Our new documentation is here
Welcome to the CoderDojo Robot book! This book allows CoderDojo mentors to teach the concepts of Computer Science using an open-source, open-platform, low-cost $30 Arduino components. Because this is an open system, students may create many variations of these robots. Note that we never sell anything - we only supply parts lists and suggest age-specific device categories and examples within these categories. We are committed to vendor-neutral open platform and open source components that promote a sustainable classroom environments. Our designs are designed to be continuously upgraded.
This book was written by a group of CoderDojo mentors interested in teaching the fundamentals of Computer Science and Physical Computing using robots. Our goal is to coordinate resources including concept cards, sample scratch libraries, sample Arduino code, and hardware parts list. Our goal is to make teaching computer science really fun and accessible to CoderDojo groups that have very small budgets. We do this by keeping costs low enough so that in many cases each student can purchase, build and program their own robot.
We are firm believers in building materials that fit the CoderDojo models:
- mentor guided learning
- flexibile materials
- accessibility for all
We like materials like concept cards (aka Sushi Cards) that make it easy for students to guide their own exploration and allow a single enviroments were students with different backgrounds can all jump right in and start learning. The once-concept-per-card makes it easy for students to quicly pick up a deck of cards and see what they could learn in a two hour sessions.
Our materials are broken into for levels based on both the age of students and budgets.
These materaisl are designed for groups just getting started with minimal budgets and without robot kits.
Appropriate for students 5-10 years old. The materials are mostly basic concept cards and discussion topics like
"What is a battery?", "What is a sensor?", "What a motor?". This material is ideal when the group only has just
some small motors, batteries, wire and perhaps a single $25 robot in the classroom. We recommend a single fun
robot like the MiP be used to lead the discussions.
Resources for teaching robotics using the $60 USD mBot or a similar Arduino Robot. Appropriate for students 10-16 years old. These materials are designed to take graduates from a scratch program and let them use scratch to program a robot. A good example is our mBlock concept cards here: MBlock Concept Cards
Based on the $22 Arduino kit.
Students will need keyboarding skills and fine motor skills for using a breadboard.
Appropriate for students 10-18. Younger students will need supervision because some soldering is required.
We use the Arduino IDE which is currently based on C/C++. We are looking for python alternatives.
Collision-Avoidance-Robot-for-Teaching-Programming
These are new classes we are just developing based around machine learing. They are based on the Raspberry Pi 3+, Cameras and the Donkey Car. The process
is to build a robot that you "train" by manually driving it around a track painted on the ground. After the robot is "trained" it can then drive itself around a track.
These materials are only appropriate for students 14-18 and will
require each team to purchase a $200 robot as well as have access to laptops. We are working on getting the costs of these robots down and would like your help.
We teach some minimal UNIX shell programming, Python and networking. The Donkey Car is based on open source machine learning,
TensorFlow and the "track" to train the robots requires a room that is 50 feet by 70 feet. We are also trying to connect Donkey Car clubs around the world to local
CoderDojo chapters.
We are working on migrating all the documentation to GitHub Pages, but for now we are collecting resources here: https://github.com/dmccreary/coderdojo-robots
We could use help organizing our documentation and making the materials searchable based on the age of your students and learning objectives.
Pull requests are requested!
Our hardware is based an Arduino Nano that can be purchased on-line for under $3.
You will also need a chasis, a motor controller and two DC motors. Our base Robot platform uses the low-cost L293D motor controller.
We use the standard Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE) which usese a variation of the C programming language. We use this since software since it is by far the most popular language for teaching Arduino and basic robotics.
This book also has a guide to help you build your own robot based on open standards and parts. You can also find detailed assembly instructions on the Instructables web site.
This book comes with a detailed Instructors Guide which is designed for teachers and mentors that are new to teaching computer science using robotics.