Atmel’s Tech on Tour mobile trailer hits the road

Atmel’s Tech on Tour (ToT) crew has tirelessly crisscrossed the globe for many years, offering hands-on technical training for a wide range of company products. This month, Atmel kicked off a new ToT era with a tricked-out mobile trailer that will be hitting the road this month.

The versatile mobile training center allows visitors to interact with a plethora of next-gen Atmel tech, including AVR and ARM based microcontrollers, automotive and crypto solutions, microprocessors, Internet Of Things (IoT) products, wearable devices, 3D printers, touch sensors and XSense.

In addition to hands-on training, Atmel will leverage the fact that it is at the heart of the Maker Movement and well positioned at the center of IoT innovation. From my perspective, the IoT will be led by a rising generation of tinkerers, inventors and innovators. These are dedicated people who are working out of universities, garages and small companies. We will go and meet them.

Our mobile Tech on Tour trailer provides a familiar setting for customers, engineers and Makers, as well as designers, students, professor and executives. We want to meet people in the market working on projects like electronics, robotics, transportation, alternative energy and sustainable agriculture. That is why we are offering hands-on training and access to soldering irons, along with a chance to brainstorm about the future together.

To be sure, the ToT trailer is quite a scalable platform, functioning not only as a mobile training center, a showroom and conference center, but also as a trade show booth, entertainment center, content creation platform, executive meeting center, recruitment platform, tech support center and employee engagement engine.

On top of that, we are partnering with all global distribution partners, customers, third parties, Makers, government officials and universities to bring Atmel to the market. We are very excited about the concept and the pull from the market and distribution partners has been very promising.

Note: You can request a ToT stop at your location here.

Brock Hinzmann talks 3D printing

Silicon Valley Node Chairman Brock Hinzmann has tracked the 3D printing industry for over 20 years. Hinzmann, who also describes himself as a technology navigator, recently told Rakesh Sharma of Forbes that he has observed a number of interesting trends over the past year, including the intersection of 3D printing and robotics, as well as the increased viability of 3D printing metal.

The Atmel-powered DIWire (Pensa Labs)

“3D printing machines are now being used to manufacture a large variety of consumer products, such as home robots (as opposed to being used to manufacture heavy machinery such as aircraft),” explained Sharma. 

“In turn, this trend also marks the first time that 3D printing is being used for printed electronics (such as the design and manufacture of circuit boards), as opposed to making structural components such as aircraft parts.”

In terms of 3D printing metal, Hinzmann says the increased accuracy and strength of metal 3D printers makes the machines “more capable and attractive” for manufacturing, as the density and finish of 3D printed metal parts “is just as good” as those manufactured using conventional manufacturing methods.

“Part of the reason for this is because 3D printing makes manufacturing cost-effective. The entire part can be 3D printed in a single machine, thereby reducing the number of points of failure,” Sharma noted. 

“This is unlike traditional manufacturing which fragments a single product into multiple pieces, each of which is manufactured separately and assembled together later.”

Hinzmann also emphasized that a number of industry improvements would have to happen for 3D printing to gain additional traction in 2014 – including a more intuitive user experience along with an expanded ecosystem.

“People who use the machines don’t have to be experts in CAD software and hardware,” he concluded. “Consumers want to push a button and have the object printed out just like their 2D printers.”

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, the DIY Maker Movement has been using Atmel-powered 3D printers like RepRap for some time now. However, 3D printing has clearly entered a new and important stage in a number of spaces including the medical sphere, architectural arena, science lab and even on the battlefield.

The RK-1 is an Arduino-based mobile robot for iOS and Android

The RK-1 – designed by Evangelos Georgiou – is a WiFi-enabled robot that can be easily controlled on iOS and Android mobile devices using swipe gestures.

“I love building and programming mobile robots. Because of my love of mobile robots, mobile phones/tablets and the Arduino, I combined them to make a prototype called the ‘RK-1.’ [So] thank you to Arduino for an amazing open source microcontroller platform!” Georgiou wrote in a recent Kickstarter post.

“[Basically], the idea is to give the [open source] community the ability to make Arduino projects mobile. There is no end to what you can do – [adding] sensors and actuators to this fun little device and [controlling] it remotely.”

A full hardware breakdown for the RK-1 is as follows:

• Programmable Arduino microcontroller
• Wireless control over wifi
• Dual H-bridge motor controller
• LIPO battery (chargeable via a mini USB cable)
• Acrylic base
• Tank tracks and DC motors

“The free software to control the robot is available via Apple’s iTunes app store or Google play,” Georgiou noted. “It is [also] possible to read analog signals from devices (sensors) connected to the Arduino micro controller. [Plus], you can change the state of digital ports from high to low.”

Additional information about the RK-1 can be found on the robot’s official Kickstarter page.

Sparki the Arduino robot is going places with Atmel’s Atmega32u4RC

Sparki is an easy to use Arduino-based robot that offers a fun introduction to programming, electronics and robotics. Although Sparki is simple enough for beginners, the ‘bot is packed with more than enough features to satisfy more experienced Makers.

The robot is powered by Atmel’s Atmega32u4RC paired with with a custom serial/HID hybrid Arduino bootloader. Additional key hardware specs include an NRF24L01+ data radio, 128×64 LCD, an ultrasonic distance sensor, accelerometer, 3x light-sensing phototransistors, 5x line-following and edge detection sensors, IR bounce for gripper, RGB LED, buzzer, IR transmitter/receiver/remote, TL serial port for expansion, a port for Bluetooth serial module, 2x geared stepper motors and a marker holder for drawing.

“Sparki is ArcBotics’ answer to robotics in education. After our first successful Kickstarter for Hexy the Hexapod, a low-cost open-source Arduino robot designed to be an intro to advanced robotics, we were approached by many who asked if we had anything for beginners. When we looked around, we saw that other educational robots were very expensive, difficult to use, lacked features, or had closed designs,” an ArcBotic rep explained on Kickstarter.

“However, we know that the interest in programming and robotics from people of all ages is enormous. So we thought, why not design an adorable new robot that lets people of all ages enjoy robotics, while offering them a wide range of [fun] possibilities?”

On the software side, ArcBotic has partnered with the folks at MiniBloq to bring drag-and-drop programming to Sparki, all while developing free tutorials and lesson plans.

Currently, Sparki can be used to teach a number of introductory robotic concepts, including edge avoidance, line following, maze solving, wall avoidance, room navigation, object retrieval and shape drawing. More advanced concepts include PID loops, pathfinding algorithms, signal filtering and heuristics.

Sparki has raised over $184,000 from close to 1,600 backers. Additional information about the ‘bot can be found on Sparki’s official Kickstarter page here.

Programming Arduino Pro Micro

EE Times’ David Peins takes a close look at the Arduino Pro Micro, based on an Atmel AVR ATmega32 microcontroller. His main objective: to use the board to control the robots that he uses in his educational program for 10 to 12 year olds. And his approach: to continue programming the Arduino Pro Micro until the board can do all of the tasks that he can now do with the PIC and BX-24 platforms.

He’ll keep us updated with his progress. But in the meantime, he brings up an interesting question: is writing subroutines really “hacking?”