If you have built a micromouse and wondered how useful a suction fan would be, the answer is simple. You cannot go fast enough to be competitive at the top level without one, the benefit is not just about cornering either. (more…)
Find out how to determine the centre of rotation for your robot
The most recent version of the Decimus 4 chassis runs reasonably well and, with the test release of the Decimus 5 Software it is more clever (I hope) than ever. However, it still can't corner as well as I had hoped. There seem to be two problems. First, the motor…
TIM3 is a general purpose timer found on all the STM32 family processors. Among other features, it has four capture compare channels that can be used to generate regular interrupts. In this article I will show you how to set up simple interrupt events based on these features. (more…)
The simplest way to produce regular interrupts from a timer like TIM3 on the STM32 family of processors is to set up the Auto Reload Register (ARR) to generate an update event. This article shows you how to correctly set up the clock source, prescaler and ARR to get regular events over a wide range of frequencies. (more…)
Selecting the best micromouse sensor design is a study in electronics, physics, geometry, maths and coding. Here I will look at some of the design considerations for the sensors in the next iteration of my micromouse. Zeetah V and VI use triangulation sensors pioneered by David Otten. These sensors consist…
UPDATE: Unfortunately, we will not be able to arrange a group purchase after all. Sorry for any inconvenience. It may be possible to arrange a group purchase of Faulhaber motors. The exact model would be 1717T003SR with IE2-512 encoder. If enough people were interested, the price could come down to about…
My micromouse generates a lot of data. I log speeds, sensor readings, motor controller parameters. All sorts of things. Often that data just makes me worry. Most recently, I was noticing that there were some large variances at speed. Micromouse is a race - among other things. If you cannot…
Travelling to contests is great. Except for the bits and pieces that you need to lug around. For several years I have used a smart charger for my LiPo batteries. It is a fine charger but bulky. Along with its mains power supply it is about the size of a large laptop charger and needs several cables to join together. I decided to make a smaller, portable charging solution. (more…)
I enjoy working with the STM32 processors. They are easy to use, powerful and cheap and there are lots of options for developing code. One minor annoyance is the question of a programmer. ST-LINK/V2 One of the most commonly available and widely supported commercial programmers is the ST-LINK/V2. This is…