Barróg - Featherweight Lifter Build Diary

[Shooty]

Final: Beauty X VS. Barróg Doom VS. Flippin Hell:



The final would put me against Flippin Hell and the winner of the first rumble, Beauty X, the tenth iteration of the legendary featherweight flipper line. The fight started alright, the bot was able to stay nimble while I waited to get a few good grabs on the opposition. Unfortunately, following a charge on Flippin Hell, my forks got stuck under the arena walls again, and in trying to reverse and escape, I managed to blow a fuse for the third fight in a row. All I was left to do was to crab walk around the arena, with really my only goal being to keep Flippin Hell in the game for as long as possible, but eventually the bot got stuck despite my best efforts, and so, despite two Irish machines making the final, it was the English flipper that took home the trophy. This fight was massively disappointing for me mainly due to how the bot failed the way it did, combined with how close a title was in my grasp. The wheels on the dead side of the drive managed to survive despite the strain they were taking with the crab walking, which was further confirmation that we’ve finally sorted the drive out, but my faith in my drive system overall has been massively shaken.

End of Show Rumble:



This was just your standard FW sized rumble, with nearly every machine competing, and for their part, both Barróg’s performed nicely. The forks would occasionally get stuck in the walls and, at one point, on each other, but no fuses were blown in this fight thankfully. Both machines are quite easy to push around if you can get under them or around the sides due to low ground clearance, but I’m not too concerned with this outside of rumbles. Both bots drove well and got some good lifts in, which at this stage of the event was all we needed.

Conclusion:

Overall there was quite a lot of good and bad with both machines after this event. We’re finally running on just the new wheel mounting setup on all wheels across both Barróg’s, and there hasn’t been a single failure since swapping over, even through all the crab walking, which is always great. The new forks are a massive upgrade for Barróg, and the new mounting is rock solid, works perfectly on both bots. We also got a lot of testing done in fights after the show, as well as got some really excellent photos, and while Barróg’s self-righting wasn’t as reliable as I’d hoped, it only needs a small amount of iteration to work, which is promising for sure. The major disappointment however were the ESC’s. This event had significantly more failures than any other in the past, and while none of them have burnt up thanks to the fuses, this just tells me that the 30A ESC’s just won’t cut it anymore for running both drills on 5S. We intend to upgrade to the 80A equivalent once we can afford them (on the same topic, we intend to sell some of the old ESC’s in a post here, the offer is still up: https://www.fightingrobots.co.uk/thr...938#post475938).

Outside of these failures however the event was great. Talking to the audience and other builders is always fun, and I really got to see how a heavyweight works with all the time I spent with Immersion and the team behind it (first heavyweight I’ve gotten to drive as well!). We were able to make a lot of good contacts as well, and I’ll definitely be making use of what I’ve obtained at the event for my upcoming robot projects, including some in collaboration with other builders. The Irish events are always a highlight for me, and I look forward to the event next year! As for myself, I am finally up to date with this build diary which is certainly a relief! I hope to announce my latest projects shortly, as many are quite far along. In the meantime however, I have finally made a team page for my robots on Facebook, linked to here: . I still intend to update this build diary (despite the difficulties in using this site), but the FB page will feature other aspects of the builds and event reports not seen here, so give it a shout: https://www.facebook.com/TeamBarrog/




Some great shots taken of the machines after hours, with a Regicide cameo.

[Shooty]

Roboriots 2022:

This update is certainly very late, and it's a little frustrating to come back to this diary and see all of the accents corrupted, but better late than never! Roboriots 2022 was the welcome return of robot fighting in Ireland for the first time in nearly three years, and was also the first true opportunity to give both FW Barrógs a spin in a long time. Due to much more of my focus during lockdown being on my cluster robot as well as working on my BW Babróg, very little time was actually spent on the Barrógs due to how well each of them actually worked already, though a few changes did make their way into the final products.


Team Barróg ready for action!

For starters, both robots received a drive upgrade. After each bot lost a side of drive due to a blown fuse, the decision was made to upgrade from 30A ESC’s powering either side of drive to 80A ESC’s, effectively (at least I hope) making them bulletproof. Outside of that, Barróg Doom’s only major upgrade was a swapping around of the forks, from two 20mm wide forks to three 15mm wide ones. I’ve been looking into ways of moving the weight around in the robot for a while now, and this was a way of using some of the new extra weight to hopefully stand a better chance of getting under robots head on.

The original Barróg meanwhile had a very new and fancy upgrade in the works. The replacement cheap Chinese linac we got for it after the original Gimson linac was destroyed for the millionth time had proven surprisingly decent, offering enough lift with an actual upgrade in top speed. However, since I was already planning some experiments with more powerful linacs with my new FW cluster robot, I decided to do the same with Barróg. I ended up getting a new custom 100mm GLA750 actuator, with the normal motor replaced with an 18V S550 motor, greatly improving the speed and power offered for lifting.


