Cicatrix Build Diary

Biggest task left before saturday was getting Eric Jr going, so been working on it the past few days and the drive and electronics seem to be working well. Have taken out the old 3000mAh batteries, 12v Argos motors, Robochallange wheels, ESCs, weapon controller (servo/switch) and LEDs. These have been replaces with new 3700mAh batteries, 14.4v Gimson Robotics motors, Gimson Robotics wheels, Scorpion XL and a Battleswitch.

The control feels a lot sharper at the moment even with driving it around in such a small space and with the robot pneumatics not in place, but that will get done tomorrow morning then after a quick test of it all together it'll get a charge and be left for Edinburgh. The battleswitch/solenoid can be heard clicking so I hope no problems arise tomorrow.

Unfortunately, putting the Gimson wheels on Eric Jr has meant that Rover is now in bits again, so will have to put it back together tomorrow too, and replace the batteries that were removed over the course of the Chariots event, but that will be a quick fix.

Quick video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsDDoGpRN3w

Very nice :)
I've got four of the Gimson wheels that I can bring along on Sunday, if you need another set for Rover?

Cheers :)

I was just going to stick the Robochallenge ones that were on Jr on it, they're completely unused. The slight difference in diameter may cause a problem, but lets be honest, thats going to be the least of Rovers problems :lol: . If you want to bring them along anyway though would be cool :)

Eric Jr and Cicatrix are pretty much finished, all ready for their event. Just a case of charging the batteries. Took Rover to bits event further to borrow some pieces from it, and it won't have a driver at the event anyway, so i'm only going to bring it along if I have a bit of time to spare reassembling it. Even then, its not really up to featherweight combat, and it looses control randomly, and it doesn't failsafe...

Anyway, video of the test of the pneumatics and drive system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7Xd1KwZK7I

Aftet the video, I added the corner protection onto Jr then took a photo of the completed articles ready for Edinburgh:

http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/...6-14150751.jpg

Event Report

Quite bad really :(

Eric got his one fight and beat Storm Force somewhat by default, which is good, but really needs the weapon back working again. Also looking at shortening it a bit as the back bit isn't really needed now that the electronics are pretty much all contained in one box whereas before they were huge. So thats something for the future.

Eric Jr got one fight too in the feathers, the other 2 fights the transmitter wouldn't bind to the receiver, the first time it didn't work in the arena, then took it out and one wheel did work. So Glyn and I had a look at it and messed about with the Scorpion which seemed to fix it, second fight it worked well and the flipper was ok, perhaps needs a bit more power though and the third fight it again didn't bind. Apparently the RadioLink gear sometimes doesn't like bonding when theres too many other radios around, and as I had pneumatics I was arming up close to last. At least I got to see how it performed with the other robots.

Cicatrix pretty much just sat there until the very last fight then had a pretty solid outing when Jamie had destroyed all of his other robots and had a go on it. Looked fine, as good as its probably going to get the way it is. Upgrade for it is already set really when I get the cash to build the drum.

So there it is.

I'm probably going to leave them all to gather dust for a few months for a number of reasons, mainly as i'll hopefully have something bigger to report around August/September time, but not confirmed yet.

At the 2011UK Champs our Radiolink gear refused to bind and we put it down to the masses of interference from other gear and the set being cheap.
Having said that we also had binding issues with out DSM2 gear at the 2012 champs but that was with cheapy Rxs.

Works again now, and worked as soon as the FW battle was over so i'm pretty sure its an interference issue and not anything being broken, but its hard to test that before or after an event, really has to be done there. I know that my DX6/BR6000 worked at the first time of asking. I'll bring an OrangeRx set next year too and see which works better.

Got my hacked ESCs today, will have to change all the connectors to deans and will test them in a couple of weeks time.

I remember reading somewhere that with brushless ESCs you need to keep the wires the same length to the battery and motor, is this still important when running them on a brushed motor?

nope, thats new to me...

with brushless you should keep your motor phase wires the same length, and the power leads as short as possible....with brushed its not so important.