Medway makers have our next social gathering on Sunday 19th February.
Come and join us. it’s FREE!
Are you looking for a new hobby or a way to bring your creative ideas to life? Look no further than Medway Makers.
Makerspaces like Medway Makers are community-run spaces where people can gather to work on projects, learn new skills, and collaborate with others. They often feature tools and equipment that might be too expensive or difficult for individuals to acquire on their own, such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and CNC machines.
But a makerspace is more than just a collection of tools. It’s a community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about making and creating. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, there’s always something new to learn and discover. Plus, the community aspect of a makerspace allows for the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and inspiration.
So why should you attend a makerspace? Here are a few reasons:
Access to tools and equipment that you might not have at home
Opportunities to learn new skills and techniques from other members
A community of like-minded individuals to collaborate with and share ideas
A space to work on personal projects and bring your ideas to life
If you’re looking for a fun, creative outlet or a way to take your projects to the next level, a makerspace is a great place to start. So why not check out Medway Makers and see what it has to offer? You might be surprised at what you can create!
Come and join us at our next social meetup which will be held on Sunday 11th Dec. This will be our last meetup for 2022. Mike will be learning how to make games using the Godot Game Engine. Other members will be building circuits using Arduino’s and Raspberry Pis. Don’t be shy. Come along and see what we are all about.
FREE tickets can be obtained using the link below. Join us in person or virtually using Skype.
Come and join us at our next social meetup which will be held on Sunday 20th November. Mike will be learning how to make games using the Godot Game Engine. Other members will be building circuits using Arduino’s and Raspberry Pis. Don’t be shy. Come along and see what we are all about.
FREE tickets can be obtained using the link below. Join us in person or virtually using Skype.
Come and join us at our next social meetup which will be held on Sunday 9th May 2022. Mike will be learning how to make games using the Godot Game Engine. Other members will be building circuits using Arduino’s and Raspberry Pis. Don’t be shy. Come along and see what we are all about.
FREE tickets can be obtained using the link below. Join us in person or virtually using Skype.
Back in 2016 Medway Makers were the first place winners in our class at the Pi Wars robotic competition at Cambridge University. Part of Medway Makers prizes for winning at PiWars was a Raspberry Pi audio amplifier hat and this device was the perfect opportunity to bring an old retro ‘Hacker’ (Yes, it really is called that) radio up to date and into the 21st century.
The radio was taken apart and I everything inside the radio that was no longer going to be used was discarded. Then, a Raspberry Pi with the amplifier hat was added inside and I soldered the output to the original radio’s speaker.
There are several software choices to use for your internet radio, and I decided to use Volume IO. This was flashed to the micro SD card of the Raspberry pi. Volume IO has a nice, easy to use web interface, the official app works well, and it’s easy to add your own music collection via a USB stick.
Over the Christmas period, Mike was lucky enough to be gifted a BBC Master 128 along with a 5.25″ disc drive, a load of cables and a few games on tape. The poor BBC Master had been sat in a garage for approximately 10 years with a load of wood on top of it, gathering dust and becoming a home for spiders and beetles. Obviously, the computer was in need of some essential TLC before it could be put into use.
First, the BBC Master needed a good strip down and a clean. The PSU, motherboard and keyboard were all removed from the case. The case was full of dust, dead spiders and beetles and was very dirty. The keyboard was absolutely filthy and was first to be stripped down and cleaned. All of the keys were taken off and given a good wash in soapy water, the chassis was cleaned up as best as possible with some brushes and cotton buds and then the whole thing reassembled. The final result was a massive improvement.
Next, the two sides of the clamshell case were washed in the shower with hot soapy water to remove all of the dirt. The case is very heavily yellowed with age and a future project for the summer is to carry out the retrobright process on the case to bring it back to white again. Next, the motherboard was given a vacuum and the board a brush and wipe down.
Next, the PSU needed some work. There are three capacitors in the BBC Power Supplies that are notorious for drying out over the 30+ years it has been since they were manufactured and when they get hot they emit smoke and die. Mike purchased a capacitor replacement kit from eBay and the three offending items were replaced. The existing capacitors did look like they were in good shape, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Finally, the battery pack needed replacing. The pack had the original Duracell batteries from the 1980’s and they had leaked all over the place. The pack was thrown away and replaced with a newly made pack using a 3 AA battery holder, diode and resistor.
Next, it was time to install the TurboSPI ROM chip and the SD Card adapter that was purchased at the same time as the capacitor kit. This would allow instant loading of games and other programs from the SD card and allows up to 512 disc images to be loaded onto the card. This was a simple case of pushing the ROM into an empty slot and pushing the SD card PCB into the user port on the underside of the computer.
Now everything was setup and ready to go, it was time to turn the computer on and hope it all worked. Voila! Everything worked fine.
After a few configuration commands were typed in to reset the configuration after it being turned off for so long and the battery pack no longer providing backup power, the Turbo MMC system was available and the contents of the SD Card could be accessed.
