All Japan Micromouse 2011 – finals

All the preparation and practice was over. The qualifiers had been held and the wheat sorted from the chaff. Now it was time to see who had what it takes to be the champion – the builder of possibly the fastest robots on the planet… (more…)

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All Japan Micromouse 2011 – Qualifying Day

The All Japan micromouse contest attracts a large number of participants. This year, the expert class has an entry list of 84 and there are 99 entries in the freshman class. With so many mice to run, Saturday is needed to thin the field and select the best contestants for the finals on Sunday…. (more…)

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Simple font data for LED matrix displays

My next mouse will have to have one of those small LED matrix displays. Not only is it actually useful to have a way of getting some feedback from the mouse, but these days, you feel a bit left out without one. There are numerous examples of 5×5 matrix font data available but when you need to design special characters it can get a bit tedious. Not being able to find anything suitable to help me, that would also run on a mac, I turned to Excel for help… (more…)

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STM32F4 – the first taste of speed

The recently announced STM32F4 series of processors using the ARM Cortex M4 are very attractive. High speeds, large memory space and a floating point unit are among the obvious benefits although there are many other architectural changes in the ST chips. This evening, I managed to get my STM32F4-Discovery board doing something…
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