Blog

A day-by-day log of our progress, achievements, and sometimes our setbacks.

Time For a Makeover

Welcome back to another episode of SART SFX where we are retiring Lord Nibbler! He is very old now and it’s time for a predecessor,...

We’re back baby!! | a new era of SART

Song of the day: The boys are back in town – Thin Lizzy Welcome back to the official SART blog!! We just came back from...

Lord Nibbler – Our Bordeaux Robot

Lord Nibbler is a black and white robot named after a beloved character from the animated series Futurama. This unique choice of name stems from...

Up and running at last!

Song of the day: Shake it off – Taylor Swift The robot ‘Nibbler’ is coming along well. 😊 This weekend has been very productive. We have...

WE’RE COOKING WITH GAS

Song recommendation for the day – It’s A Hard Knock Life by Charles Strouse. Today, we were successful in our attempt to get all our...

WE’RE BACK!!! 😱😱😱

Song recommendation of the day: Hot N Cold – Katy Perry S.A.R.T. is back up and running, filled with fresh new faces, and plenty of...

Flexo’s (A)live 🔥🥶💯👌

song recommendation of the day: Take on Me – a-ha Today was our final day of adventure in Thailand. We livestreamed our performance today and...

Flexo’s getting heated 🥵 -winter temps rising in Canberra 🙄🥱

Song recc: Steal my girl – One Direction Second blog of the day – on that grind Its getting hot in here!!! Flexo got a...

FLEXO destroys practice day

PREP & PRACTICE DAY! song recommendation of the day: Last Resort – Papa Roach Per yesterdays results, Flexo had DESTROYED the tracks, DEMOLISHED the time,...

Our first day in Thailand ! (not really 😢) – Bender’s arch nemesis cancels Thailand trip 😫

Hi everyone!!!!! song recommendation of the day: Nutcracker – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Today is set-up day! We are in Thailand as we speak 😃 (just...

UBECcer Watch Out

Over the past few days we’ve made some exciting locomotion advancements. Connor created Sights motor wrapper plugins for RoboClaw and Roboteq motor controllers, Alex authored...

Target Translation

On Tuesday evening we had our first test of the new S.A.R.T. Series M robot with all systems functioning at the same time. During our...

Using Hardware Acceleration in VNC

‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ I’d like to slightly modify that statement to ‘Any solution to a technology problem that works for...

Extracting a floor plan from a ZED Mini model using Blender

One of the requirements for the Major competition is to generate a top-down floor plan of the room in which the test takes place. Ideally,...

Unbending Bender

Today I worked mostly on testing and familiarizing myself with our development robot, which we as a team named ‘Bender’. To begin the day, I...

Moving 4ward

Big success today as part of our community outreach program “S.A.R.T. Junior”, we got 4 motors working at once with a H bridge and a...

Nvidia Jetson Nano with Intel Wireless AC PCIe WiFi

Here’s how we got our Jetson Nano working reliably with an Intel Wireless AC 3165 PCIe WiFi card. This post outlines the steps someone else...

UNLIMITED POWER!

For years, power has always been something we have constantly been seeking to improve. Most robots and other remote/portable applications utilise LiPo batteries. While flexible...

S.A.R.T.ing forward – powered by Dell Technologies

Moving away from the challenging year that 2020 was for us all, S.A.R.T. was very fortunate to get the opportunity to partner with Dell Technologies...

S.A.R.T. Through The Ages Part Trois: The Renaissance

It was July of 2016, and by our rough calculations we had about twelve months to develop a reliable robot for the competition the next...

S.A.R.T. Through The Ages Part The Second: The Dark Ages

Alex had returned from China with a plethora of ideas for potential improvements to the platform we were developing on, including both the hardware and...

S.A.R.T. Through The Ages Part 1: The Medieval Era

Greetings, everyone.  It’s been a while since I wrote a blog, I don’t think I’ve posted a blog since I became a member of the...

S.A.R.T. Team Description Materials for Q1 2020

Authors: Connor Kneebone, Alexander Cavalli, Jack Williams, Matthew Williams, Graham Stock, Charlotte Drury, Anthony Gambale, Michael Cavalli, Nathaniel Kneebone, Martin Hosking, Alexander Thorning Published: 20th...
New wheel hub in Fusion 360

A ‘Wheely’ Good Day Pt. IV

The wheels we made for the Mark III robot did pretty well. The new polyurethane tires were excellent, they had plenty of grip, were basically...

