Running Out Of Time!
18 Feb 2017We have made some progress in the last week or so. We have the new ‘development chassis’ cut and the parts we have are being fitted. Harry needs to get his code in order too…
Last weekend we were invited to go over to Bradford to meet up with a couple of teams based there. One was a team from Bradford Grammar and the other from a code club run by Mike at Exanet (one of PiWars’ sponsors!). Both teams will be competing on the Saturday and both have robots based on commercial chassis. Considering the very limited time they have together to work on their robots, we were very impressed with the progress they had made.
Workshop
We gave them a potted history of KEITH in his various iterations and shared as much information on the competition as we could. The Exanet team were working on independent movement using a games controller. The Bradford Grammar team had already mastered the connection with a Wiimote and had an ultrasonic sensor working. Harry spent some time with them cleaning up the code and showing them how to iron out the ‘odd’ readings to give consistent distance measurement. They also managed to fit their reflectance sensors for line following and we managed to get some experimentation done to set the separation on them. We finished the session with a race around the track between KEITH Evo and their bot (they were faster on the straights, but KEITH Evo was faster on the bends…). We are hoping to meet up again before the competition when I hope KEITH 3 will be running properly!
Back home we spent a little time deciding how to wire everything up. We finally decided to use a ProtoCam prototyping board (designed by our friend and rival Averageman) to keep things as neat as possible. That board is being put together with motor controllers and transistors to switch LEDs and other components. We are considering how to connect the ultrasonic sensors and, more importantly, how and where to mount them!
Protocam+ on Pi3
KEITH3 (Mostly Harmless)
As ever, help comes from unexpected quarters. Harry had an interview at a university today and came out with tips on robot control from a computer science professor!
p.s. If this post works, it will be a first for this 53yr old without help from his 17yr old! There may be hope for me yet!
Andy
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