2025 Holidays Wishlist with the BBC micro:bit!

Probably one of the display machines at one of the larger department stores in town

After that, the family ZX81 / BBC Micro.

The most notable projects on the BBC worth mentioning would probably be the home robotics stuff. I had picked up a copy of the Richard Pawson's new 1985 book called 'The Robot Book' (still have it here 38 years later) which included a number of projects at the end using the likes of Fischertechnik, Lego Technik, and converting toys such as 'Big Trak' to computer control using different home microcomputers, along with enough code samples to get it working.

I think that book was a bit of a turning point for me as it demonstrated that it was possible to do this sort of physical computing stuff at home and at a much lower cost than the advertised educational kits, especially when everyone else around you was telling you it couldn't be done. Also as it used constructor sets, it was much easier to adapt it and at the time it felt a lot more exciting than just flashing a few LEDs connected to the user/printer ports.

What does the cover of this book look like? Is it publicly available? It would be interesting to read.

What does the cover of this book look like? Is it publicly available? It would be interesting to read.

It still appears in some of the second hand bookshops.

If you do get a copy, then remember to reset your mind back to the mid 1980s before reading.

The book covers the history o f robots, how they were depicted in the media both as good/bad, their use in the real world (in the 80s), the technical aspects, and then the last half is projects that you can do yourself without significant cost as you may already have an electronic toy or constructor set which has most of the parts. There is also a bit of freedom to explore further there in that for example the draught playing robot has an XY plotter mechanism and a conveyor belt which the author points out could also be used to simulate a warehouse type system.

The author had a real inclusivity challenge in that last section as not only did people own different home computers but also they likely owned different constructor sets e.g. Lego Technic vs Fischertechnik, or electronic toys. Trying to come up with projects to allow everyone to participate using what they had would not have been easy but I thought the author did well for an introductory book.

Perhaps keep in mind that this book predates online shopping so getting your hands on specific parts wasn't always easy. Also perhaps keep in mind what robotics kits were around at that time and their cost. Sure, If you had the money you could order up a Heathkit Hero 1 from Maplin Electronics but I never managed to get one for Xmas... The Fischertechnik computing and robotics constructor kits were also available but once again not that cheap. There were robot arms aimed at the home computer market like the Colne Armdroid but not easy to modify and not cheap, and had a tendency to stretch its cables a lot making position repeatability rather hit and miss. I recall a demo of one being used to try and repeatedly put a key in a car door lock and at the start of the evening it did ok but by the end of the evening the car door was about ready for a respray. (As an aside, apparently machine learning algorithms today are still struggling with keys and door locks).

Modern books of a similar style might be Tom Igoe's 'Making Things Talk'  or even Lorraine Underwood's 'Saving the World with Code' where she has inclusivity by including projects that can use either the micro:bit, Raspberry Pi, or Circuit Playground Express. I guess that there is always a bit of a risk with inclusivity like this in that two-thirds of the book may end up not being of interest to the majority who only have the single platform to work with. On the other hand, if you write for a single platform, then you risk losing two thirds of your audience.

I managed to get a copy of this book in PDF format, it is in the public domain. It’s a very interesting book, I’ll try to read it, it even contains information about machine vision.
Don't worry about me immersing my mind in 1980, I love studying various old technical books and old equipment, and I also caught a little of the time when there was no Internet.

Ah, excellent. I think I have another book on early machine vision from that sort of time lying around somewhere.

You know that thing where you know you have a book and you go to get it from the bookcase and it isn't there ? Yup. That.