results from miami youth fair

Sorry this took so long to put up...

Dethinator placed 5th out of about 15 bots, but our team received the outstanding sportsmanship award.

miami youth fair

Well. Our first big weekend is coming up, but the Dethinator project has been fighting us every step of the way (more on this later). We're almost done, but we need to remake a few MORE parts.

The Miami Youth Fair has driving directions on its website.
Saturday we're planning on leaving from school at 11AM or 12 ish. I don' t know whether we'll be staying with host families or in Nola's house.
Sunday the check-in is at 9AM. The event starts at 1, and runs til 6.
We leave following the close of the competition (should be around 7) and get back not TOO late sunday night.

I will have more details later today.

we have a problemm.

In our more rigorous testing of the dethinator (involving using bags of empty soda cans as targets - even though the bot still doesn't have teeth) we have come to the conclusion that something needs to be changed. We burnt out a motor. Completely. I don't know how or why, but it started smoking and is totally locked up. This happened at 2:45 ish in our preliminary time test. I'm starting to doubt the robustness of the design, because those little motors seem really wimpy. I think we need to buy bigger motors and use them, like the duratrax 550 motors that eddie is using. At $8.99 each, I think we can afford them. :P We wouldn't have to TOTALLY redo all the wiring, we can still use a lot of the infrastructure we already have in place. We would have to leave two wheels as idlers, with no motor behind them, to support the shell, and then run a belt on pulleys from the motors to the other two, and take two out altogether. This should drop some weight too.

continuation of dethination

It's 1:30 AM and I just came in from my garage where I was testing and debugging the Dethinator. It works pretty well. I straightened out the drive system (hooray for reading user's manuals!) and I think I fixed my radio connect twitch. Anyways, I didn't make any CHANGES, I just debugged the electronics, and put it together for real and ran it, so we still have the same to-do list.

You can't put the throttle up more than halfway, and I'm still not sure why, but I'm sure we'll figure it out. :/

Anyways, I'll cut to the chase. :P
here's a photo of the insides, and a video of my testing.



you know you're impressed by this massive tangle of wires...

The Dethinator COMES TO LIFE

Yesterday was a marathon build. Alan and Julien stuck it out and helped a lot, so they were busy doing stuff while I was working on the wiring and assembly. I was wiring for 9 hours. straight. it was painful. and I almost finished. But i didn't have time, so I brought it home and finished it after midnight in my garage. It runs, but has a few small quirks...

1) As soon as the radio connects, one of the drive wheels jerks forward for a fraction of a second, then stops, and everything is normal. I'm using a Spektrum DX-5e, with a Sabertooth 10 Dual ESC and ML-3506 Planetary Gearmotors.

2) The Sabertooth has a built in Aile/Ele mixer and a "flip" channel which I have connected to the Aux channel on the receiver which corresponds to the trainer switch on the transmitter. Default (trainer off) has inverted L/R (right on transmitter = left turn) but when I hold the trainer it's right. No pun intended.





The Dethinator's TO-DO list:

- shorten leads to switch
- mount switch
- make runners for inside of ring/scuff pads
- switch Aile/Ele and motor polarities until it drives the RIGHT way
- Re-bind receiver chip to fix twitch
- Cut shaft to length
- Redo ring
- Attach ring
- Debug
- Make weight
- DETHINATE.

:]

thanks to readers

I just wanted to throw a thank you out to both Jeff and Senai for not only just finding this site, but also for letting me (and us all) know that they found it. Thanks!

One of the things that I wish we had at our disposal is a forum so that all of us high school, college, and pro battlebots enthusiasts can network and discuss ideas, battlebots, upcoming competitions, etc. We all know from all the competitions that battlebots isn't really as cutthroat as people think it is. What happens in the pits for the most part epitomizes teamwork and sportsmanship, and if we can extend this cooperation and friendship beyond the pits and into our brainstorming sessions, machining sessions, etc., I think it would have an extremely positive effect on the entire battlebots community. So, with that said, to everyone who reads and follows this blog who isn't on the pine view team, THANK YOU and DON'T BE SHY. Make yourselves known, and who knows, maybe together we can incite a social network of battlebots builders accross the country.


