We didn’t get around to getting a machine – we’ve been kind of busy. Instead, we were spending far too much money at the nice Italian cafe across the road. And then, to our great surprise, a lovely, shiny bean-to-cup espresso machine arrived on the doorstep. It was a gift from an American company called Zipwhip, who are in the cloud texting business. Better still (and yes, we were surprised to discover that there is something better than a free coffee machine), they’d hooked it up to a Pi and a homegrown circuit board they’re calling Textspresso, which turned it into a connected cloud texting device. The Zipwhip folk sent us instructions on setting it up so we could send a text message to a phone associated with the machine when we were on our way into the office in the morning, and it’d grind some beans and make a coffee just in time for our arrival. Cloud texting, you see. It’s the caffeinated wave of the future.

And they sent us this rather brilliant video.

Here’s the machine (it’s the same one from the video) in situ at Raspberry Towers – picture taken this morning. Note the glamorous view we have of the car park.

It sees a lot of use, and yes, we really do keep it that clean. (Gordon is not allowed to leave in the evenings until he has done some judicious sponging.)

We’ve been using Rob B’s phone to control the machine: it’s him we send texts to when we want a coffee, and the message is forwarded via the cloud to the Pi in the machine. The Pi then texts the person who’s ordered the coffee to let them know when their drink is ready. (Thanks to the cloud, it can text us even though it’s not a mobile phone.) This works brilliantly, but we have found that if any of Rob’s friends sends him a text with the string “coffee” in there (“Hey Rob! Fancy meeting up for a coffee later?”) the coffee machine springs into action, and is prone to widdling all over the floor if we’ve forgotten to stick a mug under the outlet. Friends of Rob: a plea. Use email if you want to invite him out.

Zipwhip have made exhaustive instructions for adapting your own coffee machine available, so you can get coffee on your own carpet. (Seriously. We really need to get more regimented about leaving mugs under the thing, guys.)

Thank you so much, Team Zipwhip. We’re overwhelmed by your generosity, and you read us just right: coffee is an instantaneous and powerful way into our hearts. We raise our mugs to you.

Speaking of mugs, you can buy them in the Swag Shop. Go on. You know you want to.

According to their shop blog the Mars Rover, which is in the final construction and testing phases, is constructed of over 700 electrical components, aluminum parts, and other pieces that they purchased, made by hand, and/or machined on their homemade CNC Mill. In addition to the NASA-style six-wheeled rocker-bogie suspension system and the solar panels, the new Mars Rover is equipped with an infrared camera, a thermal array sensor, eight sonar sensors, and other technology. Using special control software that they provided and programmed, kids and other visitors to the center will drive the Mars Rover remotely through the exhibit’s Mars-scape on a mission to find infrared-emitting rocks that may provide evidence of past life on Mars.

Robert, Camille and Genevieve were kind enough to let us share a few of their photos of the project, and discuss their thoughts on some heavy-hitting subjects, like custom Command Sequence software, Clone Wars, and who the next CEO of SparkFun will be (watch out, Nate).

Camille, Robert and Genevieve Beatty with their Mars Rover

Can you tell us a little bit about yourselves and what you do and how this all started?

Camille: When I was 11, I started taking apart calculators, clocks, and TV remote controls to see what was inside. My dad asked me if I wanted to build something myself. We started out creating simple circuits on a breadboard to light up LEDs. Then my dad asked, “What do you want to build next?” and I said, “A robot!” We started out really basic at first and learned as much as we could. I’m 13 now and I’m in 7th grade. We’ve built all sorts of rolling, crawling, flying, beeping, blinking robots.

Genevieve: I was 9 when we started. I was kind of interested when I saw my sister and Dad playing with electronics, but then I got really, really excited when we started talking about building a real robot because we decided to make it look like the 327T / Treadwell droid from Star Wars Clone Wars, which is my favorite show. I watch it over and over. I’m 11 now, in 5th grade.

