RobotWars101

We have a cnc machine at the hackspace, but I have never used it because the one person who understands the toolchain, does not often do training. Personally, for materials which can't be laser cut, I apply some masking tape, then laser-etch the outline and cut it with hand tools or a scroll saw. I ...

Update after AWS60: Penelope Penelope was a disaster. It worked ok at the beginning of the day, but was immediately drawn against brutal vertical spinner "Cosmic Burger Van". I went straight for Burger Van, and hit it as hard as possible with the axe. The axe was immediately destroyed. So ...

Thanks to all organisers, Sarah, Dave, everyone else for helping etc. It was brilliant. I love the venue, it's an amazing place and not even that far away. Congratulations to anyone who got an award (e.g. Anticide). It did seem to me that the ratio of spinners was higher today, but perhaps that's ju...

Penelope has successfully lost weight, and also acquired a newly machined,very sharp axe (NB: I am very bad at metalwork, especially small pieces) I now have two weapons (one spare) and did some last minute firmware updates this evening: http://vectrex.org.uk/mark/firmware_update_last.jpg We now hav...

I usually measure it with a multimeter, I've got an apparatus I've hacked up which has a red LED and exposed terminals for easier metering (easier than trying to shove probe leads up the business end of a lipo pack)

Personally I'd put much thinner, shorter wires from the esc to RX, perhaps desolder the header pins on the rx and put wires directly into the esc, then heatshrink/ kapton-tape them together. That will save a little weight and a lot of untidyness (maybe you already did that?)

This is Penelope.

She needs to go on a diet. Quickly.

Ok, it's now less than 2 weeks until AWS, what I have is this:



Can you guess what it is yet?

Can I build it in time?

I broke a non-mixing Dasmikro. Not sure how, maybe a shorted wire. Either way, the magic smoke escaped.

They are too fiddly to solder and there is too much mechanical stress on the tracks. Pin-through-hole is the way to go, my ESCs all use pin-through-hole.

As far as the microcontroller goes- yes, use whatever will work for you, low power is definitely not a requirement, even the non-low-power chips use only a few milliamps, it's nothing, a single medium-bright led probably will draw more current. Does it need a lot of external radio gubbins such as ca...