Unwrapping Sensor Wrappers – Part 2: Graphs

The SIGHTS software suite is designed to be very extensible when it comes to adding new sensors to your robot. We achieve this by using...

Unwrapping Sensor Wrappers – Part 1: Sensors

The SIGHTS software suite is designed to be very extensible when it comes to adding new sensors to your robot. We achieve this by using...

A Blog Post About Two-Way Audio

A brief history of two-way audio In previous years, we have used a few methods to do two-way audio. Initially we had a speech to...

Make It Yours: Configuring SIGHTS Part 2 (Advanced Configuration)

In “Make It Yours: Configuring SIGHTS Part 1” I showed you how to configure a basic SIGHTS-based robot. In this, the second part, I’ll go...

Make It Yours: Configuring SIGHTS Part 1 (Basic Configuration)

The recently released SIGHTS (SART Integrated GUI and Host Teleoperation Service) software suite is designed to work with virtually any RMRC robot setup. However, with...

SIGHTS Set On The Future

Here at S.A.R.T. we are proud to announce the release… of SIGHTS. No, it’s not a network of spy satellites. We aggressively forced the name...

SART Hazmat Guide

Hi everyone, Anthony here to deliver a quick message. I decided to document everything I learned during last year’s RoboCup in the form of a...

The Cops Get Involved

On the 16th of October 2019, the Australian Federal Police Bomb Response unit was called to the premises of SFX. Fortunately, it wasn’t because there...

Hazmat Part 3: Choosing the Class

Hey there, it’s Anthony, ready to bring an end to this epic trilogy of identifying hazmat signs. In this part we will cover how we...

RoboCup Rescue – Rapidly Manufactured Robot Challenge – Symposium

RMRC participants and organisers were invited to speak at the International Convention Centre Sydney for the 23rd annual RoboCup International Symposium. Dr Raymond Sheh (Founder,...

Hazmat Part 2: Isolating the Interest

Hi, it’s Anthony again. I’m here to make an addition to the first part of this series, which really belongs in that blog post, but...

Hazmat Part 1: Detecting the Danger

Hi, this is Anthony. I’ve not written a blog post about the vision stuff yet because I’ve been too busy actually working on it. The...

Using an Intel 9260 Wireless Card with the Nvidia Jetson Nano

Unfortunately the Nvidia Jetson doesn’t support the Intel 9260 cards out of the box. Nvidia’s JetPack OS ships with the Linux kernel 4.9 while support...

S.A.R.T. Team Description Materials for Q2 2019

Authors: Connor Kneebone, Alexander Cavalli, Graham Stock, Charlotte Drury, Anthony Gambale, Michael Cavalli, Nathaniel Kneebone, Martin Hosking Published: 19th of June, 2019 License: This work...

Using the UDOO x86’s Arduino with Arduino-CLI

In a previous blog post, I wrote about using the official Arduino IDE with the on-board Arduino 101 on the UDOO x86 Ultra. Since our...

Mmmmmm. Yummy PyPot.

Hello, It’s me Barney again! This time I am writing about motors. The S.A.R.T team ran into an issue with the motors constantly overloading and...

Control Unit & Access Point

Hello! It’s Barney again. I am here to give a few updates regarding S.A.R.T’s progress, considering we haven’t had an update for cough two months...

S.A.R.T. Team Description Materials for Q1 2019

Authors: Connor Kneebone, Matthew Williams, Jack Williams, Alexander Cavalli, Aaron Maggs, Ryan Ewyk, Riley Cockerill, Michael Cavalli, Charlotte Drury, Graham Stock, Ryan Millard-Cartwright Published: 17th...

SLAM

At the end of 2018 we were gifted a TurtleBot3 Burger by our new sponsor, Tribotix. A TurtleBot is a low cost robot that we...

Next Gen!

Say hello to SFX’s new SART team! This year’s team consists of three year 11’s, Barney Bruckner, Martin Hosking, Anthony Gambale and two year 12’s,...

Plans for Autonomy and ROS

Hello! I am Barney, I’ll be taking over autonomy for the next two years for S.A.R.T. This post isn’t actually about the progress of autonomy,...

Partner Helps S.A.R.T. Shake off the Shackles of Slow Sites

When we graduated St Francis Xavier College in 2017, we didn’t think we’d be back here writing a blog so soon. The great wheel that...