Robert: Career-wise, I was the founder and CEO of Plex, an Internet software company; I exited the company a few years back to spend more time with my wife and children. Now I’m an aspiring writer of imaginative fiction for young adults. When my daughter became interested in electronics, I was excited to explore that world with her. We learned about sensors, motors, electrical components, microcontrollers, metal machining, and all the rest of it by studying SparkFun.com, arduino.cc, CNC machining websites, and all the other awesome sites that are out there in the DIY community.

How and when did Beatty Robotics become official, and how has it evolved as the girls have grown?

Camille: We wanted to share pictures and videos of our robots with my cousins and my dad’s brothers who live in different states, so my dad suggested we setup a website. He thought it would be a good way for us to learn how to use Wordpress and post articles and stuff. Once we started posting, it turned out that a lot of people liked our robots. People from all over the world write to us, like the other day the Swiss Institute of Technology invited my sister and I to attend their university. But I figure I better finish 7th grade first. :)

Robert: We knew very little when we started, didn’t know how to solder, or what a common ground was, and had no idea what an Arduino was. We’ve learned a lot together. It’s been fun to see what each girl is most interested in. Genevieve loves to solder and she’s extremely good at it. She’s done 80% of the soldering in most of the robots we’ve built, including the Mars Rover. Camille, on the other, loves machining metal, especially milling, drilling, and tapping, and has become very good at that.

Camille uses the mini drill press to drill holes onto the metal wheels in preparation for tapping the threads.

What was the inspiration for building a Mars Rover?

Camille: We saw the Mars Rovers on the news and we thought it was cool. Then we watched a documentary about Spirit and Opportunity and we shouted: “Dad, we’ve got to build one of those!” So we did. :)

How does your Mars Rover work?

Robert: The Mars Rover runs on an Arduino Mega microcontroller. We use TTL serial to link to the various subsystems. A 2x25A Sabertooth motor controller drives the six motors, and a Maestro servo controller drives the six steering servos. The NASA-style, six-wheel rocker-bogie suspension system, which is the thing we’re most proud of on this robot, is made of aluminum tubes, channels, brackets, machine screws, and other components. When the Mars Rover needs to turn, the Arduino tells the servos at the corner wheels to rotate 45 degrees and then drives all six motors, causing the robot to rotate in place just like the real Mars Rover.

The robot receives commands and transmits its status using an Xbee radio. In order to avoid running into Mars rocks and exhibit walls, the robot is equipped with eight XL-Maxsonar-EZ4 ultrasonic sensors, two on each corner wheel assembly. Temperature and infrared detection is one of the key elements of the exhibit, so the robot includes a thermopile array sensor in order to detect the temperature of what’s in front of it, a green line-generating laser (to visually see where the temperature array is pointed), and a high-resolution infrared-detecting WiFi camera. The robot is also equipped with a voltage sensor to monitor the battery charge.

Our first Mars Rover robot drew power from four SparkFun solar panels, but because this particular robot will be operating in an indoor exhibit we run it on a 10,000mAh 7.4v LIPO battery. We discovered LIPOs when we built our first quadrotors, but now we use LIPOs in every robot we make.

Mars Rover main electronics plate. From left to right, top to bottom: XBee radio, voltage sensor, voltage booster for camera, Arduino Mega, servo controller, power rail and motor controller.

How did the New York Hall of Science end up contacting you about building a Rover for their Mars exhibit?

Robert: The New York Hall of Science has a very cool Mars exhibit, but their existing rover needed a serious upgrade, so they started searching around the internet for options. When they bumped into the video of our first Mars Rover, they contacted us and started asking us about it. One thing led to another, and they asked us to build them a new Mars Rover for their exhibit.

How long did the Rover take to complete, and what materials did you use (any SparkFun parts in there)?

Robert: It took us about two months to build the Mars Rover. We worked on it every day. SparkFun is one of the primary sites we buy our parts from. On this particular project, we went to SparkFun for the Arduino Mega microcontroller, Xbee radios, Explorer breakout boards, Maxbotix sensors, antennas and antenna components, hook-up wire, headers, resistors, blank circuit boards, illuminated toggle switch, screw terminals, heat shrink, Arduino enclosure, and other components. We’ve also bought many of our tools from SparkFun, such as diagonal cutters, safety glasses, and the Hot-air Rework Station. In fact, we’ve bought so many parts from SparkFun in the last two years that we use a stack of about thirty red SparkFun boxes to organize all the various parts we have in our workshop’s inventory.

