http://www.allsuburbs.com/robots/mothbots/vincent/vincent_inside.html

Robowars 2004 :
Vincent ran with 2x2.3ah batts driving bunnings 12v kk2 drills with a experimental relay controller and old car relays ( got to quarter finals in winners ) . The hurried design and build (1 week) showed up some limitatons in Vincent that will need to be fixed . The twin motors set closer to the front gave us limited traction as the weight balance was poor and he drove much better in reverse . Because room was very tight the batteries were "angled" under the radio and relay controllers and this made them hard to remove between rounds and everything else hard to fix . When weight was on the front ( another bot ) the wheels worked o.k. but the back edge of the tray scrapped on the floor and he still needed more traction . The 13cm high bunnings wheels would have given us more top ramming speed ( if we could get traction ) but at a cost of "pushing power" and increased the amps needed to push another bot . In an attempt to make the wheels stronger and easy to change , the wheel centers were large washers with nuts welded onto them and then pushed into the wheels whilst red hot . This "moulded" the centers to the wheels . The LH thread screw was used to lock the nut on the motor shaft , but as is often with wheels - it proved ineffective . Twice our wheels came loose and eventually we used superglue .The lift motor and screw setup worked well but the old 7.2 v ( running at 12v) lift motor let out magic smoke once when fully loaded .The radio ariel was a problem early , and we still spent 30% of our time in fail-safe . The experimental relay controller was "buggy" with its own issues . So there were problems that still begged to be fixed ...

2005 Victorian Championships Round 1:
Still tried to rebuild Vincent in a week ( when will I learn ) . Limited time saw Vincent still having wires soldered 1 hour from the event and no time for his "eyes" , "lift" limit switches or paint job . A single 2 meter drive test is all Vincent got before being put in the Van . Oh well its off to fight we go .. Vincent is still using the Mk1 relay controller ( buggy) as we havent had time to fix it , but now he has four motors / wheels . To fit the extra motors and wheels , we had to take out 2.5 kg of weight . The motors now sit at each end with the batteries and relays ( 8 drive relays ) , between the motors . Traction wasent a problem , but our radio stayed in failsafe most of the time and so Vincent took a lot of damage because he wasent moving . ( this teaches me to fix him before the fight ) . The body has been modified with wider side skirts fitted ( to defeat the "undercutters" ) and the front "ears" have been removed as we needed the weight . He now uses "red" wheels (x4) with cross cut tread for traction . the four kk2 drill motors give good power , but the battery life from the two "SLA's" may yet prove to be a problem .I recreated the wheel hubs for the red wheels and these proved strong enough and left enough room for lock nuts and the LH scew . The wheels centers are still heavy and I have a idea about how to make them lighter . With our radio problems , we limped around the arena like a wounded amimal and were promptly killed . But theres always next round .

Last edited by the moth on Sat Jul 09, 2005 3:26 am; edited 1 time in total

Hey, do you have a close up pic of that experimental relay controler? Sounds good, and I wouldn't mind using one instead of microswitches!
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YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

A close up can be found here

http://www.allsuburbs.com/robots/mothbots/vincent/ver_2/vincent_v2.html
I will place a wiring diagram on this site soon
Enjoy
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Some people pass cars - some people get passed by cars

Well its one week out from round 2 and Vincent is in slightly better shape .
I destroyed a micro when a wire came loose and shorted out and this has caused me use a “older” version software until I get a new chip programmed. Vincent’s internals have been rebuilt with a new light gauge aluminum base plate to give me enough weight saving to use a bigger battery . He will now run with one “12v 7ah SLA” , interesting enough this is the cheapest form of SLA’s and is the original battery that the “test frame” used . Obviously I hope this will give me extended battery power as the two “12v 2.3ah SLA’s” were running out of power towards the end of a fight . There is a fair amount of flex in the new base plate and this could be a blessing and a problem as I wonder about the long term possibly of “fatigue failure” . Using the bigger battery has caused me to shift the two relay banks over to one side and redesign the “feeder” for the lift motor . Originally I thought that I has killed the original radio receiver and ran out a brought another , but this isn’t so . Unfortunately our radio control problems persist (our achilles heel), but I may have a fix yet ….
Round 2 will be a harder fight than round one ( and we lost round 1 ) , so I have a week to get it right … I live in hope .
Enjoy moth
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Some people pass cars - some people get passed by cars

A seperate thread has been started for the relay controller here
http://robowars.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=479
New pics and the experimental wiring diagram for the PRC can be found here
http://www.allsuburbs.com/robots/mothbots/relaycontrol/relay.html
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Some people pass cars - some people get passed by cars

my teacher has offered to build me a relay controller if i can find some sutible plans and a parts list and maybe a wiring diagram . Would showing my teacher http://www.allsuburbs.com/robots/mothbots/relaycontrol/relay.html would he be able to build one ?
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If practice makes perfect and no one is prefect, Then why practice?

