Archive for August, 2007

A new mouse is born

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

I finally have a primus mouse built and ready to test. All the bits are there and the processor runs up and can be programmed. Here are a few pictures to get you in the mood. By placing the components on three separate boards, each is relatively simple to build and ...

Primus pin functions

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

The Primus micromouse will use the dsPIC30F4011 processor from microchip. It has plenty of power and resources for just about any micromouse and is relatively easy to get and use. Here is a list of the proposed functions for each processor pin on the controller board dsPIC30F4011 Pin Functions for ...

Testing the motor driver

Sunday, August 5th, 2007

This is the first time I have used the SLA7062 so I made up a small test board to make sure everything will be OK. This turns out to be a splendid motor driver and the motors can be driven to very high speeds. The board allows the selection of half, ...

Primus Chassis

Saturday, August 4th, 2007

Now the motors are here and the brackets cut, it is time to assemble the bare boards to see what the mouse will look like. Primus is intentionally simple and consequently a bit chunky. Two large and two small boards are needed. These are conveniently cut from pieces of perforated ...

Sensor Data Analysis

Saturday, August 4th, 2007

Micromouse sensors are subject to several sources of error and interference. Capturing a set of data samples lets you do some simple analysis of the effects of those errors. The test rig was set up with a section of wall placed at about 50mm from the sensors. This gives a ...

Half size micromouse contest

Wednesday, August 1st, 2007

It seems that the Japanese organising committee for micromouse would like to update the rules to reduce mouse and maze to half its current size. Check out the Google-translated page: www.robomedia.org

Sensor test

Wednesday, August 1st, 2007

The simple sensor circuit described by Ng Beng Kiat seems to give the best results. On his web site (http://www.np.edu.sg/alpha/nbk/) Beng Kiat describes Min4, one of his recent mice. In there is a PDF with schematics for the mouse. The sensor circuit for Primus is essentially the same except for ...