The user interface of the Mars Rover exhibit Control Station

Once the Rover is in place, how will the exhibit function?

Robert: The Mars Rover will operate in an 18’ diameter circular Mars-scape exhibit that includes many artificial Mars rocks. Several of the rocks have an infrared heat lamp concealed inside them. Visitors will sit down at a Control Station (a Mac Mini computer running custom software we developed). The mission is to drive the rover around and search for clues to finding past life on Mars; specifically, to find a rock that emits infrared energy (which indicates the rock may have been formed in liquid water). The visitor is provided a high-resolution video stream and various sensor data as he goes.

To make the robot move, he clicks direction arrows to build a multistep Command Sequence, then clicks the ‘UPLOAD TO ROVER’ button. We could have allowed the visitor to control the robot in real-time using a joystick, but we wanted to simulate the Command Sequence approach used on the real Mars Rover. In real life, it takes 20 minutes for the Command Sequence to reach the Rover on Mars. In our situation, it’s instantaneous. Once the Rover receives a Command Sequence, it executes the commands autonomously, using its ultrasonic sensors to avoid running into obstacles. Once the Command Sequence is complete, the Rover transmits its status back to the Control Station, including the distance to all the objects around it and the temperatures scanned by the thermal array sensor. To the naked eye, the infrared-emitting rocks don’t look any different from the other rocks, but in the infrared camera they appear bright white. When the visitor thinks he’s identified the infrared-emitting rock, he clicks on it. We use blob-recognition in the video stream to confirm that he’s correct and we congratulate him for discovering an important clue to finding evidence of past life on Mars.

Genevieve soldering the wires onto the motors.

Where do you hope this project, and Beatty Robotics, will go in the future?

Camille: Well, for sure, I want to make a super-cool sparkling-LED fiber-optic fabric dress for prom. That would be neat. For the robots, I like small. I’m always trying to make the smallest robot I can, and it gets smaller each time. I’m also trying to figure out how to incorporate nature into my robots. For example, we are building a Snailbot, which is an entire robot inside a real seashell, including an Arduino Nano, little motors, a battery, and an Xbee radio for remote control. We’re going to make the mollusk part of the snail, including the base and head, out of Sugru. The snail’s antennas, which are going to stick up from its head like a real snail creature, are going to be Maxbotix sonars. It’s going to be really cool.

What would be your advice for someone hoping to make their own electronics project, or introduce their children to electronics?

Robert: A lot of parents have contacted us and asked us about this. I normally suggest that they buy an Inventor’s Kit and experiment with it. Then buy the parts to build a small rover – either remote control or autonomous or both – and go from there. My advice to parents for keeping a child engaged is to have the child do the actual work, not just watching you do the work, but doing the work themselves with their own hands.

The Rover’s first motion test

There is a particular challenge in the US when it comes to involving more girls in the STEAM education fields, and there doesn’t seem to be a clear solution to the imbalance. It seems like you started your robotics projects when Camille started taking things apart – but there are plenty of cases where smart & creative girls don’t have the opportunity to start where your daughters did. Do you have any suggestions how parents and educators can reach out to more girls and involve them in projects like these?

Camille: My advice to girls about robotics? Well, first, don’t put the red wire on the ground pin. Bad things happen! :) Seriously, though, I think it would be good to show girls examples of the end product so that they can see some of the neat things they can do. Also, I think the key to involving a girl (or a boy), is that the mom or dad are involved. Young girls want to be with their mom and dad, so if the mom or the dad builds something and keeps the girl involved, she’s going to be interested.

Genevieve: Look at our website and other people’s websites and see all the fun stuff that can be done and then just jump in and start learning about it.

I know it’s a ways off, but are you considering careers in electronics fields? (Also – do you want to come work at SparkFun? We could sure use you!)