He would need either a programmed pic-axe micro or the programming software/code and the cable to program one himself.

If he's an electronics teacher and is interested in the picaxe and learning to do all that, tell him to get in touch with me, if he just wants a programmed chip, I can sell you one with the current version of the code in it at cost price.

Keep in mind the code is still being fine-tuned and while it does work OK (It ran Vincent at RoboWars), this is still in experimental/Beta stage and Mr.Moth still has some changes he wants done to it before we call it "production ready".

Further discussion on the Pic Relay Controller should be done here
http://robowars.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=479

This one is Vincents build thread
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

Well - ive been playing about in Vincents brain ....
Because i am still having poor radio range , I have fitted optoisolators to the receiver inputs to see if this improved my range . The optoisolators I used (Jaycar "darlington" 6n138) inverted the input signal causing me to have to change a few bits of the micro program ( Many thanks to brett for his assitance over i.p. phone ) . I made a programming cable from a old serial mouse and cdrom leads and downloaded the software programmer .
I have also adjusted the programming to only give me full rate turns on the lower quadrants of the remote to help my bad driving .

Opto leads
Pin 1 : n/c
Pin 2 : Channel data from receiver
Pin 3 : receiver earth
Pin 4 : n/c
Pin 5 : Pic micro ground
Pin 6 : data into Pic ( this is inverted when compared to the radio receiver , and needs a 2.2k resistor to pin 8 )
Pin 7 : n/c
Pin 8 : 5v power to Pic micro

This obviously means that I now use a seperate battery pack for the receiver as it is no longer powered by the PRC .
Too late to test it tonight - Ill try it towmmorow
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Some people pass cars - some people get passed by cars

i think i use the same chips in my IBC opto.
you can rig them for non inverting output btw by connecting the LED section up differently.
i'd have to look at the diagram or my existing one to see how its done but it can be done.
A word of caution i havent had any problems running off recievers yet but off nicks gyro it didnt have enough power to drive the LED requiring a booster. The same problem may be encountered with some recievers so i have heard.

note you will also need a current limiting resistor on the LED side of things (generally)

ahh yeah just rembered
hook the LED to power and signal rather than signal and ground
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

Well I’ve tried the opto's and haven't found they’ve made a great difference at this point . Using me "driveway test" I could get another 4 ft before problems (about 7%) , but this is not in combat conditions . In a short test at the Rye arena last night , we appeared to have great range , but had another problem where one of the drives would keep trying to engage forward and reverse . The software code seems fine so this may be another problem ? .Oh well the coming fight will soon tell us .
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Some people pass cars - some people get passed by cars

i doubt opto would do much in a relay switching bot
the main reason for the opto was high freq radio noise from the IBC's switch mode supply so unless you have some fancy battery circuit?
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

Micro’s (even small ones) also generate radio noise and the “battery eliminator” circuit shares a common ground with the spike ridden main supply rails , hence the experiment with optos .
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Some people pass cars - some people get passed by cars

Have you tried to tune your radio system for best signal at the reciever ?

Some times all the best efforts to eliminate poor reception from what we think is being caused by radio noise can simply turn out to be radio deafnees from a poor aerial instalation.

We used to have all the same radio probs as most have suffered as soon as we started using electronic controlers until i started moding our recievers and makeing up different aerial types for our different bots.

If you want a diagrme of how i set most of our aerials upand all our recievers, let me know and i can draw up some diagrme's .

Most of our instalations just simply are matter of useing a coaxial cable thats earthed to the reciever ground and grounded to the robots chasis for a ground plane .I usualy do the grounding through a small capacitor but some of my bots like Heamorage and my new bot just use a vertical dipole type set up.

Other bots like t2m and Anhilation needed the addition of a tuneing coil at the aerial base .

The cheese was the hardest to get an aerial to fit with out geting in the way it has a sort of folded dipole built in to what looks like a carry handle behind the saw .
I dont even bother putting ceramic caps on most of our wheapons and drive motors any more .(usualy because i dont have them and loath paying $1.10 each from dick smith for them when i know they are only worth 20cents at other places)

I’ve just fixed a bug in the micro program that should make Vincent drive better - Most of our radio issues appear to be under control for now , but we will see what happens when we get to the arena .

For more info on the fix goto the thread for the relay controller
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Some people pass cars - some people get passed by cars

well its off to the arena for our nexr round - Ive tried something different this time ...We have actually tested vincent before the event.
I wonder if it will make a difference ?
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Some people pass cars - some people get passed by cars