Stopping Servos

An issue we’ve commonly faced while operating our robot is that the servos will keep spinning if the script crashes or if we exit the...

Autonomy In Motion

Now that we have a rather nice PID controller, it’s time to test it! Enjoy responsibly Using just a PID controller alone, we can implement...

Centring with a PID Controller

On our way to autonomy, one of the things we need to have is the ability for the robot to centre itself left and right...

Catching Shiny Hubs

In light of the recent drop test debacle, we’ve decided on a new infill pattern for the wheel hub. The infill that we used for...

Drop Test!

The S.A.R.T. performed a drop test! We were pretty sure our robot would survive, but we’d never done a proper test before. We figured, now...

Semi-Autonomous At Last!

Here at S.A.R.T., we are immeasurably proud to anounce our robot is, at long last, semi-autonomous. You can watch the robot in action and in...

Servo Servicing II

As I talked about in a previous post, half of our servos weren’t working. Of course, I was going to try to fix them before...

Custom USB Board

One of our other major issues in Canada were the USB ports. Due to the small size of our robot, we needed to have right...

Servo Servicing

A lot of things went wrong in Canada, sure.But perhaps the worse of our issues were the servos. The other day, we were planning on...

RoboCup Canada, Day 8: Hip Hip Hooray!

The competition was over. Well, truthfully, we were a bit bummed out about it. We knew we had a good robot and if it had...

RoboCup Canada, Day 7: Good Going, Guys n’ Gals

Today we headed to the venue confident that we could scrape in a few points by the end of the competition. That night before, we...

RoboCup Canada, Day 6: Functionality Finally?

Today we got to the venue and immediately got to work. Today we had the bad luck of the last day except somehow worse. Unlike...

RoboCup Canada, Day 5: Errors and Exasperation

Today was our first day of competition. Everything we had worked on for the past six to nine months was leading up to today. We...

RoboCup Canada, Day 4: Daunting Dilemmas

Today was the first day we spent at the venue. It was the practice day for all teams where we could all put our robots...

RoboCup Canada, Day 3: Captivating City Curiosities

We spent today working on rewiring and testing sensors. We made improvements to the scripts on the robot too. Kyle worked on the motion tracking,...

RoboCup Canada, Day 2: Bountiful Buying Bonanza

Today was one of the only days where we could sleep in, so we woke up at around 9:00 am and headed for breakfast, thinking...

RoboCup Canada, Day 1: Ample Amount of Aviation

Our first day out of school and our first day of travel to Canada. Our trip started at the Canberra airport at 4:45am where all...

Serious Simultaneous Sensor Struggles

A mere week before our trip to Canada we had a major malfunction of our robot’s components. Our previously wired sensors had an issue where...

Our Robot Can Do A Full Pipe

The time is drawing near that the crew heads off to Canada! Since my last update on the wheels, we’ve made some slight changes to...

Jammin’ With Wheels

It has the consistency of jam and smells like jam and tastes like jam but is not jam, then what is it? You guessed it,...

Full Steam Ahead

It’s been a while since our last progress update, we’ve been rather busy with assessment at school. The worst of the assessment period is over...

Perplexing PCB Preparation

We need to plug in a rather large number of sensors to the UDOO x86 Ultra’s built-in Arduino. During the testing and programming phase, a...

Precarious Printing Pains, Part 2: the Prequel

This post is going to go into more detail about the different changes that had to be made to the body and how we made...

Precarious Printing Pains

Our body for our robot, as mentioned in previous blog posts is going to be commercially printed, but before we can commercially print them we must...

Here be New Wheels

Time to start working on the wheels. With the help of Mr Stock and Nick from Year 11 I’ve successfully modeled the hub and tyre...

Camera Compression Complications Continuation

Cameras are going to be a huge part of our robot (Mainly in terms of importance, but it just so happens that they are some...

The S.A.R.T. at Robocup 2017

While there are other blog posts that go into detail about each day at Robocup 2017 (see here), this blog is a more in-depth look...

Arduino and UDOO Communication

Having the Arduino onboard the UDOO is a godsend. It removes the need for a separate (and bulky) Arduino to act as an intermediary. The...

A ‘Wheely’ Good Day Pt. III

The previous team used a product called PolyShield, which is a tough, flexible dip that protects, insulates and seals almost any surface. Color codes all...

Less Cool 3D Modeling: 2D Modeling.

I have made a rough technical drawing of how all of our sensors are going to fit into the front of the robot. We are...

