Day two was Sunday September 25th – contest day at the 2011 Taiwan Micromouse and Intelligent Robotics Contest. After an intense period or preparation with the re-write of nearly all the code on on my mouse, it was time to put it all to the test… (more…)
When I last had the chance to visit Taiwan for a micromouse contest, I was pretty sure it would be the first and last such opportunity. And yet, here I am again, two years later, excited to be back in this fascinating country with such welcoming hosts.
The 2001 ROBOtic event will be held at Millenium Point, Birmingham on Saturday November 19th 2011. The event starts at 10am. There is no entry fee and no need to register in advance. Just turn up with your robot or come along to watch. Contests include: Maze solving micromouse, Wall-followers,…
Having had enough of the pain of posting in Drupal I have moved the site back to WordPress. There will probably be a bit of random alteration going on for a bit until I tire of the novelty. A major change is the separating out of the forum to a…
STMicroelectronics, today announced the introduction of its new STM32 F4 series of microcontrollers. This extension to the STM32 platform is based on the latest ARM Cortex-M4 core, which adds signal-processing capabilities and faster operations to the already outstanding portfolio of STM32 microcontrollers; the new series, which is available now, reinforces ST’s leadership and claims the title of highest-performance Cortex-M processor-based microcontroller range in the market.
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Two major bugs turned up in the micromouse Decimus 2 since yesterday afternoon. Each was fatal. The maze solver bug was a surprise, the other was an example of the stupidity that I can manage when I put my mind to a problem…
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In a few days, I will be on a plane to Taiwan for the 2011 Taiwan contest. After the disaster that was the UK summer contest, I have been working hard on Decimus 2 in the hope of having a decent mouse for the contest… (more…)
While the micromouse is exploring the maze, there are plenty of opportunities for it to make mistakes and end up out of position somehow. Equally, there are plenty of places where there are opportunities to correct any errors that have occured. The single cell cul-de-sac or dead-end is a perfect place for both. (more…)
I2C or Inter Integrated Circuit ( sometimes just referred to as just two-wire interface ) is a great method of individually communicating with over 100 devices on only 2 wires. However I2C as a whole requires a reasonable amount of protocol overhead so its not the fastest method of communicating with outside peripherals. But it is very good at reducing wiring on space critical designs due to the fact that only 2 data lines are required to enter the processor. (more…)
The Japanese micromouse contest season is now well under way with the announcement that you can now register for the 2011 contest from today. Full details start here: www.ntf.or.jp/mouse/micromouse2011/index_EN.html