Not the new linac, but the one I used in between the FW 2019 champs and Roboriots 2022. A very good budget option!

These motors promised a lot of speed and power, but the main reason you don’t see these conversions is due to the higher current draw of the motor, which would normally be too much for the limit switched within the actuator to handle. For my cluster, I resolved this by adding far chunkier diodes and limit switches to physical locations on the final assembly, which would cut the power in one direction when pressed. This would not be an option on Barróg however with its far more open plan, and so an electronic solution would be needed. Stay with me, because this might be the most complicated thing I’ve ever needed to explain, and even I struggle to understand it sometimes.

My idea was essentially this: the motor on the linac would be fed as normal by a standard 30A ESC. Instead of the limit switches being powered by the same current feeding the motor, they would be fed by a separate 5V 5A system through the use of a 12A ESC. When a limit switch was hit within the actuator, this would be fed through a separate relay, cutting the power to the main motor. The major challenge with this system was that, to function like a normal limit switch/diode setup, you needed the direction of both ESC’s in the system to be synchronised, otherwise either nothing would move, or the switches wouldn’t work to stop the linac. This is where some clever mixing on the Tx comes into play: I managed to program it so that when I moved left or right on the weapon stick, the smaller ESC would instantly go either 100 or -100 depending on the direction, no matter how small the input, while the larger ESC would operate normally. This syncs both systems up, and with the relay acting as the in-between system, I now had the means to apply the greatest direct upgrade to Barróg it had seen since the introduction of the RG1000 material.


The new linac system, laid out in as simple a way as I can manage. The final product was far more compact.

The format of fights was basically unchanged from Roboriots 2019, with four FW rumbles spread across the two days. Different this time however was that there would be an actual trophy to fight over, lovingly handmade by Dr. Zulu himself once more. Like last time, I’ll just link the fights, and give some general overview comments witnessed across the event. Thanks again to Team Ironclads for all of the event footage!

Fight 1:


Fight 2:


Fight 3:


Fight 4:

• Due to the timing of the event, my dad actually wasn’t present on the Saturday, so I would only be able to fight with one robot at a time. Given that I had mainly been driving Doom since 2019, and that most of the upgrades were focused on Barróg 1, I drove that for the entire Saturday. I actually enjoyed it so much that I kept on driving it during the Sunday, while my dad took to driving Doom for the first time.

Barróg and Regicide ready to go into the arena.

• I’ve definitely improved my radio mixing since the last time I had driven Barróg, because the handling of the robot was just perfect. It was very easy to keep Barróg pointing in one direction and to follow an opponent. The drive has remained super strong, and after a while I felt much more comfortable tossing it around; the new ESC’s did the job perfectly, and the wheels remain surprisingly durable.
• The new linac surpassed my expectations. It was incredibly speedy, powerful, and durable. Despite all the electronic complexity that went into it, I never had to give it much thought, it just worked in a way I was pretty unfamiliar with. The hinged forks also made getting under bots a breeze, the only issues they gave me were in how they got caught on the MDF floor, which wouldn’t be a problem on a proper steel one.

Barróg in the arena ready to fight!

• While I’ve mostly spent the last few years chasing the snake-mech suplex grabbers with Doom and my beetleweight Babróg, driving the original bot again made me really appreciate the value of that old style of lifter all over again. The linac and “reverse grabbing arms” meant that once I got hold of someone, they were basically at my mercy. Further, because so much of Barróg’s weight is at the back by default, having an opponent up front actually tends to even out the weight distribution on the bot, allowing me to drive comfortably around. It was so effective, that after fights I was able to drive around and bring all of the immobile robots back over to the arena entrance. In an arena with a pit, Barróg remains very dangerous.
• This was my dad’s first time driving Barróg Doom, and given how many years it had been since he last drove the machine, I’d say he did pretty well. The new tri-fork setup looked very good at getting under bots, though of course the MDF arena certainly made things a little trickier. The weapon on Doom is much trickier to manage than on the original, with how far an opponent needs to be up it, as well as the increased risk of blowing itself up, so I can understand why the fabled suplex was harder to find this time round. When I eventually make a third Barróg, that will probably be one of the first things to fix.

The FW Díotóir that was at the event. Was nice to both work on getting it ready for the last fight, as well as fighting against it in general!

• This was one of the few events I will likely ever go to where absolutely nothing ever broke at all. Most of my time outside of fights was spent speaking to spectators as they walked past, as well as helping to fix other robots (including fitting a new safety link system to the FW Díotóir.

The winners trophy for the event. Dr. Zulu always goes crazy with these trophies.

