[plug] Linux, Devices and Schools

[Andrew Oakeley]

<CUT FROM ECHALK>

Swan View Senior High School in association with the Department of 
Electronic and Electrical Engineering at The University of Western 
Australia have developed GENESIS - just for you! (Well not only you - but 
it sounds grand.) Go to <www.ee.uwa.edu.au/~genesis> to find out about 
projects we have designed for schools to use in their D&T, Maths and 
Science departments. Register with GENESIS - it's free!!! But that's not 
all - as well as the free steak knives you get free support by university 
lecturers and post-graduate students with the resources of a university 
electronics workshop to solve any technical problems you can dream up (as 
well as those you can't).

The STEP4A circuit board we developed is ideal for controlling four 12V 
unipolar motors (such as those in 5.25 inch FDD!) using power from a 10 
to 15V 1 Amp power source  (AC or DC). It interfaces with the computer 
via the parallel port and a .DLL we have developed and has the STEP4A 
circuit testing software (that's right - GUI windows software written 
just to support THIS board) to ensure a 100% sucess rate in building the 
board. It costs $11 to build so every kid can afford one and if they scam 
the steppers the turtle robot project can be built for under $20 - try 
that with ANY robot kit!!!

The languages supported include LOGO (such as the free but excellent 
MSWLOGO) for which we have a turtle.lgo file that controls the turtle 
robot project that uses three motors (using simple commands like tfd 100, 
tlt 90, trt 45, tpu tpd - you get the idea), Visual Basic, JAVA, C(++) 
and Pascal. We have the backing of the Faculty of Engineering at The 
University of Western Australia and are developing new projects all the 
time (see below).

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ojw at plug.linux.org.au [mailto:ojw at plug.linux.org.au]On Behalf Of
> Oliver White
> Sent: Wednesday, 15 November 2000 5:08 PM
> To: PLUG
> Subject: [plug] Linux, Devices and Schools
> 
> 
> Hey folks.
> 
> One of the HP fellows helped out my sister, giving her a cable and a
> windows app for entering her notes, reducing the data entry time to
> 4hrs, from an estimated 20. Hooray for them! </plug>
> 
> Anyway, this has got me thinking... our schools are already using basic
> networkable embedded systems. What sort of cheap, fun and educational
> applications could we come up with to help teach kids about the
> possibilities for technology in the very near future? It seems to me
> that although PDAs are becomming quite common, they're not used for much
> except solitare and buzzword bingo.
> 
> I think with a little cheap hardware, free software and some innovative
> use of IO, we could really get our kids teaching us about technology,
> and at the same time gaining an appreciation for technology that they
> (or mum or dad) can extend and improve.
> 
> I'd like to get a few people with some hardware and software clues to
> discuss making a few open spec toys.
> 
> Anyone interested?
> 
> I'm moving to melbourne in mid december, so it would be good to do it
> sometime soon. Maybe at a PLUG meet in the near future.
> 
> --
> Oliver White
>