SR2022 Issue 01

[Dan Trickey]

SR(A)WN Student Robotics (Almost) Weekly Newsletter

2021-06-05 : SR2022 Issue 01 The Student Robotics (Almost) Weekly Newsletter is a (roughly) fortnightly newsletter which summarises the goings‐on across Student Robotics. Emboldened items are ones for which additional help has been requested. SR2021 Certificates After multiple teams from SR2021 requested certificates for their awards, certificates have been designed and are currently in review. The latest iteration of the design includes a creative, but subtle way of integrating the SR logo into the background; all thanks to a Python script used to generate it! Fundraising Following the recent Member's Meeting, fundraising efforts have been ramped up and are being discussed in #fundraising. A document specifying tiers of sponsorship has been drafted by the Trustees and is currently under review. Brain Team releases first "Alpha" of SR2022 Kit Software The Brain Team have been working hard over the last 10 months to overhaul the kit software that we provide to competitors. The new features that have been developed include: Python 3 support. The images ships with Python 3.9 Mainline Linux Kernel (5.10) Support for re-running student code without rebooting the robot. Startup time under 15 seconds, better on faster SD cards. Tweaked Python API inspired by changes introduced in the SourceBots kit The first of a series of "alpha" images has been released for testing and experimentation. Updated alpha and beta images will be released at semi-regular intervals over the next few months. The image is available for: ODROID U3+ (Currently shipped in kits) Raspberry Pi 3B/3B+ Raspberry Pi 4B You can download the image from the releases page for robot-image. It should be flashed to an SD card using a tool like dd. A appropriate robot.zip can be generated using the new version of make-zip. The Brain Team are holding a introductory session to the new software, including design and technical details and how to get involved in development. Please fill in the Doodle poll for the meeting if you would like to attend. Process Documentation Whilst there's no Student Robotics competition right now, there's still plenty to do. Many volunteers are busy improving the runbook, documenting our processes and procedures for running competitions, and improving things along the way. If you're interested in seeing how things get done, or in getting involved in the discussion, check out the runbook repository, or join one of the fortnightly "Doings" (links in the calendar), part social, part writing documentation. Subscribe to SR(A)WN You can keep up with SR(A)WN online: Join the #srawn channel on Slack recommended Join the srawn mailing list on Google Groups Read historical issues on the SR(A)WN Archive Subscribe to the SR(A)WN RSS Feed

The Student Robotics (Almost) Weekly Newsletter is written by volunteers for volunteers. We'd like to thank everybody that contributed to this issue. An archive of SR(A)WN newletters is available online. If you'd like to contribute to the next issue of SR(A)WN, please visit the GitHub repository.