Camille: If I work at SparkFun, do I get free parts? Then I’m in. But I want to be CEO. :)

Genevieve: I love math and I think maybe I do want to study engineering in college, but I also want to be a writer, so I may need to be a few things.

Camille uses the vertical mini mill to do some machining to modify the laser mount.

What’s your favorite part about working on projects like these with your dad?

Camille: Machining. Hands-on stuff. My dad teaches me programming as well, but I’m not a software girl, I’m a metal-cutting girl. I like our vertical mill because I like doing the machining myself, but I like the CNC mill, too, when the part is really complicated. Drawing parts on the CAD system is fun (I use the CNC for school projects now, too). Also, on the Mars Rover, experimenting with the different kinds of lasers was really cool. After doing a series of tests, I selected the frequency/color of the laser (green) and the lens we use (38-degree line generator). But the thing I like the most about all this is spending time with my Dad, and learning about life, and to be patient, and not giving up on something because it doesn’t work at first, and how to puzzle out a solution to a problem. I also really like making new stuff out of old stuff, like one time I got interested in Morse code, so we bought some old telegraph equipment on eBay, but it didn’t really do anything, so we wired it up with Arduinos and Xbee radios and made an Arduino-based wireless telegraph set. Now my sister and I can communicate with Morse code from our separate bedrooms.

Genevieve: Doing all the soldering. I love the soldering. I also like coming up with ideas and drawings for the robots. And I like experimenting to see how things work. On the Mars Rover, I especially liked testing the thermal sensor and the infrared camera in the workshop with my Dad. I also enjoyed pretending I was a kid at the museum using the software that controls the robot. We tried to figure to make it simple and easy to use, but still fun. I’m like the Chief Test Kid.

What’s the best thing you’ve learned from building these projects?

Genevieve: That we can build anything we can think up.

Camille: I think the flow of electricity is amazing. It makes me think that maybe everything is connected, like everything is flowing around in a circuit and coming back around. Nature. Energy. People. Everything. It seems like there is a balance between extremes, positive and negative, whether it’s in machines or in nature.

Genevieve and Camille with the partially-completed Mars Rover

I read on your website that you have a little sister – do you think she’ll want to join in on the fun when she’s old enough?

Genevieve: For sure. One of her first words was “robot."

Camille: She loves playing with our tools and “helping” us. When we took the picture of Genevieve and I with the finished Mars Rover, we were all laughing because we had a hard time keeping her out of the shot. She’s not even two years old yet, but she wants to be with her big sisters and she wants to be part of things.

Thanks so much for showing us your Mars Rover, Beatty crew! Keep up the awesome work, and good luck with the exhibit!

John and the Young Innovators team have been loaning Pis to interested people in Malawi, as well as donating them to schools and kids’ groups. A number of Pi-based projects are being developed by those people for the next Lilongwe Jam in September. He tells me that there’s a remote lock for a warehouse in the works, along with the development of an IT course for a refugee center, and an application for managing patients at a local clinic.

Young Innovators Malawi do some wonderful stuff; they are a non-profit, volunteer group running events and competitions to inspire young people all over Malawi to get involved with innovation and technology. If you’d like to support them, please visit their website, and consider making a donation. Your donations go towards funding Raspberry Pi kits, bundled with learning materials, which are given to kids and schools.

The Locosys LS20031 GPS receiver integrates a MediaTek MT3339 66-channel GPS chip with a ceramic antenna to create a complete GPS module that can track up to 66 GPS satellites at a time. The GPS module supports up to a 10Hz update rate, a built-in rechargeable battery for rapid satellite acquisition (external power is still required for normal operation), and more than 6 different NMEA ASCII sentences that are output to a TTL-level serial port.

Delicious, spicy success.

1. Get past the engineer’s curse. Many engineers ask for two weeks to add “just a few more finishing touches.” Two weeks later, that same engineer needs “three more weeks and it’ll be awesome!” In the end, the product never ships. At SparkFun, we tell the customer exactly what they are getting, even if that means the silkscreen is messed up or the LED might be yellow instead of blue. People are not ok with surprises, but they are quite understanding as long as you warn them.