On the SD Card that came with the system are well over 1000 games that can be accessed from a menu system on Disc 0. These only take up around 50% of the available 512 disc slots leaving plenty empty to load your own games or to save your own programs to. All of the classics were present.
The BBC Master 128 proved to be a big hit at the next Medway Maker social meetup on Sunday 5th January with several members getting very competitive at Pacmanand a few other games.
There are a few more upgrades on the horizon with a Raspberry Pi co-processor on its way and a ROM for a BBC Master 128 specific MAMMFS file system so that Elite can be played properly.
You can see the BBC Master in use in this timelapse movie below of the last Medway Makers session on Sunday 5th January 2020.
So it is now just 6 days to go until the Sunday of Pi Wars. This is the last weekend to get things sorted before the big day. So we’ve been frantically 3D Printing and testing.
For the Somewhere Over The Rainbow challenge we were concerned about the way the course was going to be lit. There was no confidence that illumination would be even and that our robot would not cast shadows onto the ball (It’s a pretty tall robot). So we have added some LED lights to the camera side of the robot to hopefully give the camera a better view and to ensure the robot is not thrown off by shadows. We have yet to test this though!
The golf attachment has been through a few revisions as it was found to be very difficult to control in testing. The printer is beavering away right now printing out the new parts.
The Duck Shoot stuff is all working great. Shame it is taking up the majority of the internals of the robot though. Space is tight inside there!
The Minimal Maze challenge is working fine. We are just praying for no bright sun on the day as this will ruin everything as we have not had time to fit any backup sensors.
The straight line speed test works fine. We are not going to be the fastest robot out there (I’ve seen some videos of super fast competitors). However, we are confident we will get from one end to the other without touching the wall so will at least collect some points.
Finally there is the obstacle challenge, which is mainly down to practise as well as Pi Noon.
All in all we have had a bloody good crack at this competition and although we are not fully prepared as we hoped we would be we should be a strong team. Fingers crossed for the day. It will be great fun and we are all looking forward to it. I am personally looking forward to getting my life back past Pi Wars and have the time to get on with some of my own personal projects. The last 8-9 months or so has been dominated by Pi Wars and it will be nice to finally get it done and get things back to normal.
However, I now have some fantastic new skills since starting the Pi Wars competition that will be invaluable for some of my up and coming projects and for that I am very grateful.
Hope to see you all in Cambridge next week. Please come along and support us !
With just 10 days to go till the Sunday that we are competing in Pi Wars, panic is now setting in. We have to admit we are not completely ready and really need another few weeks to get things right. However, we don’t have that luxury. There are 10 days to the competition and considering 6 of those are work days meaning only a few hours in the evening are available during the week, plus once we set off for Cambridge on the Friday any chance to work on the robot after that will be very limited indeed. So this coming weekend is really the last chance to do as much as possible on the robot. After that, time has ran out.
Where did all of that time go? It was way back in 2017 that work started on the robot and thinking we had plenty of time. All of a sudden we are in headless chicken territory and needing more time.
So this is a brief status update on where we are as of today :-
Chassis – Happy with the chassis and we’ve added a little bit of bling to make it look less like an RC car and more like a robot.
Straight Line Speed Test – Not confident about this challenge. Using ToF sensors only so we are weather dependent on this one. No time to add in backup sensors.
Maze – Same as above. Good results in testing but praying for overcast skies on the day.
Somewhere Over The Rainbow. – Robot performs well in testing. Again, lighting conditions on the day that differ drastically from those in testing may be our downfall.
Obstacle Course – This one is entirely down to the skill of the driver. The robot is fast and maneuverable. Hoping to do reasonably well on this one.
Pi Noon – As above. But we are up against formidable opponents so don’t expect to win. Hoping to get at least half way through the rounds though.
Golf – Attachment works reasonably well in testing. Luck and driver skill will need to be on our side.
Duck Shoot – Hoping to do well in this one. We have a nice Nerf Cannon. But then so do other teams so again, speed and luck are required here.
Blogging – We’ve definitely done better than most teams as a lot haven’t even bothered. Hoping for good scores here.
Artistic Merit – Hoping for some points here as we’ve put some effort into making it look good.
Technical Merit – Hundreds of hours have been spent in Fusion 360 and with the 3D printer on the robot. Almost every single plastic part on it was designed from scratch with many iterations in the R&D phase till we had working versions. The Nerf Cannon in particular went through many changes till we got what we wanted. Hopefully high scores here.
So, we are not expecting to win any challenges, but will be trying our damnedest to do so. No matter how we do on the day, I am sure it will still be great fun and I am walking away with some great new skills with Python, OpenCV, Fusion 360 and 3D Printing that will be very useful for up and coming personal projects and those with Medway Makers. It will also be great to put some faces to names of those we have been speaking to on the Pi Wars Discord channel and on Twitter. One thing I’ve loved about the active guys and gals on Discord (not including the ‘lurkers’) is the willingness to share information and help each other, even between competing teams. This sums up the spirit of Pi Wars and the Raspberry Pi community as a whole and I applaud every person involved in this great hobby.