In the end, this event went as well as I could ever expect. All of our robots worked basically perfectly, put on a decent show, and after winning all four of the melee’s, Barróg finally had its first event win! It definitely wasn’t like the fields you would see at a major FW tournament, but it felt good nonetheless, and the trophy really was spectacular! With Díotóir winning the heavyweight category as well, it was nice that for the first time, both categories in the main Irish event were won by Irish robots. Thank you so much to all the kind and hardworking folks at Mechatrons and the staff at the National Basketball Arena, and to all the other roboteers. I look forward to the event taking place later this year, and hope that the Barróg’s can return to a large-scale tournament in Europe someday soon!




Barróg and Díotóir, the winners of their respective categories!

[Ocracoke]

Congratuations Eoin! Well deserved!

This was one of the few events I will likely ever go to where absolutely nothing ever broke at all.

Haahahah! Wonder what that is like? :P

[Shooty]

Roboriots 2023 (& 2024):

Ireland’s annual live event has continued to truck along, and they’ve continued to be another chance for me to mess around with my featherweights, basically untouched from previous years. There’s not as much to talk about in these event reports compared to exclusively FW competitions, and while the bots do go through some changes, I’ll save a more detailed build update for my next entry, where I’ll talk about North Down Havoc 2024. Due to how late these updates have been, I’m going to combine both last year and this year’s events into one update. Video content is a little tricky for 2023 since the team which provides wonderful footage of so many live events, Team Ironclads, wasn’t present for that year, so you may have to hop across several channels if you want the full event report experience.


The full squad ready to go for 2023.

Making it to the events themselves were often some of the most difficult parts of the journeys, particularly in 2023 when the family car broke down the day before the event itself, potentially stranding everything in Galway. We were also running a secret third bot for this competition, my four bar FW cluster half which still really hasn’t been given a proper name (Kill O’Herlihy in 2023, Very Schnakey in 2024).

2023 Fight 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC8TvTwDFJc (I don't know why this link isn't working, it's formatted exactly like the others and I've tried to fix it for 15 minutes, but I suppose this all comes with dealing with a website that has not been updated since the Cameron government)

2023 Final:


2024 Full Tournament:


The main Barróg (mostly driven by my dad) performed pretty similar to how it has over the past few events, both using the new fancy linac and the old cheap linac. Self-righting continues to be a strength for the design, managing to roll back from any angle, and the drive setup continues to push things around both normally and when an opponent is lifted and grabbed. The metal forks do a good job getting underneath opponents even when not totally flush with the ground (accidentally mounted them the wrong way round for the first fight of 2024 but still did OK). They do catch an awful lot on the ground however, and there were a few occasions where the bot gets wedged into the arena walls hard.


The pit table for 2023, shared with the 2HDF team.

Barróg Doom continues to have strong moments, although the quality of the lifter differed wildly between fights. I noticed in preparing for the 2024 event that basically all of the bolts involved with the lifter assembly had either loosened (where the two drill motors meet), or had sheared entirely. I actually had a total failure in Doom’s second fight in 2024, which in hindsight should have been prevented, and to be honest I can’t complain too much if the main lifting mechanism on this robot has only suffered a single failure in 5 years. In the future I will likely swap these bolts out every year. When Doom is working it’s a real crowd pleaser, though again it would be undone a few times by a not-perfect ground game, as well as getting stuck under arena walls, costing it event wins in both 2023 and 2024.


Very Schnakey back in 2023 with the four-bar setup. This setup already was poor without a metal floor, which would be the only way I could self-right. The fact the lifter got caught on so many things just made it worse.

Very Schnakey (this will be the name I’ll go with for now) had a very anonymous 2023, where it lost a side of drive early on, and was also flipped over into a position where it couldn’t self-right without magnets. For 2024 I decided to run it in the invertible wedge config and even lend the robot out to Isaac of Team Immersion. The bot was not the most effective pusher thanks to the weight disadvantage, but it was mobile, manoeuvrable, and surprisingly durable, surviving numerous tumbles. Special shout out to the bot being used as a test dummy for Amicide’s flipper test, which literally sent the bot into the catch fencing of the arena, and kept running regardless.


A close look at the drive side which had the failed wheel in 2023. Not the most informative photo if I'm honest.

Outside of the standard wheel swap now and then (of which I’m hoping to fix with a new wheel design going forward), I’m once again happy with the performance of the robots in these events. These events are basically just an excuse for me to meet up with friends, have some wonderful conversations with people in the crowds, and toss some robots around for a few glorious minutes, which is why most of us do this to be honest. Shout outs to all of the usual Irish and British teams in attendance, and a special shout out to the Two Headed Death Flamingo team in 2023 for the weekend together, and to Team Penny for finally allowing us to meet, hopefully there can be some more collabs between the Irish and Northern Irish scenes in the future!


The full squad for 2024. Not that many photos, but another fun event regardless!