Minos 2011 Dates

Just take a short pause in your Christmas preparations and spare a thought for next spring when we will have our annual micromouse and small robot international conference – MINOS 11. For 2011, the intended dates are April 9th and 10th. It is the Saturday and Sunday two weeks before Easter what with Easter being late and all…

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Microchip MPLAB moving to NetBeans

It seems that the next big thing for MPLAB, Microchip’s IDE, is going to be a move to NetBeans. MPLAB is, mostly, a pretty good place to develop embedded software for the Microchip PIC processors. All the variants from the venerable 16F84 up to the latest 32-bitdevices are catered for. Editing, programming and debugging can all be done from one handy-dandy application. Of course, it has its limitations…

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RoboTIC 2010

RoboTIC is the winter micromouse event in the UK. An informal affair, it can still attract contestants from surprising distances. This year we had Coen Roos from the Netherlands who is becoming a regular. Although there was a small turnout overall – probably due to the threat of snow – we still managed to scrape together a good set of mice for the main event. (more…)

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Japan 2010 finals

CIMG2984It is bright and sunny in Tsukuba this morning as we make our way to the Capio for the final round of the 31st All Japan Micromouse contest. Three events will be decided today –  Robotracer, half size micromouse and micromouse classic. After last years upset in the final few minutes, all eyes are on Kato to see if he can reclaim the crown for Japan…

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Japan 2010 Practice day

CIMG3016Friday is practice day. Well, half day would be more accurate. In the afternoon, the venue is open and the mazes and practice circuits are laid out for anyone to test their robot’s basic functions. Everyone is busy setting up, making sure things work as they should and getting a good look at the other entries. Since we had the morning spare, we went an watched the Real World Robot Contest first…
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Japan 2010 – The Journey Out

The time had come. Get on a plane fly east to see what the the world’s best micromouse builders can produce. It is not all micromouse of course – there are line followers and autonomous metropolitan robots – all sorts of things. This year, I must pay more attention to some of the other contests. It is a fair trip. Door to door was about 22 hours and if you include the time before it is possible to check in to the hotel, it comes to an even 24 hours. Arrival in Tsukuba was at 12:15….

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Too much stuff

Time to gather the bits and pieces needed to take to the All Japan Micromouse Contest in Tsukuba. First job is to put it all in one place to see how much there is. Too much it seems. The gear is divided into two lots. One package goes in thehold in the main baggage. This is stuff that I could manage without if the bag failed to arrive. The other lot goes with me. This has to include everything I need to run the contest.

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