Hummingbird Tutorial

For this project you will be working with a Hummingbird Kit to make a basic robot. We will show you how to make simple movements, such as those needed for arms. We will also show you how to work with LED's to make eyes for your robot.

When first started learning about hummingbird we knew that we wanted to do a simple design that would including move parts and LED's. The first idea we came up was a T-Rex. Our initial idea included making a T-Rex with moving arms and LED lights. As we started to make our robot, we realized that we would have problems making the shell for the T-Rex fit with our design. For this reason we went with a robot based on the character Plank from the tv show Ed Edd and Eddy. We encourage you to come up with a initial design and direction for your project, but with the understanding that it might change based on your hummingbird kit.

Servo is a type of motor used for rotational movement and the first thing we will connect.. For our project we used two of them. Feel free to use more if your design needs it. Connect the servos in the area on the circuit board labeled servos. Servos are good for arms because the can rotate in a circular motion. You can program them to go back and forth to give the motion of an arm moving up and down.

The next step is to put in to LED lights, however this wasn't part of our initial design. As you get familiar with the humming bird we encourage you to get creative and add features to personalize your robot. For our project, the LED lights were something we thought we be good to use and make our robot more aesthetically appealing.

Now we will be using LED's for the eyes. Connect the two LED's into the LED area of the circuit board. Make sure you connect the wire color to the corresponding spot on the circuit board (labeled RGB-).

Snap is the software we will be using to program the robot. Download the program Snap to your PC.

The programming will be split into two commands, Servos and LEDs.

SERVOS

For Servo commands you will need to make sure to grab two Servos under the Motion section. You will notice for Servos, there are two numbers you can change. The first number corresponds to the port it is plugged into on the circuit board. The second number is the degrees that the Servo will rotate. Using negative numbers will change the direction of the rotation. Adjust the numbers as you see fit.

LED'S

For LED commands you will need two LED's from the Sound Section. You will notice there are 4 numbers you can change. The first number corresponds to the port it is plugged into on the circuit board. The last three are red, green, and blue (RGB). For each of these colors you can choose between 0 and 100, with 100 being giving it the greatest hue. Adjust the hues of each color to get the desired look.

At the start of this project we had never worked with hummingbird before. We weren't sure how difficult it would be to learn and construct. It was intimidating when we started putting things together. But looking back now it is made to be intuitive. The circuit board is labeled for your convenience. (You plug in servos where it says servos, motors where it says motors, etc.) One thing that we should have done, that we would recommend to others, is to take the time to observe and read the circuit board. We feel that this would have saved us time and that it would have made for a more fulfilling learning experience than looking up every aspect of the hummingbird hardware.