Our next meeting is rapidly approaching. This week on Thursday 26th February we have Jon talking to us about Node-Red, a web based interface for Internet of Things (IoT). It sounds really interesting. The Talk will be in a break out room so the usual making can continue if Node-Red is not for you.
Our calendar of events can be found here.
Just found this photo of TractorBot, probably should have posted it earlier, but better late than never.
Once again, thank you very much Rapid Electronics for the sponsorship.
Did you know Ipswich Makerspace has a git repository?
No… well it does. it can be found here
So far it contains two repositories:
If anyone has anything they think can be added here, please let me know.
Keith Ellis.
A great video by Frank recording the journey of the TractorBot journey during the 2014 PiWars competition, and a great story it was, with us coming first in our class!
To read the full story on how we did, see this post
For more information on the competition as a whole, see the official site www.piwars.org
I took part in the Cambridge Jam PiWars event at the weekend, it was held at the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy, me and Phil Willis built the robot and we took part representing the Ipswich Makerspace. It was a great event and many thanks must go to the organisers Mike Horne, Tim Richardson and Andy Batey.
The Event consisted of a number of challenges, more can be found on the PiWars website, but the challenges were as follows:
* Code Quality
* Aesthetics
* Sumo (remote control)
* Straight Line Speed (remote control)
* Obstacle Course (remote control)
* Line Following (autonomous)
* Three Point Turn (autonomous)
* Golf (remote control)
* Object Avoidance (autonomous)
The above challenges were scored and a number of other prizes where awarded, but the main two prizes were awarded for best overall robot, one for under £75 and one for over £75.
We took part in all the challenges with our robot TractorBot, Phil coded all the software whilst I designed and built the hardware!
Sumo
Was interesting, there was a wide variety of bots of different sizes and shapes, our first competitor was a worthy opponent and very balanced and it took a while, but with some skilled control we eventually won. The second round was easy and a bit unfair, Harold was a two wheeled bot, we had more control and power so it was over quickly. Our final competitor was a monster, BiggerTrak was a six wheeled bot with full suspension hiding beneath a pirate ship. We clearly was not going to win this one based on strength, it swamped us, but we knew his control could play up a bit. So we danced around a bit and avoided the monster a few times, but eventually it had to happen, we were pushed out and out of the Sumo challenge.
Straight Line Speed Test
Phil took the controls for this one, it was a straight track with edges and timing was carried out with timing beams and a Raspberry Pi by [PiBorg](https://www.piborg.org/). We were hoping to put bigger wheels on for this challenge to give us a bit more speed, but time just did not allow, accourding to the [PiBorg video](http://youtu.be/nKRGZbmyCiU) it looks like we came 5th, with three very consistent speed runs.
Three Point Turn
I was not very confident with this challenge, mainly because I had not seen the bot attempt it, so we set the bot in the starting box and set it to do its thing. Thanks to Phil, it did reasonably well, getting back tot the start line but not quite back tot he starting box. A much better result than I was hoping for.
Golf
I was really hoping we would do well in this challenge, we had a custom designed ball catcher and restraint system so was hoping to be able to easily pick up the ball and shoot it through the goal. It has worked very well in tests on a smooth surface, however the challenge was on carpet tiles. We picked up the ball shot it through the hole and ….., it wedged in the ball catcher. Eventually we managed to get it in the hole by using the ball restrainer as a bat and kick it through the hole, so we completed it but far slower than we had hoped. I have a feeling the ball may have been very slightly bigger than our test ball, making it wedge, but we live and learn.
Object avoidance
The aim of this challenge was to approach a wall and stop as close as we can without touching the wall. It had to be competed three times and the sum of the distances would be our score. It we hit the wall we got a penalty of 30cm.
Attempt One, we got about 15mm
Attempt 2, we got about 2mm
attempt 3, ouch, we just hit the wall, oh well, lots of other people were doing this also.
Line Following
We had started off wanting to do this with a camera and the Raspberry Pi tracking and following the line with OpenCV, this worked well, but we felt was a little slow. To speed it up we finally decided to use IR line following sensors and in tests it had worked very well.
However on the day, TractorBot just did not want to play ball, we could barely get past the start line, we need to do some investigation as to why it did not work, but at this moment I have no idea what went wrong, this was a big disappointment for us.
Obstacle Course
From the very beginning we had wanted to do well at this challenge, although TractorBot was quite a basic chassis we had designed it to be four wheel drive with a reasonable ground clearance. This was our final challenge and we had done some reconnaissance and had pre-planed our route. So off we went, straight over the polished stones without hardly a hesitation, round the corner and through the mass of square blocks at varying heights, we got though that one too, round another bend and through a slarlam, over the sea–saw and steamed on to the finishing line. Our time 21 seconds, it seemed reasonable to us, we could not have done any better. The judge then confirmed we had been the fastest, bonus, this was our crowning achievement.
Prize Giving
We then all assembled for the prize giving, it was quite tense, we had no idea how we were going to do. But we did end up with a few prizes.
* 1st in the Obstacle course
* Best overall bot in the remote controlled challenges
* Best robot overall in the sub £75 category
So we actually won the big one, the best bot costing less than £75. There were only two trophy’s one for sub £75 and one for over £75 and we had won, what an amazing achievement.
All in all, it was an amazing event and we all really enjoyed it.
We would like to thank Rapid Electronics for their very kind sponsorship as well as Cedarcroft Productions for providing a brilliant laser cutting service and lets not forget the CamJam team for organising the whole event and of course the support of Ipswich Makerspace
Keith Ellis
So we now have a PiWars team
If you still want to be part of the team get in touch via our Facebook page.
We have two months to design, build code and test a robot to take to the December CamJam Piwars event. We are starting with nothing and our first task is to read the rules to understand what we can and cannot build. Task two is to understand the various challenges, from there we can start to think about what we want the robot’s capabilities to be and what it should look like. To be successful we are going to have to be masters of collaborative working through various social networks, each working on various elements and then bring it all together. It should be fun and I for one am certainly looking forward to working closely with other members of the Makerspace.
The Cambridge Raspberry Pi Jam team CamJam are hosting PiWars in Cambridge on 6th December. 16 places for competitors became available tonight and they all went in 5 minutes.
However I managed to snap one up for Ipswich Makerspace, so it looks like we’ve got a project on our hands. If your interested in taking part please come along to the next meeting on 25th September where I will run through the rules and we can distribute tasks amongst the team.
Keith
We had another great makerspace meeting this week, talks from Frank about micro controllers (the plural of micro-controllers does not give the quantity any justice, there must have been nearing on 100 of them!). Andy from Cedarcroft Productions who does some laser cutting explained what he could do for us, you can find his web site here, I’m certainly looking forward to getting some stuff cut. Then John, our ‘founder’ described his mechanical and software biased history, including an attempt at Robot Wars, a little searching found this link.
After a short break for tea and cake we took to our feet and started exploring projects the members had brought along. There were robots, 3D printers, Kinect 3D modelling and real time body mapping (if that is what it is called) and a hex-copter. The hex-copter made two indoor flights. the first did not finish so well but survived unscathed.
The second flight was a bit less eventful but we did manage to get some on board footage, showing a good attendance at the makerspace.
If you like what you see and want to get involved, we meet on the 2nd and 4th Thursday each month.
Keith Ellis