Author Archives: pidrogen

Building software to control a robot based on a video feed is tricky.  Generally, you get an idea how your algorithm should work so you implement it.  But when you try it the robot does something completely different to your plan and you have no idea why.  And the next time you try it, itContinue reading “Vision System Development”

I’ve done quite a lot of work on UTGP over the last couple of weeks. To start with I made the course. Then I used our 2019 line following code to time the course under vision control.  This code doesn’t know about junctions, so I made it work as follows: Set the odometer to countContinue reading “Up the Garden Path Progress”

Wow, it’s been a month since our last update.  That’s partly because we’ve been working on a talk for the upcoming conference, and partly because we’re too lazy after Christmas.  Anyway, lets update you on progress. Feed the Fish We have progress on this game, but there’s more to do. The robot does the appropriateContinue reading “Happy New Year!”

P20 (the robot we built for PiWars 2020) had loads of improvements over P19 (the machine we entered for PiWars 2019).  But most of the improvements were kind of… “incremental”: none of them resulted in a big performance increase.  For PiWars@Home we decided there was opportunity for fundamental change. So, we present P21; our machineContinue reading “Move Over P20!”

We have progress to report on the Tidy Up the Toys challenge. To begin with we thought we would adapt our Eco Disaster barrel lifter (shown below) for the tidy up the toys challenge. However, this has a few shortcomings: The barrel lift only raises the barrels by about 15mm.  This is plenty for Eco-DisasterContinue reading “The Tidy Up the Toys Challenge”

It was soon clear that our existing Nerf gun design was not well suited to the new shooting game, “Feed the Fish”.  The gun is designed to hit a target using a projectile trajectory which is as flat as possible; but the new game needs the projectiles to drop into the opening in the topContinue reading “Progress on Feed the Fish”

So, what about all these new challenges then?  The new challenges for PiWars at Home were announced at the start of September 2020.  As in previous competitions, there are several ways to perform each challenge with differing amounts of points available for each approach.  We will make every effort to gain maximum points for eachContinue reading “Getting ready for PiWars@Home”

The finish line is in sight for the hardware now. We have hopefully gone through the last major redesign (number 7!) for this year’s robot.  The new design incorporates all the lessons from the test chassis and last year’s robot.  All that remains is to settle on mounting holes in the lid for the NerfContinue reading “Hardware Almost Finished.”

Last year we didn’t do very well in Pi Noon as we were knocked out in the second round.  We decided to try to improve that this year. To that end we have developed a “Pi Noon Simulator”.  The cylinder at the top bends when pressed and makes a connection.  This lights an LED viaContinue reading “Pi Noon Practice”