Thanks again!

Dan Curhan
President - Pine View Engineering Club
guiswim7391@yahoo.com

_______________________

andddd...

I just felt like rambling on, so I'll continue.

I find it kinda funny that people are forever associated with the bots that they create. For example, when Eddie and I went to see the antweight competition at RobotMarketplace, we saw a kid there who we knew was from Miami - we'd seen him at BotsIQ with the bot Coincedence. The first thing I said to him: "Hey, you're one the Coincidence team, right?" not, "Hey Adam, what's up?" His response was a perfect parallel "Yeah, and you guys are Copperhead, right?" It seems that Eddie and I will forever BE Copperhead. Yes, the bot will be passed down once I graduate, and it will belong to the club, but it will never be truly associated with anyone but Eddie and me by those who saw us win... In other news, the video I did of Copperhead 3's battles in BotsIQ 2008 is on like 20 different sites lol. I googled copperhead botsIQ....

__________________

THERE'S MORE!
I made us a forum. I made everyone a forum. Please! Join! I'll make it pretty in the next couple days - for now, it's kinda stock and boring... but I promise, that will soon change. I want to bring all the battlebots teams everywhere together.

http://battlebots.forumotion.com/index.htm

This is the perfect place for you non-pine view people to actually talk to us... and a better place than here for you pineviewers to discuss your ideas.

Hopefully we can get a nice discussion going with a good amount of members from everywhere. I will talk to Nola, and see what she thinks...

The Dethinator

Well guys, I guess Rob, Andrew Lum, Andrew Foster, Alan and myself are the only ones going to Miami? NO ONE HAS TOLD ME WHEN THEY ARE GOING! I NEED TO KNOW OR YOU WILL NOT GO. NO EXCEPTIONS. These deadlines are rapidly approaching, and Nola needs to know our plans so that we can make arrangements. If I get no response from you by tuesday, no one except the people who have responded will go. I will not go out of my way to ask you what your plans are. I want all of you to experience the competition first-hand, but I also want you to grow up and start being responsible for yourself. This is not just another "I kinda said I was going... he'll know I'm going" situation. I need a definite answer. ASAP.

I also registered the 15 pounder as THE DETHINATOR for San Francisco.

And as far as the fifteen pounder goes, I owe a huge thank you to Alan and Ben for coming out and helping almost every day I've been working on this thing. It's proving to be a challenge. I think we're going to end up using one of the battlepacks from D.O. instead of the individual cells... it's SOOOO much lighter, and 12V and already assembled... it just makes things easier. And it fits. Lightening this beast is proving to be a disheartening task. It refuses to make weight. The baseplate, 4 motors, drive motors, wheels, hardware, shell, shaft w/ mount, electronics and new steel ring are 13.5 lbs. The battery pack weighs 1.35 lbs, giving us a grand total of 14.85 lbs. The only problem is there is NO CHANCE we can compete with 4 motors. We need six (at least!), and they weigh .55 lbs each, putting us at almost 16 lbs.

I spun (or tried to spin) the shell with the spring loaded runner bearings and four motors, and it would spin for about two seconds and stop. The speed controllers have a maximum current cutoff, and we reached it. Every time. I took the runners out (because they actually have a fair amount of drag), and the shell spun for about 5 seconds, then stopped. Then, I slowly, slowly brought up the throttle, and got the shell to start spinning pretty well, but I backed off because it was precariously screwed onto a 2x8 clamped in the small vice, and was vibrating quite a bit. I still don't know if I can spin the shell with all four runners in or not, so I'll do some more testing on Saturday. Eddie will be coming down Saturday to work on his bot, so if you want to see him, come on out - I just have to let you know that it isn't going to be a machining-fest where everyone is doing stuff all the time. There's not that much left to do, but at the same time, there's a LOT left to do. If you know what I mean... I need to wire the whole thing, and we need to test and lighten and stuff, but there isn't going to be a whole lot for everyone to DO. If you just want to come and watch the process and learn, then that's great. If you're going to be bored and cause trouble, don't bother coming.

metals

if you want to learn more about the various metals we use, I put a link in the "links to useful stuff" box on the right to a page called "METALS" which talks about the various metals we use.

