Author Archives: pidrogen

Argh! First the bad news: we may have been too ambitious when filming the obstacle course. PiDrogen has taken a significant tumble and is now in “dry dock”. I can’t tell you what happened right now (you’ll have to wait to see the out take at the end of our obstacle course video at theContinue reading “The Bad News & the Good News”

Yikes!  It’s June.  18 days left.  Better get on with it. When we record the obstacle course, we plan to be running PiDrogen’s recording strategy.  This records a video from the robot’s camera and marks it up with various information, a bit like a Head Up Display (HUD).  See below. The HUD reports the headingContinue reading “The Obstacle Course”

Sorry!  I forgot to update the blog on the new catapult arm. (See my previous blog entry). Sadly, it didn’t make a difference on the Feed the Fish game.  But I’ll explain it anyway. Nerf Rival balls are obviously made with a mold which has two hemispherical parts.  It is clear to see the seamContinue reading “YACA5 Update”

I’ve fallen into the trap of searching for the Holy Grail of Feed the Fish: that is 15/15 shots.  I’ve done so many “takes” that the course has gone darker (from tyre rubber) where the robot makes a right-angle turn to line up on the aquarium!  This is my latest attempt at designing a moreContinue reading “Yet Another Catapult Arm”

I’m rather proud of our aquarium. Here’s a picture: It is a 3D printed frame into which you can slot two (or three) iPads.  The red circle on the bottom is a target for the robot to align on. The outside of the box is the regulation 200mm, but the hole in the top isContinue reading “Take a look at our Aquarium!”

I built the new catapult (that I talked about in my last post) and tested it. Immediately I could see many of the improvements that were expected of the new design: However, I found that it was still too inconsistent.  Specifically, the energy stored in the system would gradually decrease as the catapult was usedContinue reading “Testing the new Catapult”

Back in November I made this design for Feed the Fish. At the time, I was pleased with it.  Initial tests went well, and I had occasions where the catapult delivered five rounds into the aquarium in one shot.  Since then, however, I have become less satisfied with the design.  Here are the problems withContinue reading “A New Catapult for Feed the Fish”

I’m a bit late to the voice control party.  But that’s good news because everyone else has done all the hard work.  In particular, Neil Stevenson from Team Dangle has blogged how to install Vosk (https://dangle.blogsyte.com/?p=199) on a Pi.  I copied Neil’s instructions and had a voice control system up and running (on a RPi400)Continue reading “Voice Control Taking Shape”

Two blog posts in one day!  Whatever next? Version 1 of the junction detector has a problem.  Frequently the angle of the road ahead does not match the preset angles of the coloured bars in the detector (see the earlier blog).  As a result, the code misses road options. So, I have developed a newContinue reading “I want Doughnuts.”

You may recall that we have managed to complete the Up the Garden Path challenge using a mixture of video guidance and odometry (see our blog from the 25th January). The next step in our plan is to remove the utilisation of the odometry.  This requires that the line follower code be changed to understandContinue reading “Line Follower Junction Detection Version 1.”