2. Trust (aka delegation). We cannot do it all, so we have to find good people and ask them to work for us. It’s a leap of faith to let someone else ship an order or answer the phone. But we have to do it, and the sooner we ask for help and trust that person, the sooner we will get back to what we really should be working on – the business.

3. No one ever said they fired someone too soon. This may sound cold, but I have hurt SparkFun and myself by not letting people go quickly enough. Even the person getting let go is harmed when you don’t let them go, because they aren’t in the job that they could really excel at. When you wait, bad things happen. Do not wait.

4. Luck is a thing. The best-laid plans can be augmented or destroyed by Lady Luck. We moved into the remaining space in a building that was occupied by another tenant. We had plenty of space for us, but nowhere to grow past the space we rented. When the other tenant closed its doors, they didn’t just move out; they also had to pay the five remaining years of their seven-year lease. When we needed more space, it was available and at a discounted rate. You can’t plan for these black swans, just try to ride them.

5. Never stop working on yourself. There is no book that will tell you how to run a successful business. There are no social-media shortcuts. Running a business means a lot of work, challenges, and learning something new every day. Read, talk, listen, and take classes. You will quickly realize there is a noise-to-information ratio of about 20 to 1. I have to listen to four hours of a speaker to get 15 minutes of valuable “A-ha!” moments. I have to read 200 pages of a book to get 10 worth of action. Don’t stop looking for more.

6. Learn the word “no.” We want to meet, talk to, and help others. However, will the person be mad that I said no, or will they be more mad when I fail to deliver? Saying no is 10 times harder and more important than saying yes to something.

7. Focus on one thing and do it well. Far too many companies assume additional features or services are what the customer really wants. Like user interaction design, simpler is better. Look at craigslist: it’s ugly as sin, but it did something so well (classifieds) that it uprooted the newspaper industry. There are infinite opportunities out there. Find one and hammer it.

8. First to market is important and overrated. If you have the benefit of being first to market you will enjoy a quick market share, but you will be locked into the eternal race with the red queen. If you are second or 12th to market (I believe Wikipedia was the 12th attempt at a wiki-based encyclopedia), you have the advantage of being the one that the incumbent never saw coming. Being later to market has made many of the largest companies. Nobody’s watching – try something crazy.

9. Listen more than you talk. No one is given a permit to run a company, they just decide to. And there is no better way to show your ineptitude than when you open your mouth. I surround myself with people who are ok saying, “I don’t know.”

Remember this advice is worth what it cost you, and in this case it was darn near zero. Hope you enjoyed reading!

Last saturday we had a great day celebrating the Arduino Camp, hosting the traditional hackaton inside Officine Arduino and Fablab Torino spaces and the huge courtyard of Toolbox Coworking. Many people, cool projects, and a theme: “Reinventing interfaces of home appliances” (… interpreted in a very wide way, though).

We had three winners and a special nomination, check yourself among the amazing shoots by Cosimo Maffione on our Flickr set.

First prize – “No friends No air”:  an air system based on computer vision

Second prize – “Rombot“: the alarm clock that you have to drive back to turn it off

Third prize – “InterVintage“: a domestic communication tool based on vintage stuff

Special Mention – “Coffee or Die“: a special interface for a flame

So far we’ve been organizing  three Arduino Camps, and we have many requests of people willing to join or organize such an event all over the world to celebrate Arduino users’ community. That’s why for the next years’ edition we are planning to offer to community-based groups the possibility to organize their own hackaton on the same day in different locations. Same theme, a variety of approaches to solve a problem. Stay tuned!

You might recognise Pierre’s name from a project we featured here back in April. The Magic Mirror recognises people looking into it, and talks to them accordingly. Back then he was using a webcam; now he’s got his hands on a camera board. The Raspberry Pi camera board is a better fit for the device, with a much higher framerate and better resolution.

In most webcams, OpenCV works natively. But because the Pi camera board isn’t a USB device, some work needed to be done to get it up and running. Pierre has done a bang-up job, and has made a seven-part tutorial available to get you up to speed. When you’re done, you’ll be able to see results like this:

Thanks Pierre – we can’t wait to see what you do next!