Updated TDM for 2018

We have just submitted our updated Team Description Materials for 2018. In addition to last year’s TDM, it covers a number of improvements and additions...

What’s in the mythical orange folder?

So hey, first post for me. Heya! Figured I’d write something about the random ideas and designs I’ve collected since joining S.A.R.T., so here we...

Camera Compression Complications

Mr. Crane picked up some cheap Logitech webcams the other day, so we could try testing multiple camera streams. He also got a USB 2.0...

Chassis is French For Frame Apparently

Last year the old team’s chassis had a square hole instead of servo mounts as well as screws which meant that the wheels could be flipped but...

New Cameras

We have currently been researching a new and greatly improved way of knowing the position of the robot on the field using cameras. We had...

Networking, more like net-not-working

I have been working on setting up the UDOO x86 Ultra while everyone else has been working on the chassis. Setting up the software on...

The Men with the Plen

Today the team spent time in discussion with our new mentors, discussing the current stage of the robot. A number of decisions were made, regarding...

S.A.R.T NG+

We’re the new S.A.R.T team, and we’re in charge now. We are Connor, Ben, Erin, and Kyle. Now that that’s out of the way; we...

S.A.R.T. Team Description Materials

Authors: Matthew Williams, Jack Williams, Aaron Maggs, Ryan Ewyk, Riley Cockerill Published: 1st of September, 2017 Abstract The Semi-Autonomous Rescue Team is a small group of Robotics and Information Technology...

RoboCup: A Retrospective (Day Six – Symposium)

Day 6 was another – unintended – early morning, giving us time to make our way to the Aichi University Nagoya Campus for the 21st...

RoboCup: A Retrospective (Day Five – Finals)

Finals: Finally. Not final practice finals. Final finals – the finale. Finally. We rose at 7 AM for breakfast on the final day, after only...

RoboCup: A Retrospective (Day Four – Final Practice)

The 29th of July was an opportunity for the S.A.R.T and the four other qualifying teams – Blue Storm, Tupac, Kings Legacy and Magistry –...

RoboCup: A Retrospective (Day Three – Preliminaries and Parties)

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...

RoboCup: A Retrospective (Day Two – Practice)

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...

RoboCup: A Retrospective (Day One – Setup)

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...

Let’s Break It Down! “controlscript.php” Part 4

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...

Sensor Party: The Hardware

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,...

Thingiverse

I uploaded all the robot’s design files and some renders I made of the mocked up internals in Sketchup. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2430783   In other news, the...

Let’s Break It Down! “movement.py” part 3

Welcome to part 3 of Let’s break it down! ‘movement.py’. In the last post we went over two massive functions: ‘bckFwdRun(key, s)’ and ‘leftRightRun(key, s)’....

Let’s Break It Down! “movement.py” part 2

Today we’re back into breaking down the movement.py script. The last post walked through many of the functions needed to run the robot. Now we...

Let’s Break It Down! “movement.py” part 1

In this post, I’m going to break down the “movement1v.py” script which, if you didn’t read the last post I wrote, can be accessed on...

Github 10/07/17

Today, I uploaded all of the SARTs code to our GitHub repository which you can find here. We have released our code under the GNU General...

Motion in Motion

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...

Socket Stuff

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...

Belt Stuff

Today I used one of the prototype chassis to measure the length of each belt.  I attached the servos and wheels, and then used string...

NinjaFlex Belt Force Tests

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...

Snapshot and Movie

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...

Robot Redesigns

After exams had concluded, I started working on modifying the current robot design to accommodate the concepts that Jack and Aaron came up with a...

NinjaFlex Flexes its Muscles

Today was the day where I got my hands on to the Ninja Flex that we bought a few weeks ago. As soon as I...

Power Problems are in the Past

Last Thursday, Aaron, Ryan and I went to Jaycar to purchase some supplies, including heat shrink, switches, DC plugs, XT60 connectors and solder – all...

More 3D Printer news!

While talking to Mr. Crane, he asked how we are going to do the belt on the wheels. I said we could buy a belt...

Prototype Printing Plans

After our redesign brainwave, Aaron and I immediately set about modifying our current prototype. Once we have everything in the robot, we can decide just...

Robot Redesign Ruminations

Aaron and I had a long discussion about the robot design this morning, and we conceptualised a new orientation for the Intel NUC to allow...

NUC Running on battery!

