It was another early morning for the S.A.R.T on Friday the 28th of July. The preliminary or qualifying runs were due to start at 1 PM, however, we wanted to arrive at the venue early to continue practice and work on the sensor software. It seems we didn’t take any photos at all until after...Read More

The 27th of July was the first day of RoboCup 2017. In our division, the Rapidly Manufactured Robot League, the first day was designated a practice day – a time where teams could test various versions of their robots on the final mazes and decide which configuration to use in the preliminary runs on the...Read More

It’s been exactly one month since RoboCup 2017 began, so now is as good a time as any to share the experiences we had. We arrived at the Takeda Teva Ocean Arena early on Wednesday the 26th at 8 AM. With RoboCup yet to officially start, the venue was only open for teams to set...Read More

You’ve read all about Ryan’s “movement.py” script, so now it’s time to learn about “controlscript.php” – the script that collects client keystrokes and sends the movements to the WebSocket server. The script can be accessed at our GitHub repository here. So, let’s break it down! Firstly, “controlscript.php” is a misnomer. It should really say “controlscript.js”,...Read More

We’ve recently been talking about the sensors we want to implement on the robot. We were interested in some sort of mapping or distance detection, so we first considered sonar sensors. However, as these are far too bulky for our small design, we settled on SHARP Infared sensors. Also added was an accelerometer and compass....Read More

With the robot (or at least the internal components) now portable, we could run a number more interesting real-world tests. We know from Aaron’s two previous tests that we can run the robot for around 1.25 hours with everything hooked up and running, so today we decided to do yet another range test. This time,...Read More

Today we enter a new era of robotic communication! We’ve got the control panel and the robot talking directly with the robot using WebSockets. To do this, Ryan set up a WebSocket server on the robot using Python. The server waits for messages from the console. On my end, the client/control panel connects to the...Read More

The casual reader may recall that we recently printed some test belts using the new NinjaFlex (See Aaron’s blog post here). This was our first time printing with the new filament, so we wanted to run some tests to see just how much the belts could take. NinjaFlex SemiFlex is a specially formulated thermoplastic polyurethane...Read More

The S.A.R.T Interface has two new highly requested features! Snapshots The snapshots feature allows the user to take a snapshot of the camera’s view at any point. The screenshot is then instantly downloaded to the connected client thanks to a simple PHP file. Movies The movie feature is slightly different. It runs the Motion command makemovie,...Read More

Last Thursday, Aaron, Ryan and I went to Jaycar to purchase some supplies, including heat shrink, switches, DC plugs, XT60 connectors and solder – all important parts in our new power delivery system! After some testing over the next couple of days, we put together these two circuits. The XT60 connects to a LiPo battery and...Read More