SPARK Project #2, Post #4

Computers & Mobile
SPARK Project #2, Post #4

msSpark2_v2.jpg

NibblesWoodaway.jpg

Providence, Rhode Island is home to many larger than life characters. One that has special meaning for me, and is arguably one of the most iconic characters, is New England Pest Control’s giant blue mascot, Nibbles Woodaway. I’ve always found programming fun and interesting, but the true challenge for me is trying to figure out why a program doesn’t work the way I want, and then figuring out how to fix it. I often find myself thinking about the exterminators at New England Pest Control celebrating their profession with a monster sized termite while I dive into the nooks of my programs to eliminate bugs that prevent proper execution (and eat into my sleep schedule!)

Last week, I set up my iCop SPARK hardware and got a simple “Hello World” program running. That process took some time, but wasn’t too difficult. Of course, sending text to a console window is not very useful for controlling my iRobot Create. I need to add serial send and receive functionality to my code in order to control the robot. So this week I put together a simple program designed to send and receive characters over the serial port.

Read more about it in the full post here.

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Kipp Bradford is a technology consultant and entrepreneur with a passion for making things. He is the Senior Design Engineer and Lecturer in Engineering at Brown University, where he teaches several engineering design and entrepreneurship courses. Kipp is also on the Technical Advisory Board for Make Magazine.

View more articles by Kipp Bradford

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