Cricket Compass


	A girl visited the PIC (Playful Invention Center ) and made a compass using lots of orange tape, Legos, a pencil, a touch sensor and a cricket. -Keith

	The girl who made this invention spent about 15 minutes with me coming up with an idea, then building, refining and programming it. Click to see a bigger picture.

	The girl who wrote this hadn't programmed before, and she spent about 10 or 15 minutes learning how to program and making her compass move the way she wanted it to. She used the module that has a motor that turns slowly. She had a pencil attached to lego parts that held it up. When this program runs, it waits until you press a touch sensor called "toucha". When this happens the motor turns "onfor" 70 (decaseconds) which means 7 seconds. After it turns on, a "repeat" block is used to repeat a beep and four notes 10 times.

	This is the Lego module that gave her the idea for the cricket compass. We'd been putting the modules out for visitors to try, so they can focus on quickly trying out the crickets, some neat motion, sensors, and programming. Watch a movie of the cricket compass in action.