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Originally posted by Valen:
a PIC or 3 should be plenty for all i had in mind.
anything involving more processing can be shipped off to the main PC (if we want that) if we are running bluetooth or some other high speed protocol the delay should be minimal. (~1ms or less should be ok)

thats the other option, just do all the processing off board and rely on a high speed data link back to the main PC, that also makes development easier.

My vote for language at this stage is python.
I dont know it as yet but it looks like it should "just work" with everything.
my backup is VB, VB graphics is pretty slow.

back in sydney now after helping cassie move in, so i should be a bit more in the loop.

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Why put a V8 in a motorbike when all you need is a single cylinder PIC's are pretty versatile, cheap and disposable. They should handle any funky tasks requires and if not, just ship that extra hard stuff off to Jakes Laptop for further funkification

Could always go the full hog and look at those Altera chips used in Cyclonebot, they seem to have plenty of grunt to satisfy those guys.
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https://www.halfdonethings.com/

I would use AVR's but i know PIC's.

FPGA's would be funky but i dont know them at all.
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

Bottom line; use what's most familiar to reduce the development time. If a PIC will do the job, we don't really need to learn fancier stuff.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

http://www.totalinsanity.net/tut/mechanical/4barfrontbar.php

A 4-bar lifter calculator

That looks WAY better than what I was using (a dodgy spreadsheet)! Everyone will be building them soon.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Sewer snake just went down 1-2 at the UK nationals, loosing to a full pressure flipper and a horizontal crusher. So only a perfect design when you only think about rocks and sissors.

Luckily for us, the Robolympics is dominated by that sort of thinking. I can't really recall the last time I saw a winning crusher in the US.

BTW: I should have four of the DeWalt 36V packs arriving in around 2 to 3 weeks . After that, it's time to get gearboxes and start thinking about the wheel design.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

So THIS is SOWC eh http://www.madoverlord.com/movies/2006Nats/SonOfWhacky-Joe2.mov

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( •_•)

( •_•)>⌐■-■

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YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

yeah nothing too flash, just your basic mag, right angle drive to a bar setup, seen ir done many times before in bots such as 2EZ and what not

dont get me wrong its effective and all but i can see ways to defeat it easily
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Andrew Welch, Team Unconventional Robotics

It's been very quiet around here for several months, but don't think I have lost interest! I just found out that Battlepacks may be making A123 battery packs and (more importantly) Astroflight will be making an A123 cell charger . I was really disapointed to learn about all the protection and current limiting built into the DeWalt packs, but these developments make the A123 cells a serious and sustainable power source.

The other thing that has been bugging me is the best way to make a really low height wedge invertable and effective at the same time. for instance, Cobra is highly effective until its flipped, where ground clearance and traction become problems. The usual ways to fix this are to go with a full wedge shape (ie Cheese Shredder) or to use a flat frame and hinged wedges. They both have major drawbacks - I still don't know which ones are easier to live with yet...
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

the limiting in the dewalt packs is done by a circutry module. remove the module, remove the limiting ;->
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

Trouble is, removing the module sounds like it removes the charging & balancing circuitry too - I wasn't keen to spend $500 on Dewalt packs and chargers before knowing everything about them.

Perhaps one could seperate the module from the pack, permanently attach it to the DeWalt charger, then run power and balancer leads off to the cells? If that worked, you would have a cheap 10S charger & balancer for $60 USD
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

that sounds like it could work

The recharge time of 1 hour isn't so great, but the low cost sure is Considering that we would need a charger like an AstroFlight 109 AND a powerful PSU to run it, the Dewalt chargers are about 1/3 the cost. The one hour recharge isn't really a problem as long as we have a second set of packs; the four packs in the bot give 9.2 AH and in EDTsim I get a run time of at least 7 minutes. Recharging a half empty pack will take much less than 1 hour and we could probably run a fight every 15 to 20 minutes.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion