Another year of PiWars Build Nights Begins...

Each year we share our story of traveling to England to compete in a robotics competition called PiWars... we share our triumphs, and defeats...and CNM CIS students show up wanting to know more, wanting to travel, wanting to learn about robotics and programming. This year the initial group was greater than 20.  That number has dwindled because of school/work schedules, time commitments, cost, etc. to the current 10 students.  Everybody involved is enthusiastic and ready to learn as much as they can to help the team.  This year we only have 3 returning students from last years team with only 2 of those planning to make the trip to Cambridge next March.  There are 7 new students with varying degrees of understanding of robotics and python programming...mostly newbies...  So, we decided to bring out the Dexter GoPiGos to get them initiated into the world of robotics.  this slide show was our installation and testing night.  We downloaded the DexterOS image from the website listed below the slideshow and burned the image to the MicroSD cards using Belena Etcher (website listed in the notes below).  Once we had the images burned we tested each robot for a successful boot of the OS before repacking the robots into their containers and heading home to work on our coursework...  We shall test connectivity and operations next time.

In the background you can catch a glimpse of HAL3000, our PiWars 2019 robot that came in 2nd in the Intermediates category after brilliant runs on the Straightish Line Speed Test and the Hubble Telescope Challenge.

For this project we are using 10 Dexter GoPiGo 2's and the GoBoxEd Club Kit with a ton of cool sensors to learn.

Webpage for DexterOS Download
www.dexterindustries.com/dexteros/get-dexteros-operating-system-for-raspberry-pi-robotics/

Webpage for Balena Etcher Download
www.balena.io/etcher/