The project displays the water usage for a lawn irrigation system. Our new landscaping uses a Rachio Pro smart irrigation system (http://rachio.com/pro). The system is very useful and has a smart phone interface that includes a display of the water usage. This water usage is an estimate based on the time the sprinklers are on and…read more
Thanks for all those that attended the third sumo bot contest, aka Ultimate Robot Competition. For the second time in three events Team Half Moon Bay is the overall winner. Round 1: Stickers def. Skullcrusher Discord def. Ultra Robo Robro def. Wall-E Blue def. Dance Goldilocks def. Green Screen Round 2: Discord def. Stickers Robro def….read more
We’ve had several people ask us about our favorite sumobot by the folks at Pololu. Although they sell models that are fully assembled we prefer to build ours from their kit. Here’s an overview of what we use. What is a Zumobot: Pololu makes kit, called Zumobot, that combines an Arduino shield with a small…read more
The zumobot we call stickers, seen below on the left, used to have a little OLED display on it. However that got re-purposed for another project. So it’s been driving around with four wires hanging out the back. After the latest upgrade the wires are now connected to a 0.96″ 128×64 monochorme OLED. The display from…read more
This is a combination of two 3D projects from thingiverse to create a WALL-E skin for Pololu’s zumobot. The RCControl code from Pololu worked without any code modification. The servo for WALL-E head is connected directly to the RC receiver so no code is required. The SR04 sensor is not hooked up but just…read more
Connecting a RC controller to a robot arm can make controlling it easy and fun. For this project I used a Ironnik KA-6 transmitter and receiver combo. There are other combos that are significantly less expense, but this is a nice quality unit that was available at my local hobby shop. https://www.hobbytown.com/ka6-6channel-transmitter-receiver-hitec-red-mode-2-by-ikonnik-knna1000/p501569 This is a…read more
COMMENT DOWN BELOW WHICH ROBOT IS YOUR FAVORITERobot name: The winner Robot maker: Kate Robot name: Darthvader Robot maker: Jeff Robot name: Stickers Robot maker: Jeff and Lily Robot name: Champion Robot maker: Lily Robot…read more
Thanks for all those that attended the sumo bot contest. The new champion is the robot “The Fastest” from Team Mountain View. Round 1: The Fastest def. Stickers MicroRobot def. Champion Lightning(1) def. Flames Lightning(2) def. The Winner Round 2: The Fastest def. MicroRobot Lightning(1) def. Lightning(2) Finals: The Fastest def. Lightning(1) End of…read more
We ran a small SumoBot clinic for some elementary kids. In Silicon Valley style it was out of our garage. In the course of two hours they assembled their robots, which included some soldering. The pizza and other fun distractions limited the amount of hands on programming time. We did get all the Arduino software…read more
The first SumoBot contest was held over the weekend, aka URC#1 (ulitmate robot championship). It was a strong showing from Team Half Moon Bay which had only one loss all day and won the tournament. Much was learned by the contestants which promises to make an even more competitive event in July. Thanks for those…read more