A few days ago Mr. Elias and I were having a chat about powering the NUC. He said that we should start looking at how...

3D Printing Update

After printing some wheels in PLA I thought we could speed this up if I got the Ultimaker and started printing them on that as well....

Better Than F5

Ever since I created the S.A.R.T interface, there’s been one thing that bugs us constantly, and that’s having to refresh the page to load the...

Control Panel Creation

The final pieces of the control-panel-puzzle are in place, with the arrival of our new UPS and monitor. Over the past few days, we have...

Wire up that UPS

As part of our control panel, we needed to extend the UPS power on cable this is because we wanted to be able to turn...

Perfecting the Perspex

With the robot well under construction, we’re soon going to need the S.A.R.T Control Panel in order to test it. With that in mind, I...

Screw This

So. We have a problem. Like Tom Hanks stranded on an island, level problem…. In short, stuff doesn’t work properly. Long version: The Robot’s current...

A ‘Wheely’ Good Day Pt. II

I took the 3D printer home again this weekend and printed the 6th chassis prototype, with the extra room for the SSD underneath the NUC,...

UPS Experiments

After a discussion with Aaron yesterday, this morning I set up an experiment to test how long the UPS would run after being disconnected from...

Filament Forever

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been running very low on 3D printer filament, only being able to print a few test prints every time...

Crack The Case

Our current design has the UPS sitting in the pelican case like so: Unfortunately, in order to power it on, we would need to stick...

One Inch More

A short update. Each S.A.R.T model/prototype has a new and quite frankly, interesting addition or modification. Every time a new model is printed, something new...

Rebranding

The site we got our original logo from updated their commercial use license, meaning we need to update our logo. Fortunately, this gives us the chance to...

Cable Management

After the excitement of Christmas wore off, we started to fit all the items into the case. We discovered that some of the new items...

Christmas! At least for us.

This morning I was told my Mr. Crane that our new NUC, UPS, and keyboard arrived. As I had a free first I went into...

Unboxing

Our new toys have arrived in the mail! Dynamixel AX-18A Servos We’ve purchased 4 AX-18A servos from Dynamixel. Apparently, these are the “next step up”...

Robot Prototype 2

3/3/2017 – 21:21  Sit Rep: I started printing the robot chassis with no raft about ~1/2 hour ago.  It looked good for the first 10 minutes...

USB2AX Plan

Our two USB2AX dynamixel servo interfaces arrived in the mail today. We purchased these as they’re a far smaller alternative to the USB2Dynamixel (see image...

Power to the NUC

Powering our expensive components has always been something we put off to the end, because if it’s not done properly you’re likely to blow something...

Preliminary Prototype Print Problems Post (Pictures Provided)

The purpose of printing a prototype chassis was to check if there were any small issues, and thankfully we’ve found some, otherwise we’d have nothing...

Printing Process and First Print!

If you saw our last blog, you would know that we have had some 3D printer troubles over the last couple of days. We discovered...

3D Printer failure

Today I needed to use the Xacto knife that we keep in the IT staff room, as I was using it I thought to myself,...

Robot Design Recommences

Today I began redesigning the chassis for the new robot.  After discussing with Mr Elias, I had a few changes to the original design –...

Move That Project

Today as I was walking into the student services hub to go home, I was approached by none other than Mr. Crane as we have been...

Windows Server 2016, that’s so last year.

After windows server 2012 didn’t know what an ethernet adapter was, I downloaded windows server 2016 (5GB) that only took 3 hours due to Australia’s internet...

Ultimate Power System!

In order for the S.A.R.T to be truly portable, the control panel needs to be portable too. We can’t have it tethered to a power...

indows Server + Breeze Lite = Great?

As part of our briefcase idea, we need a little PC to control the robot (we are ditching the laptop cause of size) I had...

Briefcase Brief

This morning, Aaron and I walked into the IT staff room to find a pleasant surprise. A shiny new TREKA 700 plastic case was sitting...

FTP: Fix That Panel!

After the Great Permissions Blunder of 2017, the robot was shut down over the weekend. Initially I thought this could cause issues as processes would...

FTP Failure

Well, this is awkward… So in the process of trying to give the MonstaFTP panel access to the entire file system, I needed to give...

Important (Important) Information. Important Indeed.

3 days ago, Aaron set up a fantastic little WordPress plugin that will send an email to every member of the team whenever a new...

