VEX

The Wednesday Update: Mission Accomplished

Posted on by burf2000

Welcome to another Wednesday update, again a rare edition that’s actually on Wednesday! A bit less on content this week due to it being my kid’s half term!

GWiz Update

The mission was always to make it to my Partner’s house in Sandhurst, and guess what it did it! No issues at all, max out about 45mph but I think it has more in it!

I have 1 small issue to sort with the GWiz, when breaking the re-gen system causes a burst of over 70v to the controller which causes the car to shut down. It’s a simple setting to change but needs a special cable.

Vex Tank

So on Tuesday, I wanted to start prototyping a simple tank to use as a platform for outside. It took about 2 hours to build and works pretty well until it got to the brick test. I think I am going to make a slightly larger more powerful one. At the same time, I want to test it again on a similar platform with different types of wheels (e.g Omni) which will hopefully give me some evidence on what works best out on the pavements.

ROS Lidar Robot

So I managed to get part of my old VEX ROS lidar robot working, I had missed out on some key bits of information in the readme but managed to get parts of it working. This was a great learning platform for ROS as it was purely built from the ground up by myself. The teleops control worked to control it, the Lidar also worked, the only issue was a lot of Errors were generated

Holiday

On a short holiday with my dad to Welles and Cheddar, I managed to get an Anki Overdrive set from a charity shop, this was awesome in its day and uses AI to drive the cars.

New Burf.co, Business Success Diploma and building furniture!

Posted on by burf2000

So, I am trying my best to make sure I update my blog regularly so that I can look back and see what I have achieved.

Burf.co, now with no search button

So between spending over 12 hours building furniture for the wife (2 new bunk beds, 2 desks, 2 chairs and a bookcase) I also managed to build a new MVP of Burf.co.  The previous version was using Swift and was all in one (frontend/ backend).  The new one is properly structured and uses VueJS for the frontend hosted externally, and the backend is in Java Spring Boot.  It is just a prototype at the moment and doesn’t even have a search button, you just type and it starts getting the results (and smashing the db) but it was a fun prototype to build and is definitely the way I want to go.

Next Steps

  • Increase dataset from 10 million to 100 million and make it fast as f*ck
  • Add site pages (contact, about, submit etc)
  • Add tag cloud and routing to make it better for SEO

Business Success Diploma

So ages ago I signed up to Shaw Academy as it has some great courses and reviews.  I got a lifetime membership so I wasn’t in a rush.  Since I finished the bodybuilding show, I have been caining through the course at super speed and hope to take my exam this week:). It was one of my new year’s resolutions to do (so was Hack24 🙁 ).  I am learning a lot and hope to carry on with more advanced training around business.

Echo

The above projects are the fluff as I call it to get out of the way so that I can focus on Echo and getting this startup off the ground.  I already started building a basic website for them.  Once that’s complete, its time to focus on the MVP

Robotics

When it rains, it pours!  So before I had even thought about the above 3 projects, I had decided I was going to build a humanoid out of VEX EDR, which is a brilliant building platform.  They had just brought out their new V5 system which looks epic (more powerful motors, more motors, vision control, touch screen etc).  VEX was very nice in sending me some V5 hardware to start building this 3D Printed / VEX EDR humanoid!  This will be my chilled weekend project 🙂

 

VEX Worlds 2017 – Robotics Competition

Posted on by burf2000

Sorry for the late post about VEX Worlds, I thought I would have more time after worlds to catch up with stuff, sadly (well not really), the kids have been mega active.  My eldest son played his first football tournament, had a holiday, lots of family stuff!

So, VEX Worlds, what an amazing experience, I went along for the VEX EDR side of the competition (this year it was split EDR / IQ) as I was showing off the EDR Tank.  Sadly I had to leave the US early as my son, Max was ill.  Still a very cool experience!

So, the EDR tank, well it performed really really well in remote control mode.  I mean the thing was fairly slow but must have covered MILES!  The batteries never died on me, nor did any motors!  I did kill a few Omniwheels, however, that’s to be expected.   Even though I left early, the EDR tank did not and so others drove it around.  I have not received it back yet to see how bad it is now, but I am sure it will be fine.

The autonomous side was a bit of a failure, to be honest, and looking back I had set up myself to fail and I will explain why.  The autonomous side was using ROS (Robotic operating system) which is an industry standard.  I was using a Neato Lidar system which is awesome however it only had a range of 5 meters and SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) to work out where I was, and where I needed to go via building up a map.  SLAM works by detecting features of the surrounding area to work out where it is.  When you’re in a hall that’s hundreds of meters wide with very little features, a sensor with a range of 5 meters is practically useless.  In the end, I just showed kids how it worked on my laptop using RVIZ.  If I had to do this properly I would need to invest in a proper LIDAR system with a much greater range.  Another aspect which makes this very hard is all the people moving around, how can SLAM pick up features if they are constantly moving!

Overall, the EDR tank was hugely popular, I gave tons of fist bumps, high fives, etc, people just thought it was cool, just a little slow.