Please read it. I don't like explaining things that you should already know because I've already written/talked about them. :]

Update on stuff

Some of you know that I have been at Hydrogel working on the 15 lb bot every tuesday, thursday and saturday for the last 2/3 weeks. It's exhausting but we're making progress. I owe a big thank you to Ben and Alan for coming and helping out.

We are nearing the end, but as always, new challenges have come up. Over 400 holes later, the baseplate is now essentially done. It weighs 1.6 lbs. Both drive wheels are done, the spring-loaded bearings that run along the inside of the shell are done, We made custom 1/8" washers to raise the drive motors up off the baseplate, and that whole assembly is done. All the weapon assemnbly stuff is done. The teeth are done, but may need modification. The only thing left to do is the wiring.... or so we thought.

We took all the parts to the scale and weighed everything. With eight motors and 12 battery cells, we have a bot that weighs 17.2 lbs. We definitely need to do some modification of parts, and there's a chance we may have to run with 6 motors and 10 battery cells... run everything at 12V... I don't know yet, I need to do some more testing of all the electronics.

Eddie came down to watch the antweight competition at Robot MarketPlace, and to see what we've been up to. The antweight competition was kinda fun...

it's a bot!

Well, folks, we have a bot. Sort of. In one long day (11AM - 10PM), we took a pile of parts, and turned it into a bot. This video kind of chronicles the entire day.



We did the basic machining on the baseplate (we still need to lighten it A LOT and mill slots and holes for the bearing brackets), assembled all the weapon motor assemblies, tested all the electronics, assembled the weapon system, put the shell on and spun it. It spin really nicely, but we have some electrical problems we need to work out...




- the weapon motors are all rated for 7.2 volts, not 12, so after we spun up the shell and then quickly took it off to check everything inside, the motors were all pretty hot. We only spun it for 10 or 15 seconds, so we may need to step down the voltage and use 7.2 V. This will save us weight anyways because one 10 cell 12V pack can't run the bot for three minutes without overheating, so we would need two... and two 7.2 V packs are only six cells each, giving us a lot of extra weight.


- the speed controllers got really really hot and one even melted its plastic shrinkwrap covering. I ran 4 Speed-400 motors per 1 speedmax-40 speed controller (which they suggested for one speed 400 motor)... so this could be the issue. I am going to buy three more (so we have one extra) and use one SC for two motors. I need some PWM Y-splitter cables so that all the motors receive the same throttle signal (I was using two different channels today, the second being the trainer switch on the back of the transmitter...) I also need to reprogram the speed controllers so that they don't brake the motors (as this uses a lot of current and is bad for the motors and can even damage the speed controller when there is a lot of mass spinning the motors).

- We need to buy powerpoles to finish the wiring, and we need to make terminals for all the little motors. We also need 1.2 V rechargeable AA size batteries for the transmitters. Hopefully robot marketplace has them. There is a chance we may need to cut the 8 motors down to six to make weight, but I think they'll be working too hard if we do that, and I really don't feel comfortable with it.

Tuesday I will go to robot marketplace and buy all the stuff we need, then head to hydrogel and get to work. I need to finish the second drive wheel (my dad made the first one... he might just do the second for me). Everything's coming together pretty well. We're going to take the shaft and the stop piece to Rick to get welded on Monday so we'll have that done by Tuesday.

I'm excited. :]

Rick Wilson - our awesome machinst