Competing Meeting

On Wednesday the 15th, the team met at the school at 5pm to discuss the itinerary and travel plans for Japan. At the current time,...

Energy Issues

Powering the Robot The new Lithium Polymer batteries that we bought arrived a few days ago, so I started thinking about how we would power...

Default Gateway

As I am running Windows Server 2012 R2 I can use this to my full advantage, as the S.A.R.T robot hosts everything, including the troubleshooting...

Drive System Design

Aaron, Riley and I were discussing an improved drive system over Skype when I quickly created this graphic. Our 4 wheel drive system worked exceptionally...

The Briefest Of Cases

Hi All, Along with the new robot, we are looking into a new command centre. The command centre is, in essence, going to be all the...

Addressing The IP Address

After Jack and I did our “Network stress test” we were starting to get tired of changing our wi-fi to a static IP address. The...

Stress Test Streaming

Day Eighty-Five was a productive day. At least, if you count paperwork as productive. Aaron and I worked on the To-Do List of Things To...

FTP

So we went to the S.A.R.T Workstation with the intention of setting up FTP transfer for the S.A.R.T Interface. We believe a web FTP client...

Ubuntu laptop no more and first person blogs!

While in my study class, I was going to re-image the Ubuntu laptop that had an issue installing Google chrome. I was about halfway through...

Blender Render

The issue I’ve been having is that all the previous rendering software that I’ve tried is that they all are, quite frankly, rubbish unless you...

System Information Sorted

I originally built the S.A.R.T Interface for a Raspberry Pi with only a fraction of the processing power of the Intel NUC that we’re using...

Total System Failure And Exams

After installing the web server and putting the S.A.R.T control interface on it, Jack found out that the system information status on the interface doesn’t...

Reinstall All The Things! Again…

Today Aaron talked to Jack about reimaging the NUC after having the backup software (SystemBack) fail and cause errors on startup despite being uninstalled. Aaron...

S.A.R.T Workstation Cleanup!

After the SFX Kaleidoscope Electives Showcase, we kind of just dumped everything on our desk for someone else to deal with… After the cleanup, we started...

Robot Recovery

We’ve recovered the old SD card from the S.A.R.T v1. We’re going to use it to construct a streaming test on the Raspberry Pi to...

Branded Booth

As part of the Kaleidoscope Electives Showcase at St Francis Xavier College, the S.A.R.T team are showing their stuff at the Information Technology booth consisting...

Significant Streaming Success!

Our previous Wi-Fi tests were very successful, although they only tested the signal strength at a range, not the usability or quality of the connection....

More Ethernet Ports!

Aaron ran into a little snag after he made the NAS. Specifically, there was no way to connect the BreezeLite, intel NUC, the NAS itself,...

Network Attached Storage

After backing up the NUC Aaron had an idea, the idea was we should set up a network attached storage server to make it easier to...

File Safety

Today Aaron started looking at backing up the NUC as we have finally got most things installed and working. He did a lot of research trying...

Shellinabox

I continued working on the S.A.R.T Interface, this time adding Shellinabox. Shellinabox is web-based terminal, perfect for the S.A.R.T interface. By implementing a shell terminal, there...

Reinstall All The Things!

Aaron and I reinstalled Ubuntu on the Intel NUC (It’s always good to have a fresh image) and started installing the webservers and streaming for...

Boot Options

Aaron and I headed to the S.A.R.T workstation in the morning to resume working on the robot. First, we cleared away half of a second...

3D Printing!

After Jack found the cable holder clips Aaron started to print them, we used a MakerBot replicator 2 as this is a very fast printer. Aaron managed...

Repurposing

We have two monitors at the S.A.R.T workstation. One monitor is usually connected to the S.A.R.T robot, and the other is usually unused. Until today....

6 Month Ban Lifted! We Think…

Today Aaron brought the chocolates that he promised to bring for IT Support. Aaron had an idea about how we could give them to IT Support....

BreezeLite Hype Train Crashed And Burned

Today Aaron got a reply from Leader Systems, they said that there was no BIOS update for the BreezeLite and that our best option would...

BreezeLite Disappoint?

Over the weekend Aaron had a look into why the breezeLite wasn’t running Linux smoothly, after looking in the BIOS he came across an option...

Wi-Fi? Ha No.

Aaron and Matt went to IT to work on the BreezeLite but found out that google has been blocked, yet we could go to websites...

Power Problems (We Think)

Referring to the events of Day Sixty-One (Boot Loop), Aaron and I believe we may have solved the problem. The BreezeLite was possibly not booting due...

