beetles?

there's a new 3 lb bot in the works, but shhh don't tell anyone...

GCRS2 results

The GCRS competition is over....
It's always an interesting day when it involves a combat robot competition, and this was no exception. There were good battles, frantic mechanical repairs, vexing electrical malfunctions, scavenging for negative weight, crazy driving and a bit of competitve spirit to round things out.


Trauma meet Piranha.....



Nice hit but I'm invertable....



I'm not running away, I just can't drive my bot....

Let me remove this extra piece I found on your bot.... Unfortunately this resulted in a too big of a hit between my weapon spinning at about 12,000 rpm and Piranha. A piece did fly off Piranha, but one of my weapon blades got nudged out of position and scuffed against the front of my bot preventing my weapon from spinning. Judges decision at the end of the battle in favor of Piranha.

Next I had to battle Conundrum, go figure.... We decided to just let it rip even though Daniel was still struggling with his radio and had no way of predicting how his bot would run. This was the first hit, which ended up flipping Conondrum over. Due to all the electrical debugging the previously compressed wiring was overflowing from the top of Conondrum making it non-invertable.

While your upside down and not doing anything, let's touch weapons! Judges decision in favor of Trauma.

Trauma meets Little Scoop.... Now this won't hurt a bit, 12,000 rpm is nothing to worry about.


Are you sure we're allowed to do this during the competition, we're in public for bots sake! Wow you're a frisky bot...

Hey, did I do something wrong? Why are we going over here?

I'm afraid of heights! Stop that, let's play some more.... S%&@!!!!!

After my little Humpty-Dumpty impersonation here, I entered a 4 bot rumble and proceeded to hit one of the bots so hard it decimated the 2 ball bearings supporting the weapon shaft, and broke the weapon motor mount allowing the motor to spin inside the bot winding up all the wiring into a huge ball which broke both the BR6000 receiver and Thunderbird ESC from their mounts. The weapon motor stopped working at some point during this spontaneous re-wiring event ending the day for Trauma, with, well trauma.

Special Thanks to Ken Strothman for taking all these photos during the competition and getting them to me on a CD the next day.

competition is TOMORROW!

The GCRS2 competition is tomorrow. Both our bots are ...finished, I guess. We've had to make some compromises. Driving them around today beating up old computer parts and a joke-chassis I bolted together was pretty fun. Conundrum can hit pretty hard, but I've been having glitchy radio problems. Apparently, Spektrum screwed up the programming on their AR6100 chip, and a lot of people are having problems with it - including ME. This is the second one I've put in (I had to replace the first after it stopped connecting AND binding to ANYTHING), so it's brand new, and giving me problems. I spin up my drum for a few seconds, start driving, and I lose radio signal, the drum stays on for a second or two, then shuts off. Sometimes the bot spins in place (one wheel forwards, one wheel back). It's really frustrating. And then, sometimes it works fine!

We'll see how things go tomorrow...

This is what I managed to document until my camera died (before we started doing all the really good stuff, of course...)

photos of conundrum's near-final assembly

Really, the only thing left to do is install the switch. The bot has been lightened by 25 g since this photo, but still needs to lose another 30... I'm working on getting the drum balance perfect, and maybe lightening it since it's steel, and steel is HEAVY.

the drum SPINS!!

I'm getting really excited! The drum spins beautifully. I had to buy a different kind of bearing, and I finally found a belt, and now it's awesome. It's got some weird electrical glitches, but I have two weeks to figure them out...

Online Retailers

Some useful links for buying robot parts...
www.robotmarketplace.com
www.banebots.com
www.hobbypartz.com/ind.html
www.fingertechrobotics.com
www.superdroidrobots.com
www.hobbycity.com
www.trossenrobotics.com
www.robobugs.solarbotics.net/sites.html
www.bphobbies.com
www.mcmaster.com

If you know of others worth mentioning, let us know!

I have a bot!

I made some major progress over the last few days, so I think it's time to talk about it.

I had to remake my motor mount because the old plan wasn't going to work. This one's 10 grams heavier, and too tall for my bot, so I need to cut a window in the top armor to let it stick out. But there really wasn't any other way of doing it. I finished my frame assembly with the front corner blocks and shaft. The drum is also getting close to being finished. I have a small alignment problem which prevents me from tightening the screws that hold the endcaps on down all the way because when I do it locks the shaft and doesn't spin. I also need to replace the bearings because I bought Perma-Lube bearings which have a LOT of friction... This is a learning process! I'm struggling to find a belt that will fit into my design, but I finally ordered two today (two different sizes because I'm not sure which one I need). Those should show up tomorrow. I cut the slots for the wheels and drum, and drilled mounting holes for the drive motor assemblies. It all goes together nicely. Everything actually fits inside! I also started my wiring. I got a rough setup running and twitched the bot on my tabletop, then I cut everything to length and finished the drive system. Shortening PWM cables is a pain because I didn't have a bucket of fresh crimp-on pin receptors or whatever you want to call them - I had to pry them out of the plastic piece and off the end of the wire. It took a long time. I finally got the drive system running, and drove around for a little bit before I realized that I had never charged my battery. No wonder things were going slow..