Show and tell December meeting - PiWars 2024

 And the next update meeting. It might seem to be quick on the heels of the previous meeting but that was just the delay of the blog writer getting on with it.

Not a full meeting this time due to illness, it's been going round the team, so we didn't see any progress in the nerf gun mount but we did look at what the zombie ideas might look like and a trial camera mount of for the minesweeper challenge.

Firstly a small update on the lava palaver challenge.

Apart from just a reprint of the front attachment, the ball bearing skids have been replaced by two jockey wheels to cope better with small steps in the course and for the 'bump'. The microswitch is still in place for the physical bump detection but will be replaced by an optical switch when the hinge is remade.

For this iteration, the line guidance is still using IR detectors in two rows, to improve resolution using off the shelf parts but it's likely that a camera interface will be used finally.

The image recognition for the Zombie Apocalypse and Eco-Disaster challenges moves on with good recognition and aiming now achievable. 

These are recognition tests as well as calibration screens, we're guessing at what zombies look like. 

Finally we have built a basic overhead camera detector for the Minesweeper challenge to check the calculations on being able to 'see' the whole arena.

Here the 160 degree camera is mounted at 350mm above the surface, which gives a 600mm radius surrounding view. Raising the gantry to 450mm extends this to a 800mm radius.

This is a bit ungainly but does demonstrate the approach to view the whole 1600mm square arena in one image for processing. For the next meet we'll be aiming to get that extended as well as some line following and mine hunting code.