Team Pushover - Pullover (Ant)

So, after much procrastination, here goes my first build...

Pullover is an Ant variant of my intended Feather, a 2 wheeled front hinge flipper, the general idea is use a central spine and wrap some armour around it (that doesn't sound quite right, but all will become clear... I hope)

Some parts haven't arrived yet, I'm still waiting on the motors, and haven't decided what to do about radio gear BUT I couldn't wait and made a tentative start...

I'm going to be using a NanoTwo V3, got some 2s LiPo's, managed to snag a handful of 9g servos, and various bits of scrap plastics from a skip or two.

The belly pan section in the photos are just me playing with ideas, it wont be going all the way to the front to save weight, it only needs to hold the electronics in, and so far parts and roughly half of the fittings come to 74g, need to add some for the motors, RX, and the arm and it might come in at 164g if my maths is right, but there's plenty of scope to save weight.

Lets see if I can make pictures work...
Attachment 7855

EDIT: managed to drop a pic in, also may or my not scrap the spine...

I don't see the photos I am afraid. Reads like it should be a interesting build though, can't wait to see it ;)

First photo added :)

Well, pullover has been scrapped and started again... with the materials I have, the front hinge set up was overweight without motors or battery... yeah...

So I changed it to use a flippy-grabby sort of thing, this has reduced weight drastically.

There is also a minor complication of only one motor turning up... so, with one wheel on my wagon, and coming in at 115g with 11g to add for the remaining motor, here she Is!

Also a bonus pic in it's cube, so tiny!Attachment 7917Attachment 7918

The grabby thing reminds me of Incomplete Control from the Beetleweight class, should be pretty effective ;)

A-haa!!! That's what it was called, a black 4 wheel machine with a grabber...

Yeah I should have between 200 and 240g of force at the hook, and the little bend across gives slightly more effective width for flipping (if it even will) and the arch in the rod shortens the arm for maximum torque for self righting... at least that's all the theory anyway.

Just need that last motor and a bigger resistor for the power led and it's ready to bind and test. Can't wait.

Well, it appears that the Pullover is Complete!

The other motor arrived, and everything fits inside...just...

It's not as pretty as the builds I've looked at, but it's fairly solid and compact. That slot in front of the wheel is for the LED, i havent glued it yet and pushed it in attaching the body. The only thing I'm missing now is a suitable TX.

Final question; is that fuse tucked under the front going to be acceptable as a removable link before I hot glue the terminals in place?

Attachment 7950Attachment 7951Attachment 7952

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Final question; is that fuse tucked under the front going to be acceptable as a removable link before I hot glue the terminals in place?

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I do know of folks who do use fuses as removable links in the FW category so I can't see this being an issue here. AWS rules state that a switch can also be used in place of a link (http://robotwars101.org/ants/rules.htm) so you are probably going to be OK here.

Awesome Thank you. Just worried about the positioning.

It had a switch originally, but it really is that tight inside that I didn't have room for the back of the switch, I've tried to make the body round the electronics as small as physically possible with what I had... and got a bit carried away... once I've hot glued, and velcro'd the NanoTwo a bit better I'll post some i eternal pics to show what I mean.

I did manage to bring it in at 129g without acetate tho, so I'm proud of that for a first attempt.

As promised, here is a video from the initial testing.
https://youtu.be/5jydaKgxdBg

Let me know what everyone thinks, but be gentle, it's my first one afterall...

I approve very much, well done! Am I right in thinking you are using a NanoTwo V3? The V3 delivers the full battery voltage to the servo rather than limit it to 5V so if the servo you have is a non-HV type, I suspect that is why it is getting warm.

Thank you, I'm overly proud, mostly amazed it works...

Yep, it's the v3, I figured the extra voltage would affect the duty cycle, although I didn't appreciate by how much, I'm getting around 3 mins use until it starts twitching, but that was almost continuous use while I tried to set everything up and nudged some trims, under more normal use it should survive until about the 5 minute mark... should...

And if not, it's about 2 mins to change and I've got 5 or 6 more for my tenner.

