Micromouse Online

Winmaze - Another Maze Editor

It seems that all micromouse builders get around to writing their own software for displaying and editing mazes in the end. This is mine. It is a Windows only application but should run on pretty well any version of Windows. I have not tested it on Vista. It can open maze files of several types including the ’standard’ binary mazes and some types of text maze. Changes to a maze will always be saved as a binary maze file. (note: revision now will not ask for libraries)

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STM32 and the Segger/IAR J-Link

I finally got a day to play with some of my new toys. These are the IAR STM32-SK and the IAR J-Link debugger.The IAR J-Link is a re-badges Segger unit and I believe they are identical. I was quite excited about having a real debugger to use. - especially as programming the STM32 through the bootloader is a bit of a fiddle. Things didn’t turn out quite as I had hoped…

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Head to Head micromouse video

Derek Hall has just put up a new video on YouTube from the UK 2008 micromouse competition. It show his mouse, MouseX2, pitted against my mouse (Decimus). A bit of split-screen trickery shows the two mice running the same course. Vary handy that as I can now see exactly where I was going wrong - apart from crashing in the final of course. See the video here - or click the picture.

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Half size micromouse details published

A Japanese blog now has pretty complete details of a half size, stepper-driven micromouse. Over a period of only a few weeks, there have been posts covering the mechanical design, software and circuit details of a complete mouse and several videos of it performing in a test maze.

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Cheap micromouse skid pads

Sometimes the simplest things can be tricky to achieve. Of the several mice I have build, one of the hardest things to find can be a suitable skid for the front and back of the mouse. On the latest micromouse test-bed, the base is several millimeters off the floor. Too much for drawing pins and I couldn’t find upholstery nails to the right size. As I walked through the local market today, there was a haberdashery stall. The kind of place that sells buttons, thread and sewing bits and pieces. They had several kinds of plastic animal eyes. The small black ones in the picture turned out to be just right and the shaft will just take a 3mm nut to hold them in place. Two nuts, or some washers, let you adjust the height exactly. The plastic won’t last very long rubbing against the maze floor but they are only 15p a pair so I bought plenty of spares.

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Robot Racer - line followers in Japan

There has been some talk of changing the schools micromouse competitions. I am in favour of a more flexible line-following class of competitions. While doing a bit of research, I found many examples of the kind of thing I had in mind. Given that these competitions are much more popular in South East Asia, I was not surprised to find that most of the information and examples were to be found in Japan. What I was surprised to find was just how well advanced the state of the art is over there. Have a look at this video of a contestant to see what kind of performance might be possible: High Speed Line Follower (it takes a little while to appear in your browser). Sorry, I have no details about who this is but I believe it was taken at the 2007 Japan micromouse event.

Posted in General Information, Line Follower, News | 4 Comments »

UK Micromouse Competition 2008

The UK micromouse competition for 2008 was run on June 28th at Millennium Point in Birmingham. We had an excellent turnout and a truly International flavour with teams from Iran, India, Singapore and Holland as well as the UK teams. As well as the micromouse contest there was also mini-sumo, ant-weight robot wars, Formula1 and Formula 4 schools competitions, biped robots and a number of other displays.

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Posted in decimus, micromouse | 8 Comments »

Pre-competition testing of Decimus

There are two days to go until the UK micromouse championships at Millennium Point in Birmingham. The competition will be held on Saturday 28th June 2008 and the day starts at 09:45. Decimus is as ready as it is going to get now and I am afraid to tinker any more in case I break something. The code is fairly safe in its revision control system but there is always the risk of physical damage…

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