It is now only 35 days to go until the Sunday Pi Wars day and the pressure is mounting. The reality is, we need more time, another 3 months would be great. The reality also is, we don’t have that luxury. Pi Wars is in 35 days whether we are ready or not.
We made some good progress on the Nerf Cannon this weekend and (finally) have a design we are happy with after many iterations. The gun has plenty of power and the addition of the laser sight will help with aiming. The problem now is finding where to mount it. The chassis is a total mess and needs sorting out. So, I am frantically printing out parts to hang things under and off the sides of the robot to make more space up top to mount the Nerf Cannon and Pi Camera. The attachments for the golf course and the maze sensors will go at either end and around the sides.
We are getting there slowly but things now need to pick up pace. Tom has been busy working away building our test courses whilst Mike cracks on with the 3D printing and coding. Considering it is only a 2 man team, we’ve done really well and have a half decent robot. Looking at what some of the other teams have built it is clear we are up against some very tough competition. As our first entry into Pi Wars as a maker-space we do no expect to come near the top 10 but will do our best to get as many points as we possibly can. We have certainly learnt a great deal and will be far better equipped to tackle the competition again if we decide to enter another year. Plenty of valuable lessons have been learnt.
However, no matter how we do I am sure it is going to be a great fun day on 22nd April. Even if we don’t win any challenges we’ve learnt loads of new skills and I am now very proficient at building working parts in Fusion 360. The skills I’ve learnt in the Pi Wars build will go a long way towards my own personal ‘Earth Rover’ project which I plan to start once Pi Wars is out of the way later in the year. Tom is picking up tons of Fusion 360 skills which he plans in using to assist with his kids school projects. These are the main rewards of entering a competition like this, the experiences you can take away from it and put to use elsewhere in your life. We are really looking forward to Pi Wars. See you all there!
Over the last few weeks I’ve gone through several design iterations for the Nerf Cannon. This is mainly due to my insistence in trying to use a continuous rotation modded servo to move the darts into position. I have finally given in and used a stepper motor. This is something I should have done right from the start with hindsight.
However, the darts are now lining up perfectly with the gun barrel every time now and the 3D printer is busy beavering away printing out what I hope will be the final version of the gun. Once the gun is finished and fully working I shall post up a video of it in action.
I was saying to Tom yesterday that it is no wonder so many teams drop out of Pi Wars in the first few months. Pi Wars is hard. There is no doubt about it, they are not called “Challenges” lightly. Over the last month or so I have been designing, redesigning, printing and reprinting parts for the Nerf Cannon. We could have gone down the route that lots of other teams have gone down and hacked a Nerf gun, But we chose not to. Those solutions are not elegant, they look ugly as hell, and are not going to win many points for Technical Merit. We chose to design and build a Nerf cannon entirely from scratch.
This was hard for two reasons. One, it meant having to learn a CAD program to enable custom built 3D printed parts to be manufactured. Our chosen software is Fusion 360 as it is extremely powerful and allows entire assemblies of multiple parts to be constructed with relative ease. I have gone from a complete beginner in Fusion 360 to a competent intermediate user in the last few months and I am now producing complicated multi-parts devices.
The recent iteration of the Nerf Cannon for the Duck Shoot challenge is made of 13 separate parts. Secondly, once a design is constructed, there are then rounds of testing, tweaking the design or even complete redesigns, reprinting modified parts and so on. Perhaps if I wasn’t such a perfectionist I would ‘make do’ with an inferior solution, but I am keen to get it right. All the work is made much harder as the bulk of the technical aspects of the robot build fall on my shoulders. Fitting time in to get stuff done is tricky.
For the maze challenge, we have used the usual ToF and ultrasonic sensors and the robot is solving the maze in a very respectable time. This one was a lot easier than expected.
Next, we are going to be working on a solution for the golf challenge. I have a few ideas in my head and parts are on the way. The Obstacle Course and Pi Noon will need minimal work apart from plenty of practice as these are manually controlled challenges. Although we may program in some automation if time allows.
The Straight Line Speed Test will be a lot more challenging with the addition of the narrow section in the centre. This will require either slowing down when it gets there or a very efficient centering algorithm. Somewhere Over The Rainbow may prove challenging, we have yet to see.
Finally, at the moment the robot is ugly. It is a basic chassis with a spaghetti mess of wires on top. I would really like to design a nice looking chassis where all of the electronics are hidden away. However, time is running out and this will have to wait until last. There are only 11 weeks left until the competition. Tick tock tick tock !!!
o ensure the robot is not thrown off by shadows. We have yet to test this though!
Medway Makers 