Boot Loop.

I took the BreezeLite home to work on it over the weekend. There were a number of boot problems, so I first had to reinstall Ubuntu....

Trade Embargo

With yesterday’s WiFi tests a resounding success, Aaron and I decided to transfer the wireless adapter from the laptop to the BreezeLite. The drivers did not...

No Strings Attached

Aaron and I ran a number of WiFi range tests using the Xirrus Access Point as the access point (no surprises there) and the TP-Link Archer...

Helpful Hardware

Using the 5GHz Intel wireless card, the S.A.R.T was unable to host a 5GHz ad-hoc network due to Intel’s international regulations. I had an idea...

Wi-Fixed.

Aaron and I talked to the IT guys and got a Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6205 wireless card (usually used in the school laptops) for the NUC,...

Do NUC Disappoint!

Aaron and I tried to repair the Intel NUC during a free period. A small crack was discovered in the SSD connector, meaning the SSD...

Torque Talk

Today we talked torque. We’re looking at new servos for the Mark II S.A.R.T robot. Gerard is considering buying 4 of these AX-18A servos. http://support.robotis.com/en/product/dynamixel/ax_series/ax-18f.htm...

Article

Today we were interviewed by the Canberra Times for an upcoming article. We’ll include a scan and possibly a link when it is published! http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/canberra-students-to-compete-at-robocup-junior-national-championships-20160909-grd3nk.html...

The Great Japan Plan

During a free period, Aaron and I discussed the possibility of using a new 3D printer filament, CPE. The filament has excellent toughness with resistance...

Riley & Mr Elias Get New Ideas

So… RoboCup. Came, Saw, Conquered. After some hard competition and some very tasty schnitzel, Riley walked away with tied first in the maze competition and...

Wi-Fix this Problem Again?

We’ve had a few internet issues that have set us back a long way. The first issue is that the wireless access points in use...

Exams

Over the past few weeks, very little progress has been made as most members of the team have been studying for exams. Most exams finished...

Early Preparations

Riley spent most of his time building and test fitting the parts for the robot, Ryan spent his time working with Mr Pham on python...

BatView

An assignment for IT requires students to create a programming project related to the school in some way. We had the option to work on...

Power to the Pi

I worked on a new power delivery system for the Raspberry Pi. Originally I designed this schematic: However I later found a simpler PCB that...

Break Off

After a long hiatus, the team return to the project. Today, we set up a test print of our new modular chassis, which will take...

Intervening Months

After taking home a 3D printer over the holidays, Matthew and I are working on designing the new modular chassis. Below is a modular locking...

Paper Jam

Paper jam? Not quite. Although it does involve printers. 3D printers. Our new modular locking system is complete but has not been printed, and therefore...

Fully Modular Robot!

Our team 3D design expert Matthew designed the new chassis for the robot, and then after a discussion with myself and Mr Elias, began to...

OpenCV

The team met for the first time since Robocup, but with OpenCV installed and working, we began to make some actual progress. Before we start...

RoboCup Regionals

Robocup Regionals! I took the robot home overnight to install the necessary packages such as NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, OpenCV and ffmpeg. On the day, we...

Streaming? Kinda. Not Really.

Using the camera mounted cleverly by Matthew’s camera mount apparatus, I took a collection of test photographs and determined that the image must be flipped...

Still No Streaming. (We’re Working On It Though)

Matthew worked on designing a static camera mount for the Pi Camera, which will face down at the ground in order to make line following...

Streaming? No.

After having more trouble with the camera on a new Raspberry Pi, I worked on updating the firmware of said Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi...

Redesign!

Matthew finished designing the new and improved robot chassis, with some inputs from myself and Ryan.  It will measure about 25cm wide when the servos...

Ghetto-bot ROLL OUT!

We finally got the robot back in our hands. Today is our first day pulling apart the robot and its arm, and to say the...

Redesign?

Matthew ran into a couple of issues while attempting to edit some of the original .stl files from Thingiverse, more specifically not being able to...

Return!

Alex, Mr Elias, Mr Crane, Mr Pham and the rest of the senior robotics team returned from the international Robocup competition in China on the...

Striving for Streaming

We tried a number of different ways to get the Raspberry Pi streaming video to another device without success. It’s surprising that there’s no easy...

