Ok then, to give the background on me and robotics, here is a convenient flashback!
Imagine, if you will, the heady days of 1998 (or so). I was a scrawny runt of kid, just entering my first year of Junior High Shool (7th Grade). Having had a long love of all things fantasy/sci-fi, my first choice at electives were no surprise, and of course Robotics was in there. Now, a quick note on the school I went to. West Junior High was a fairly old school (opened in 1953, they closed the old building down last year and moved to a new location), and as such was limited in space, funds and so on (what school isn’t these days). My Robotics teacher was Mr. Vogt, a bear of a man if I ever knew one. He was a great guy, with an honest love of all things mechanical. Now, of course robotics back then, and especially for the school format, were quite simplistic. I would liken them to the precursor of the Lego Mindstorms sets. It was one of the greatest years of my life, when I learned of my true love of mechanical things, robotics, and video games.
Needless to say, time went on and I wasn’t in 7th grade much longer. So here we will fast forward through the uncomfortable mid-teen years and my excessive nerdliness. Now we are in 2002, quite a different time from the late 90’s, especially after the tragic events of the prior year. A quick backtrack here, my family and I moved to a suburb of Rochester, NY in January of 2001. Now then, 2001-2002 school year, my Junior Year in High School, attending the lovely institute known as Webster Schroeder High School. I once again enrolled in some classic nerd style electives, Principles of Engineering, Electronics, and Robotics, yet again. Now, the robotics field has changed a lot between ‘98 and ‘02, and on top of that we are older and get to play with cooler things. Now we have, what are basically, erector sets. No micro-controller or anything, they remained attached to the school computers via serial cables, and we programmed them in Basic. All was fun and awesome, again a great year for me, what with the greatest Chemistry Teacher ever, Mr. Schug.
But, as things go, time again went on its plodding way, leading to many things. Shortly before my graduation from High School I returned to Boise, ID and proceeded to do other things. Working and Gaming took over my life (somewhat to my chagrin). Now another fast forward through time (aren’t flashbacks convenient). Here we are in September, 2008 (gasp that’s this month!) and I am again browsing the web as I am wont to do. I stumble across a chain of sites that quickly lead me from simple USB Mods on to a gem of a site called Let’s Make Robots!. And my have I lost my nerve to do anything else ever again. I start reading and learning.
Much to my surprise, hobby robotics is relatively affordable (even for a guy on minimum wage) and I start setting my plans into motion. So in two days, I will be cashing my paycheck and ordering my first micro-controller. So stay tuned, as tomorrow I will inventory my tools (just for reference) and then I will periodically update with sketches, ideas, and plans I have until I get my parts. And then my blogging will begin in earnest as I share my journey with everyone who randomly stumbles upon this site.
Of course I will also document everything over at Let’s Make Robots.com.
