Listed below you will find my resume expanded upon. If you have questions please contact me using the contact page. A pdf version of my resume is available for download here.

I will post links here to all the files throughout my web page. There will also be some other files on here that I have found to be useful.

Misc Files
• Art Hanner Resume
• A conversion chart to convert fractions of an inch to decimal inches and millimeters
• Colour wheel with hex codes
• RALPh Lesson Plans zip file

Certifications
• National Registry Advanced Emergency Medical Technician
• Georgia Advanced Emergency Medical Technician
• Georgia Pharmacy Technician
• Certified Pharmacy Technician
• National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians Advanced Medical Life Support
• National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians EMS Safety
• Traffic Incident Management
• American Heart Association Pediatric Advanced Life Support
• American Heart Association Basic Life Support for Providers
• Georgia Department of Public Health Infectious Disease Transportation - Operations
• OSHA 30 Hour Class
• National Incident Management System 100
• National Incident Management System 200
• National Incident Management System 700
• National Incident Management System 800
• GEMA Crash Victim Extraction
• GEMA Rescue Specialist
• GEMA Hazardous Materials Awareness

Welcome to my Ham radio reference and projects page. Listed below you will find the links, files, and information that I have found to be useful in my time on the air.

I am always looking forward to new opportunities to learn and help the local community.

I have currently completed the training listed below and the certificates are linked on my files page.

• National Incident Management System 100
• National Incident Management System 200
• National Incident Management System 700
• National Incident Management System 800
• GEMA Crash Victim Extraction
• GEMA Rescue Specialist
• GEMA Hazardous Materials Awareness
• OSHA 30 Hour

Robotics Assistive Learning Platform (RALPh)

This page goes into further detail about the Robotics Assistive Learning Platform (RALPh) that I tested in a class during spring semester 2016 at Mercer University.

I designed, created and revised RALPh over about 4 years. I handed the project off to a professor when I left Mercer University in late 2016. RALPh is being implemented into the Freshman Programming for Engineers Class. I successfully taught this class as a lab instructor for the spring semester of 2016.

The idea behind the project was to add a physical real world component to coding in C++. Many things can be done with just a computer screen, but for many students it is difficult to really grasp the critical thinking skills required for programming and engineering. With that in mind, I set about looking into making coding fun and accessible to more students. I started by examining at what LEGO has done with their Mindstorms program. They had a modular reprogrammable robotics system that was easy to work with and fun. I talked with Dean Wade H. Shaw, Ph.D., P.E. at the Mercer University School of Engineering to understand what he would like for in the freshman introduction to C++ class. Dean Shaw wanted to refocus the class on critical thinking in engineering. This meant getting the students to problem solve, think linearly, and be creative with what they were learning. So from there I began the design process of the robot.

The robot started out mechanically close to the final design undergoing just minor changes. It is roughly 5 inches wide by 7 inches long hardboard frame. Attached to this are two roughly 4 inch wheels driven by two modified HS311 servos and a single pivot point. I removed the circuit board and mechanical stops from the servos to allow them to be continuous rotation geared motors. I chose this route because the servos are cheaper than a regular motor with gearbox in a similar form factor and strength. This design was modified several times over the course of the next four years. The main changes were to the box that houses the circuitry. It sits on top of the robot and changed size to accommodate the changes in circuitry. The circuitry progressed a long way from the initial design.

I started out the circuit design proof of concept with an lm239 motor driver and an Atmel ATTiny 2313 8 bit microprocessor. The first several versions kept these 2 chips and adjusted the layout and peripheral components. These first versions were two sided single board systems with integrated linear regulators and breakouts for the programming header and unused input/output (IO) pins. As I built the system and talked to some professors I decided to add a second motor driver that would allow for two auxiliary motors to be driven from the same board. At this point I was unable to keep the design hand solderable and small enough to fit on one board in the robot, so I created a stacked mother-daughter board system with the motor drivers, linear regulator, and other higher voltage parts on the lower board and put the processor on the top board. This design worked well enough but I was quickly running out of IO pins. After doing more research, I settled on the Atmel ATMega 8 microprocessor as my replacement.

I chose the ATMega 8 because it gave me more pins, a faster internal clock, and was the cheapest of the options. This upgrade allowed me to broaden the capabilities of RALPh. I was now able to add in serial communication as well as analogue inputs. The analogue inputs were a great boost to RALPh, allowing for line following and distance measurement sensors to be developed and added on. The ATMega 8 also gave me a larger code storage capacity and more communication options.

I worked out the wireless controller option using a Bluetooth to serial adaptor and the hardware serial pins on the ATMega 8. This allowed the students to use their phones to connect to the robot and control it. The bidirectional serial stream allowed the students to create a 'dashboard' that they could use to get feedback from the robot. The stream also gave the students a good feedback option when they were debugging their code allowing for print to serial stream markers to locate hang-ups in code.

Once I had the hardware and circuitry mostly settled I began work on the lab exercises for the students. I adjusted what I was thinking because after working on the low level backend code I had to remember that these students are freshman learning C++ or coding in general. This led to some challenges when writing the lessons plans as I had to think back to when I was learning to write code and what issues I ran into. One of the objectives of the class was to promote problem solving, so I did not solve all the problems the students could run into during the lab. I have attached the finalized pdf lesson plans that I wrote here if you would like to use them for your own teaching. All of the students were using Atmel Studio 7 to program their robots so that is where the screen shots come from. Atmel Studio 7 is free to download and use privately or in education settings as of the writing of this page.