can use to program all Arduino based robots of which there are many. When you have some time before the start of next term please go to the Arduino software download page and install the Arduino IDE (currently version 1.8.12) on your machine. I appreciate that you could use the web based editor and that's fine but my instructional materials will be predicated on you having the IDE installed on your machine. The install has been straight forward and consistent on the various machines I have used (just follow the directions) though I don't know that it will run on a Chromebook. If you have a Chromebook your best solution is the web application from the reading I have done.