Next year, if I did a vehicle again, I would have to make it a lot faster and forget about advance sensors etc!

Here are some videos of VEX World and the EDR TANK:

Robot making schoolgirls set for world championships

Posted on by burf2000

Nothing made me happier to see a BBC article about these 2 school girls.  They have qualified to go to VEX Worlds next month which is held in the US to compete against 500 other teams from all over the world.

I have been lucky enough to meet these two (aged 8 and 9) a few times when I have been a VEX Judge.   They are extremely talented bright kids for their age.  Each time I have met them, they have walked away with an award!

For the full details please check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-39410855

This weeks update :) Big Bang, VEX Worlds.

Posted on by burf2000

So, last week I was at the Big Bang Science Fair, I was asked to be a judge for the VEX Robotics National Championship 🙂

I also managed to get VEX the VEX Tank ready to ship it to the US for VEX WORLDS, build-wise, it’s complete, software wise, it’s not 🙁

My flights have been booked for VEX WORLD for next month, so full speed ahead to finish the software!  Anyone know ROS?

 

Big Bang Science Fair 2017 @ the NEC

Posted on by burf2000

Every year the VEX National Robotics Championship is held at the Big Bang Science Fair.  This takes place at the Birmingham NEC in March.  Last year I attended as a VEXIQ superuser showing off my VEXIQ Skateboard, this year I have been asked to be a VEXIQ Judge under O2 who I work for.  I have done judging a few times, and it is such a great experience, you get to meet some super cool kids who make the most impressive robots.  It is also brilliant that my work (O2) support this, they really have a mission to help out kids.

Anyway, I will do a full write-up of the event, once it happens 🙂  Please check out The Big Bang Fair.co.uk/

 

 

The VEX EDR Tank

Posted on by burf2000

Over the last few month’s, I have been building a vehicle out of VEX EDR with the aim of it to self-drive. This is my first big project with VEX EDR, I usually build large stuff out of LEGO Mindstorms or VEXIQ. My view was that VEX EDR would be easier as it is a) made out of metal as opposed to plastic, and b) more powerful. I thought it would take me a week to make the vehicle, and the rest of the time would be on software. I had to also learn ROS (Robotic Operating System).

It actually turned out more challenging than I expected. Due to my lack of experience with EDR, I just assumed metal would just be stronger, and the motors would just work. However the first version of the Tank collapsed under my weight, and it took around 10 versions to get it to move me (95kg) without the motors shutting down after 5 seconds. Unlike LEGO and VEXIQ, EDR motors had a protection circuit in (PTC) which shut down the motor if it gets too hot or draws too much power. This is, of course, a good feature to protect the motor, however, it made my project very difficult.

I went from 8 motors, direct drive to 14 motors geared down to 2.44. The 8 motors could move me at a rapid speed but would just shut down after a few second.

Here is the progress of how it went

Current state

So I managed to get the Tank to a point where it worked, it was not as fast as I hoped however it seems reliable.  Next is the software.  ROS is a big subject to learn, there are lot of books on it and it is not the easiest thing to learn.  I have actually made some good progress on this thanks to the community.  Stay tuned to my next post about ROS.

 

 

Mr Purple : VEX SMART RADIO : VEX WORLD FINALS 2016

Posted on by burf2000

So, the first part of this year, I have been swamped with VEX stuff to do, it’s been pretty good fun actually.  I now have lot’s of VEX EDR (the metal stuff) to play with.  Very excited about that!  I have also been invited to VEX World Finals in the US!  The aim is to build some smartphone controlled robots that show off the power of the Smart Radio. Thanks to Xander and RobotC it is now possible to do 2 way communication between VEXIQ and iOS

Code is here! https://github.com/burf2000/VEXIQ_iOS_ROBOTC

Anyway, so MR PURPLE, I went in to the garage, I came out with MR PURPLE.  3  DOF per arm and his head moves!  Super happy with him

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VEX and the Big Bang Science Fair

Posted on by burf2000

So I have been asked by VEX Robotics to build 2 small robotics for Big Bang Science show at the NEC.  The 2 robotics will be on stage as helpers.  It’s a super fun idea, focus is reliability!  The robots need telescopic arms to push buttons and be able to push out a bottle of water from their chests.

Here are 2 initial videos I did showing progression

I actually got to see the robots on stage and they worked perfectly!

What I enjoyed about this was trying to make VEX stuff look cool, it’s actually harder than it is with LEGO 🙂

 

 

Skills Show 2015 : Review

Posted on by burf2000

The Skills show is a massive careers show at the NEC, it has over 70,000 + people visiting and boy it’s busy. It covers everything from hairdressing, welding, fitness to joining the army.

The O2 / NSPCC / The Lab had a awesome display and we stayed pretty busy throughout.  The LEGO displays went down like a bomb!

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Got to have a chat with VEX UK and Studica Ltd (who do Tetrix and Fischertechnik).  It was really nice seeing all the different types of robotics platforms for kids to learn on.  

I loved the fact that Forensic Science was next to the butcher area.

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Great event to take the kids to!