The APEC conference hosted its 35th annual micromouse contest on Monday February 26th in Long Beach California. There was a good mix of contestants from the USA, UK and Japan with a surprise last-minute entry creating quite a stir with its excellent showing. The maze looked like this: As we…
In this month's presentation, Ian Butterworth describes how he managed to fit a Raspberry Pi Zero to the UKMARSBOT while ensuring that there is enough power for everything. UKMARSBOT was designed to have a replaceable processor. What we didn't think of was adding a Raspberry Pi Zero as a supervisory…
The UKMARSBOT robot was designed from the start to be a good training robot for aspiring micromouse developers. In this month's presentation, Peter Harrison describes some of the important considerations and features needed in the code that controls a micromouse. All the code that is described can be downloaded from…
You will have heard of Bluetooth. You will almost certainly have also heard of Bluetooth LE (BLE). Ever wondered about the difference? Want to know more? In this months online meeting, Rob Probin gives a bit of background on Bluetooth, describes some of the features of BLE, tells us how…
Back in the late 20th Century, the micromouse contest we new and all sorts of designs were tried. Moderm micromouse designs have tended to converge but Derek and Jim, for their first half-size micromouse decided to made a new, and tiny, version of a classic - Thumper. Thumper had two…
This is one of 10 UKMARSbot robots built at KES School in the 2019/2020 academic year with students in year 8. Motors are Pimoroni N20s with the extended shaft and a 20:1 gearbox, but no encoders have been fitted at present, although by using the extended shafts it would be…
This is the demonstration model of the UKMARSbot robot built for the robot club at KES School in the 2019/2020 academic year with students in year 8. Motors are Poluloi N20s with a 10:1 gearbox and the extended shaft with magnetic encoders added The wheels are the standard 32 mm…
Magellan, built by Ian Butterworth, is an example of UKMARSBOT a beginner’s robot with the standard basic line sensor board extended to improve reliability when detecting radius and start/finish markers. UKMARSBOT is covered in detail here https://ukmars.org/projects/ukmarsbot/getting-started-ukmarsbot/ and the modification of the sensors was discussed at Minos 2020, a recording…
Asymouse is a beginner’s robot built by Ian Butterworth to complete the IET triathlon events. The platform is a PCB designed by the builder with sensor boards constructed from prototyping board. There is minimal surface mount, just a microSD slot, and the robot is built around a dsPic33 plug in…
Due to COVID, it is not currently possible to hold a Micromouse event in person. However, it would be nice for people who have made line-followers in expectation of competition this year to have a means of comparing them. I have designed and tested a line-follower course that can be…