Well, r2 made it into a maze!  then crashed into the walls of that maze over... and over... and over... anyway, it diddnt work, and looks unlikely to work in the near or far future.

So i've spent some time fiddling with my CAD software, and now have a basic design ready to announce R3volution, my third micromouse!

Its a bit of an... unconventional design, with massive foam rubber wheels that i hope will give me a nice big contact patch, and therefore more traction on the ground.

The Gearbox is made up of 3 parts, a 3d printed 'backbone' and a pair of laser cut 'plates'

They are all designed in OpenSCAD, and set up in a parametric way, so i can adjust things like the angle of the motors and the height of the base plate without having to rebuild the entire cad files from scratch.  

It uses Faulhaber 1524SR motors with integrated encoders and 0.4 mod gearing, giving me a final gear ratio of 1:12.8, slightly higher than most mice (i think), but balanced out by the fact my wheels are HUGE.  The Axle for each side is a m4 bolt, mounted on mf84zz bearings and fixed to a custom wheel mounting system i'll be making on a lathe.

Electronics to follow when i've finished buying parts for & building the gearbox!

Today I went to FabLab Manchester with one mission, to create a case for my OpenBench Logic Sniffer, an awesome little device from dangerous prototypes and the gadget factory, which ships as a bare PCB.

I started off by measuring the OBLS (93mm x 48mm), and making a test box 5mm wider than it in each direction. I added some circles for bolt holes to the corners, and cut a test piece out of cardboard out using fablab's Epilog Laser Cutter.

This piece seemed to be the right size, so I drew up the second layer, with the middle cut out, and a 1cm wide space for the USB socket. this was printed and checked, and I proceeded to the third layer with cutouts for the header and the USB socket.

After I was happy with the measurements on this mockup case, I cut out a copy in clear acrylic:

Assembled it:

Disaster! I had given enough room for the USB plug, but not for the USB cable that plugs into it. I modified the top of the case with a cutout for the plug, and widened the USB hole to 12mm to compensate.
Cut out another copy with the modifications, and a prettier colour scheme:

Perfect!Download the Laser cutter files to make your own OBLS Case

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZImGw8d2ksc]

Finally got some time to work on r2 this weekend, and have movement! He can now move arond, and spin and stuff.

Unfortunately, still need to add some odometry, not quite worked out how thats going to work yet!

finally got a gearbox mount that i'm happy with, just need to work out how to add odometry to it, since Plan A had two magnets close and opposite each other.  One wheel turning would turn the other!

While waiting for the last parts for r2 to arrive, I have been toying with building a bot based on... well... a toy!

I bought this remote control tank off ebay last year, and took off the plastic top.  Today I stripped off the other unnecessary bits of plastic, and mounted a breadboard on top.

Next part of the plan is to either modify the existing drive board to allow direct drive from the microcontroller, or build a replacement based on a single-chip h-bridge device.

[gallery]