Coming soon: Colony Command

I admit that its been a little while since my last post, and I acknowledge that many of you who took the BW Science Labs Survey requested articles more often, but well hey, school comes first.

I'm currently 260 lines of code through my next program, a gamed called Colony Command. CC is an old-style 100% text-based game built entirely in raw Python code. It is executed completely in the Python Shell, just like the very 1st computer games.




I'm building Colony Command to improve my raw Python coding skills, meaning I'm doing this to work on fundamentals rather than working with other libraries, modules, and toolkits like Tkinter.

Working with LEDs

All engineers are different, some are clean-kept while others are unorganized and messy (I get bonus points there), some prefer picaxe microcontrollers over BASIC Stamps, and so on and so forth. However, we all have one thing in common: We all use LEDs, or Light Emitting Diodes. You see them everywhere: in your phone, your Xbox, computer, watch, and just about everywhere else.

Today I will show you a fun, simple, and cheap project that will teach you about working with LEDs.

A little while ago I went down to Radioshack and got a bag of 20 LEDs for $3.00. If this sounds amazing to you, wait. The 20 bag bundle is extremely poor quality, and only comes with green, red, orange, and yellow LEDs. I highly recommend you invest a couple extra dollars and get 5 higher quality LEDs rather than 20 cheap ones, or better yet, buy your LEDs online if you can. Remember to test them before you use them, I learned to do that the hard way.

Here are the parts for this fun and simple project:

-3 3volt LEDs of any color

-1 project box (optional but highly recommended)

-1 9v battery

-1 9v battery clip

-1 switch of any kind

-1 330 ohm resistor

-1 zip tie (optional)

-a soldering gun

-some solder

-and lots of hot glue!

Now that I look at at, this list looks long for a simple project, but its really a lot less daunting than it sounds, I promise.

These are the LEDs that came in the grab bag:



Unfortunately the bag did not say what voltage they used (typical Radioshack), and the guy there looked at me like I was asking him to name every neutrino in existence when I asked him about the voltage. I guessed about 2 or 3 volts, and went with 3 to be safe.

LEDs have what are called cathodes and anodes, or positive (+) and negative (-) sides. The anode is the long wire, while the cathode is the short one. I chose to color the negative red and the positive green so I would not confuse myself.

Drill three holes in the lid of the project container. I did this my my all-time favorite tool, the Dremel.



Sorry if the image is a bit difficult to view, I'm an engineer, not a photographer so you will have to bear with me as far as images go.

Glue in the LEDs and solder their anodes to their cathodes. This is really simpler than it sounds, hook together the greens with the reds and apply solder. Now solder your 330 ohm resistor to one of the two open leds (the little wires jutting out of the LEDs). Then solder the other end of the resistor to the correct battery side (guess and check to see which side works). Now wire the other open wire from the battery to one side of the switch (for easy access you should cut a hole in your box for the switch, depending on what kind you used), and finally the open LED's led to the switch. I used a zip tie to hold the wire to the battery to make it easier for me to close the box.



Attach the lid to the container with the parts resting inside and flip it on. If all is well, your three LEDs should illuminate the room (unless you used Radioshack LEDs, in which case you will illuminate much less).

An All-New Brilliant Innovation Competition

I love nothing more than a competition where you can use your wits alone to triumph over everyone else. So, of course, I love Digital Open, a community where kids 17 and under can submit just about any project that they've been working on, be it a musical piece or robot. I've submitted one of my simple robots and BW Science Labs already, and I plan on posting many more.



Unfortunately, we live in a world today where most teens are sucked into TV and video games, losing the advantages they have when they are young and wasting precious time. Digital Open is a great effort to try and get kids off the couch and spend more time following their passion.

Perhaps my favorite thing about Digital Open is the community. Through DO I have been given great ideas on how to improve BW Science Labs, and a fellow Digital Open user, Joseph Dudley, created our current logo which is now in use.

I encourage everyone under 17 to submit at least a project or two at Digital Open, its definitely worth it.

And hey, you can win some cool prizes in the process, and earn "Achievements" like mine:

Take the BW Science Labs Survey!

Last night I read Chris Guillebaeu's "279 Days to Overnight Success" on how he manages his blog. After reading it, I realized all of the great changes that BW Science Labs could go through. However, before I do this I want your input, so please go ahead and take the BW Science Labs Survey.

Speedy the Robot

I just finished building another bristle bot named speedy.

Speedy is a fun and simple bristle bot that I built from parts that I had lying around the house. I make the chassis from scrap metal that I had, and I shaped it using my diamond cutter. This was perhaps the most dangerous part, as cutting through sheet metal in your room isn't usually a good idea, however if the proper safety measures are taken there's no risk.

I got the motor from my brother's Xbox controller, as he is yet to discover. Working with the motor was extremely frustrating because it has very short, thin wires that left no margin for error. It was also too powerful, as often times the enormous vibrations used to move the bristle bot would loosen the hot glue that held it down.

I soldered the motor and the power supply to a switch. I've seen and read enough MAKE tutorials to know how to solder properly, and fortunately I have a bit of experience with a soldering gun. The first contact point went smoothly, however the second point took me forever to get right, and the vibrations would keep loosening it until the point it would break off. I finally decided to solder it and then wrap the connection point in hot glue to prevent short-circuiting and disconnection.

I attached all of the parts using hot glue and double-sided foam tape, and added a flashing blue, yellow, and green light display at the front to give it a cooler look (especially when its on in the dark).

I actually spent more time troubleshooting then I did building, which is always frustrating.

This isn't my most applicable robot, but I suppose it could clean some floors before I take it apart or it drives its self off of a table one foot too high.

Awesome Mac tweaks

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to speak with some high school programmers. They had messed around with the school terminal program on all of the library's macs to the point where our tech people blocked Terminal from use.

Most mac users fail to see what a powerful application Terminal really is. You can use it for networking, writing Perl code, and just about everything else. DOS (Windows) has a similar command-line, but the commands are different than that of Unix (mac).
Today, I found one of my favorite commands:

"defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES"

I found it at Mac OS X tips, along with a couple others.

What this command allows you to do is take Dashboard widgets and put them on your desktop, which is pretty cool.

To get this command to work, you have to:

1) enter it in Terminal
2) enter "killall Dock"
3) press F12, click and hold on a widget, and press F12 again.
4) enjoy your favorite widgets on your desktop



When using Terminal, be sure to exercise caution, it is a very powerful application that you don't want to enter the wrong command in.

BW Science Labs now has an official logo!

I think we'll all agree that BW Science Labs has been in need of a logo for quite some time. Well, now thanks to Joseph Dudley (age 15), we have one.




Designing logos is just one of the many ways you can get involved in BW Science Labs. Feel free to send me your ideas at brennonw[at]gmail.com.