Pre-Competition Status ReportPiWars,Mini MouseWith two days to go until competition day (only one day for schools and clubs!), I thought I’d capture the status of Mini Mouse, for posterity and for something to compare …
Battery Discharge ProfilePiWarsEarlier, on the PiWars Discord, we were having a spirited discussion about the discharge profile of lithium batteries, disagreeing about the relationship between cell voltage and …
Autonomous Challenge: HubblePiWars,Mini MouseThe Hubble Telescope Nebula Challenge (previously Somewhere Over the Rainbow) is one of the autonomous challenges, requiring the robot to visit the four corners of a square arena, …
SetbacksPiWars,Mini MouseThree weeks ago, I got a basic implementation of The Hubble Telescope Nebula Challenge working, which made Mini Mouse’s code “feature complete” from the point of …
Mini Mouse's ArmamentPiWars,Mini Mouse,LEGO Now, irrespective of personal views on arming robots, unfortunately one of the Pi Wars challenges requires1 that we weaponise them. For Space Invaders we have to be able to knock …
Edge DetectionPiWars,Mini Mouse Identifying edges is one of the key “features” of the human vision system. Our brains have evolved to identify edges and it’s one of the things which lets us …
Autonomous Challenge: Blast OffPiWars,Mini Mouse Blast Off: the Straight-ish Line Speed Test is, to my mind, the easiest of the three autonomous challenges in this year’s competition. As such, it’s the one which I …
Mini Mouse's SoftwarePiWars,Mini MouseBefore I dive in to details on individual challenge implementations, I thought it would be sensible to describe how the software on Mini Mouse sits together. Some of this …
Final HardwarePiWars,Mini MouseIt’s been a few frantic months of robot building between my last post and now, a decent portion of it being focussed on finalising the chassis. Since around September …
(Quite) Robust ThresholdingPiWars,Mini MouseToday, I’m detailing the method I’m using to threshold images for line detection. Also included are some hard-learned lessons about premature optimisation and the …
We're in!PiWars,Mini MouseSo last weekend Mike and Tim sent out the confirmations for Pi Wars entries, and Mini Mouse made the cut! We’re going to Pi Wars!
Doug on the Discord suggested the idea of …
PCBsPiWars,Mini MouseFor Mini Mouse, I’ve designed two PCBs - one for motor drivers, and one for the power supply/control circuitry. These were my first boards using the open-source KiCad suite …
PowerPiWars,Mini MouseEvery robot needs power, generally at two or more voltages - one “high” voltage directly from the battery to feed the power hungry motors, and one “logic” …
MotorsPiWars,Mini MouseMotors were the first thing I worked on selecting at the start of the development process. Given the space constraints I’m working with, motors would be a critical component …
Mini MousePiWars,Mini MouseIn the past 12 months, I built Bot Matrix, aiming for PiWars 2018 (though unfortunately I wasn’t selected as a competitor). It was the first chassis I built from scratch, and …