I Just Realised this Blog has no Title…

I tidied up the cable management on the robot, adding heatshrink to the Pi power connector to reduce the chance of an arc or short....

Rebuild

Today we finally rebuilt the robot back up to where it was before it blew up – and then some! This time, we gave much...

Small Projects

Aaron brought his iPad to school to attempt to connect to the Raspberry Pi over Wi-Fi, (hopefully for control and streaming) but after much trial...

Proper Pi Power

Alex discovered a way we could continue to use the Lithium-Polymer battery to power the robot, which involved delivering the correct measurements of voltage and...

Logs

Most of the team worked on their portfolios, a presentation that provides evidence of competence in various areas of basic computing. After finishing my portfolio,...

Road to Recovery

With the robot all but dead and without the necessary materials to fix it, the team occupied their time with other more menial tasks. For...

Too Amped Up!

Matthew worked on connecting the Ubuntu laptop to the school network, however he is having trouble connecting it to the Internet. Our connection seems to...

Pi IP

Aaron made huge breakthroughs with streaming video from the Raspberry Pi to a computer. While he had successfully used VLC to stream to Windows devices,...

Basic Construction

Matthew and Riley drilled the holes in the standoff/support for the Raspberry Pi screen, while Ryan and I started working on getting the claw and...

What If?

Ryan and I continued to work on the Python script on the Raspberry Pi, fixing a few issues with the code. We now have a...

Eventful

Day Twenty One was a very eventful day, and unfortunately we dedicated most of our time to working on the robot rather than working on...

Baud Rate

Ryan took the robot home to work on it over the public holiday. He spent the day working with Oarkit’s script for controlling the servos....

Sophistication

We discovered a more sophisticated robot design on the internet, which gave us inspiration for a better design (to compete in the National Competition).  Riley...

Power!

We have started designing the breakout board that will direct power from the lithium polymer battery to the Raspberry Pi, the Dynamixel servos, and anything...

Taking Control

Matthew and Riley printed a few more camera mounts, in case the ones we currently have break. This was an issue we found with the...

More 3D Printing

Riley downloaded Inventor, and Matthew is going to teach him the basics so he can design and print models, as he wants to experiment with...

The IT Crowd

Riley and Matthew replaced the tape on the 3D printer bed and reapplied glue, then began printing the newly designed camera mounting apparatus that Matthew...

Console Peasants

Ryan and I discussed how the PlayStation controller will be used to control the robot. We mapped most of the buttons and both joysticks to...

Achievement Get: Taking Inventory

Upon arriving at school, we discovered that the gear arm we started printing the previous day had been misplaced.  As a result, we had to...

3D Printing

After some testing with Dynamixel Wizard, I discovered an issue with the claw mount servo. Mounted in the way it was, the arm would not...

Dynamixel Day

Ryan and I connected a single Dynamixel servo to the Dynamixel2USB and the SMPS2Dynamixel, but had trouble connecting more than one. We soon discovered that...

Fixing Computer Bugs

I began the overhaul of our team laptop with Aaron and Ryan. We would eventually be using this to program and develop the code necessary...

Of Claws, and Not Much Else

We can begin assembly of the claw as soon as we figure out exactly how all the pieces fit together with only two reference pictures...

Of Wheels, Plastic, and Not Much Else

We didn’t spend long on the robot today, just a few minutes to get the main body finished. Matthew and I have removed the excess...

Wi-Fix this Problem

Aaron installed the WiFi adapter on the Raspberry Pi, however he has had trouble connecting to it. Aaron and I are in the process of...

A ‘Wheely’ Good Day!

Aaron has finally got the PiTFT screen to work! After installing a collection of drivers on a fresh version of Raspbian, the screen is fully...

Python Trumps C++

We have decided to switch languages for the second time: We’re leaning back towards Python instead of C++, due to an outdated API that may...

Robotic Arm(y)

Ryan and I continue to delve into the world of C++. Ryan is scouring the Internet for C++ libraries and documentation for Dynamixel. I have...

Learning Foreign Languages

Matthew and Riley are leaving the robot chassis for a bit while they learn Python. So far, they have learned about variables and operators, along...

It Begins

Ryan and I continued to learn Python. We downloaded Python 3.4.3 for Windows, along with a Python IDE by the name of LiClipse. Meanwhile, Aaron...

The Planning Stage

We discussed the idea of switching to the RoboCup Rescue competition, participating with a Emu Mini 2, part of the Open Academic Robot Kit. We’ve...