This September, Parallax has been in business for 35 years. As part of our celebration, we asked our customers to tell us your Parallax story. This is one we received from our community which will be shared throughout the month.
"Thank you to Parallax for providing such a great product. Many girls in the class cited Robotics Day as their favorite day of summer camp."
General Electric Volunteers led a class of girls to build a robot based on the Parallax BASIC Stamp Microcontroller. They focused on electronics, software and hardware, firmware programming, and writing customized code to create an autonomous robot with sensory feedback.
The week-long STEM summer camp was run at the GE Canada corporate headquarters in Toronto, Ontario for 30 Grade 8 girls from the local school district, including one day focused on the Parallax Boe-Bot robot. The 30 girls were split up into groups of three and assigned one of ten Parallax’s BOE-Bot robot kits. The GE Volunteers led them through a full day of learning about the PBASIC language, microprocessors, servo-controllers, basic electronics, LEDs, and many other topics that steadily built on the necessary knowledge to build, troubleshoot, and modify pre-designed programs outlined in the Parallax’s study guide, “Robotics with the Boe-Bot”.
The end of the day culminated in the girls building out the full Boe-bots with tactile whiskers which provided feedback to the Boe-bot allowing for self-navigating an unknown room. Sharing a photo taken during the servo calibration phase of the activity, a quote from one of the girls, a short video, and of one of the girls testing her Boe-Bot during the course of the day.
One student wrote:
“Dear Chris,
I’d like to begin by thanking you and the rest of your team for giving me and the rest of the 30 girls this opportunity. It has been a wonderful week that made me think of STEM a different way. Thank you all for organizing this week. I’d like to ask that if there are any future volunteer opportunities with GE, please let me know, as I would love to be a part of it.”
Thank you to Parallax for providing such a great product. Many girls in the class cited Robotics Day as their favorite day of summer camp.
Contact: Chris Love, P. Eng., Director, Healthcare Service Technologies, GE Healthcare
Email: Chris.Love@GE.com
Cell 416-459-7867
