Crikey, has it really been that long since the last blog post about Pi Wars? So, what have we been up to since the last post? Well, lots of things, but slowly. Progress on the robot is slow. There are only two of us doing the core work on the robot with Mike doing the bulk of the work on his own. Fitting this in around work and a personal life is tricky to say the least. Despite this we have made good progress.
We have a chassis size and shape that we are generally happy with. Time permitting, Mike would like to 3D print a custom chassis if possible. The motors, motor controller, wheel combination and control code works well and we see no reason to change any of this. The bulk of the hard work has been in designing the parts for the challenges and sourcing suitable sensors.
For sensors we have decided to go for a combination of ultrasonic and TOF IR sensors. So nothing ground breaking there as most other teams are doing the same.
For the Duck Shoot challenge we have decided to design and 3D print a firing mechanism from scratch. We could have hacked a Nerf gun I suppose but we want our robot to look good and be as compact as possible. We’ve come up with a nice compact design and the majority of the prototype parts have been printed and tested. A few more to go and then proper testing can take place.
We haven’t even started on the Over The Rainbow challenge yet or even the gold challenge. Time is slowly running out so we need to make this priority once the Duck Shoot parts are finalised.
We will take some photos of the progress so far over the coming weekend and post these up for all to see.
Medway Makers 
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