And to add to the Video, I couldn't drag the mouse because I couldn't grip the shape, but putting it on and clamping it means I can fly about at normal speed, it's quite a bit more powerful than I thought it would be, I'm impressed with it so far.

I know I'm mithering a bit now, sorry.

I'm having an issue with failsafe state, realised I should test it and it seem that whenever I turn off the TX it spins the right side motor backwards and stands the servo up, the servo I can live with for now as it twitches and stops. but the motor won't stop until I either A) turn the TX back on, or B) pull the link.

Something is niggling at me that this is a setup issue, I'm using Devo 7E with Deviation 5.0.0 and a NanoTwo V3, if anyone can point me in the right direction I'd much appreciate it, Thanks.

Sounds as if the NanoTwo is holding onto a failsafe state that would appear to include signalling from the TX at the time of binding. Try rebinding the TX and the NanoTwo, making sure not to touch the directional controls. I had this problem with The Honey Badger, obviously with a different receiver and speed controller ;)

BOOM! I'll crack on with that on Monday when I get chance to work on it again, see what happens. Thanks for all the help, I don't think I'd have got this far without your help. Thankyouuuuuu.

Anyway, how did today go? Excited to see you in action tomorrow at 12.

No worries, I think Ikari may have had this problem as well.

It was awesome, I'll save on the details until you've seen it on Sunday but safe to say, plenty of work to do ;)

Bit late with the update, but went for the re bind and it seems to have cured the random circles. Going to replace the arm, because it's pretty poo, but other than that I need to throw it in an arena now and see how it does.

Thanks for the guidance.

Good to hear! Might it be worth replacing the thin wire with a polycarbonate hook?

I'll be looking to run the social again fairly soon and I'll see about bringing the AW arena as well.

I've been looking at hook replacement stuff, it's a shame because the wire is only around 2.5g and plenty strong enough, but I think I'm going to have to affix a tail section so I can self right without it having to go so far back, it will self right and almost grab right now, but it won't flip, and that's what I was aiming For, I have a few ideas, I've picked up some m1 bolts to see if they'll go through the servo horn to give me some flexibility.

Awesome stuff, i enjoyed the last one, looking into having a go at my own arena too, complete with some obstacles like barrels and a see saw and things like that for a bit of fun, if I have chance I'll be starting in earnest at weekend, if it's done I can bring that too?

Yeah sure, if it is ready, bring it along ;)

Well, finally got around to replacing the rather naff wire hook, did it on the cheap again and now we have an amazingly ugly brown lump on top, and as ugly as she now is, she self rights from every conceiveble orientation, can still turn over a 152g RC car, can drag almost 3 times her own weight, and still meets weigh-in...

Shame I can't get the parts for her sibling to come under weight so well...

Attachment 8204

With Pullover now 'complete' (I blew the LED), I can dedicate some time to my arena hazards and the next AW, or atleast the box of parts that will be the next one, stand by for Pushup coming soon

So, not really a 'build update', but today we had our first event!

Had a trip to Botfest, as organised by our very own Okracoke. And. Had. A. Blast!

Poor Pullover's servo is well and truly dead, it got so hot through the overvolting it now only twitches... upgrade required... and after Pushup's rather unfortunate incident with a LiPo battery and a screw last week, I threw a 'weapon' on my test mule/target, the Scrap Special.

First off, Heat B, Scrappy was in arena, and promptly drove off... twice... more practice required methinks, and while facing Theo's bot, actually lifted him... then drove clean underneath, and OOTA (spotting a pattern?)… so, yeah, today we learned that I can't really drive it, and I lost every match. Damn.

Then Pullover joined the fun in Heat C, and was totally out-classed by Iasius but somehow managed to scrape through to the quarter finals. In this quarter final match, we were again totally outclassed, Mini Kev Awe I think, both bot and driver were superior. Wow can he drive!

Then there was the rumble, and (can you guess it?) ended up OOTA relatively quickly... again...

I did however, manage to score a win against Axe-on, Axe-off, and Ethics Gradient (by some miracle, I beat a spinner 8)) and had a fantastic time and can't wait to do it all again.