These are instructions for setting the Arduino IDE with a Pico / RP2040 NOTE: I already had the support board installed before writing this post, so some of this might be missing some steps. If anyone spots a problem, then let please me know. We'd like people to be able…
In December's robot club video call David Hannaford shared an update on his presentation from Minos showing how to add remote control to your robot using an Android phone. The approach uses the MIT App Inventor software to build the software for the phone and sketch code on the Arduino…
If you are new to the robot game (and even if you are not) it can be a challenge to select suitable sensors for your creation. This series will look at some possile devices. It is not necessarily a recommendation because I have not tried them all in all circumstances.…
Over the weekend of Saturday 2nd April and Sunday 3rd April we had another successful Minos conference and the first since 2019 that we were able to hold in person with a full programme of competitions on the Sunday. You can see the results here Minos 2022 Competition Results Thank…
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…
We have been looking at the possibilities for a half size line follower challenge and Duncan has published a test track for printing in A1. I thought I’d see just how few special items were needed to try this out. So I used my A4 printer in posterising mode to…
The purpose of the ISC project is to offload sensor control to an embedded controller which communicates over an I2C interface to the UKMARSBOT MCU. The ISC comprises a programmed ATtiny814 acting as an I2C Slave on a PCB which plugs in between the UKMARSBOT sensor board connection and cable…
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…
I wanted to build a UKMARSBOT line follower but code it in Python. So here I describe how to replace the Arduino Nano with the recently launched Raspberry Pi Pico. The Pico is not ideal in many respects, particularly because it only has 3 A to D ports, where we…
The UKMARSBOT is very similar in concept to the robots I used to build for the IET and Techfest events around five years ago, so when I discovered the UKMARS website last year I decided to re-join the hobby and build one. The majority of Hammerhead's chassis is standard UKMARSBOT,…