Finch, Hummingbird, and Snap!

We will introduce attendees to two hardware platforms used to teach computer science, math, science, and engineering: the Finch robot, and the Hummingbird Robotics Kit. Both platforms were developed at Carnegie Mellon’s CREATE lab and are now commercially available. Finch and Hummingbird connect to a computer over USB and can be programming with Snap, which is heavily based on Scratch. We will demonstrate the basics of using Snap to program the Finch and components from the Hummingbird kit. Come learn how to control pen graphics with accelerometers, control robots with “key pressed” commands, set shiny, color-changing LEDs to respond to how much light is in the room or how loud it is, and much, much more!