Cubelets at the Cafe Scientifique

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Today I got to strut my stuff at the Hull branch of the Cafe Sceintifique. This is a really neat idea set up by Mark Lorch from our Chemistry Department.  At the end of each month he hosts a talk of scientific bent in the upstairs room at Nellie’s, a fantastic pub in Beverley.

Note to new (or any) students. One night get a train to Beverley and go for a drink there. The atmosphere is amazing, enhanced by the fact that the place is all lit by gas lights.

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This is the programme for the rest of the year (and a bottle of very posh diet cola). Do you think I should tell them I’m not really a doctor?

Anyhoo, I’d given my talk the delightfully vague title of “Computing is fun. No really!”, which I reckoned gave me plenty of wiggle room about what to say. Once I’d agreed to turn up I was told of the house rules. No Powerpoint. In fact, no computer or screen. Just props. Fortunately I’d thought of that. And so I took along my cubelets. These are little cubes of computing that you can fit together to create physical programs and they turned out to be a super way to illustrate what computing is really all about. And they are fun too. If you want to find out more, take a look here.

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This is my “slab” of cubelets, all fitted together. I’ve no idea what this arrangement does, but that is part of the fun. And after tonight I want to buy some more.

I did my thirty minute talk and then, once we’d all found another drink, we sat around and talked about things computing, the future, and my memories of going into Dixons and typing: 

10 PRINT "Rob Rulez"
20 GOTO 10

- into the computers on display when the assistants weren’t looking. It was a really great night and the audience were splendid. I took a bunch of pictures, you can find all of them here.

Learning Computing with Cubelets

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I’m always on the lookout for a neat gadget. And at the Gadget Show I found one. What you can see above are Cubelets from ModRobotics. The picture above shows a robot made of little, cooperating cubelets. Each is around an inch on each side, and each is fitted with a set of tiny magnets that allows cubelets to snap to each other and send data back and forth. And each cubelet does something. Above, from left to right you can see a battery cubelet, a distance cubelet and a light cubelet. Black cubelets are sense cubelets, transparent cubes perform some form of action. Coloured cubelets are “thinking” cubelets that do something with the data coming in.

A sense cubelet will send out out the value it “sees” to all the cubelets around it. The distance one sends a signal that gets stronger the closer it is to something. So above you can see the reaction to my camera.

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This is a slightly more complicated device. The dark brown cubelet is a “think” one that outputs the larger of the two inputs that are going into it. The red cubelet is an “inverse” one that reverse the sense of the input. So, if something is close to my robot, or the knob is turned to the maximum, the light will grow dimmer.

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This one is a bit simpler. The cubelets at each end are drive cubelets. They have little motorised rollers. This robot will run away if I bring my hand too close to the top.

“Programming” with cubelets isn’t really programming at all. They click together and organise themselves so neatly that you just pop them into arrangements to see what they do. They are toy certified for kids from 4 years old, and I reckon that is a place they will really shine. After a bit of fun and games you can get some very complicated behaviours, and start making robots that behave in a way that you want, for example things like line following.

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This is my cubelet collection. I’ve no idea what it does, but it definitely does something…

And finally, as if this wasn’t enough, you can actually re-program the thinking cubes in C. The blue cube at the top left hand corner of my collection above is a Bluetooth cube that can talk to your PC.

Cubelets Coding

This is the programming environment that you run inside a browser. It talks to Bluetooth cubelet and allows you to select cubelets in the network and reprogram them.

The whole thing is utterly charming. The programming in C aspect is a bit of a work in progress at the moment, although it does work and ModRobotics are very responsive if you have problems. The system is powered by tiny rechargeable lithium-ion cells in the battery cubelet that seem to last a long time and the cubelets themselves are beautifully made and look like they would stand up to a lot of hammer. The kits are not cheap, but they aren’t bonkers expensive either, and you can always get them “on instalments” by just purchasing a few at a time. Well worth a look if you have any interest in engaging children with computing.