Update Meeting - PiWars 2024

 We finally all got together in the same room to see what we'd been up to. The big attraction of the afternoon was the Zombie Apocalypse challenge and where we'd gone with it so far.

This is very much in two parts, the gun platform and the gun.

Here we see the a mock-up of the gun, using parts removed from a working Nerf gun, and 3D printed parts to adapt them to test usage.

For the demonstration, the flywheel motor was driven by a switched AA battery pack (actually a 6 x AA pack adapted for 4 x AA) and the 'firing mechanism' is an SG90 servo connected to a servo tester.

As this mock-up shows, it works well. To get a feel for what the targets might look like, we have to practice, a few small pictures mocked up onto a cupboard helps. This is a view from the turret camera.

They look a bit small don't they! This was with a Pi Zero fitted camera, but a little upgrade helped.

This helped a lot!!!

The chassis has undergone a few changes as well, and now has a Pi3 inside, as well as the original wiring. The following picture shows what we've fitted inside.

This has meant that for operational testing the chassis has been modified further to get access to the boards inside, both to change the SD cards and to plug in USB cables. 

We also have headlights as well which will be very useful for the Lava Palaver challenge when consistent lighting will be important. Here's a video of the chassis in action.

This also demonstrates the control from a standard RC handset via SBus which is working well.

We have been active on building the Line Follower but that demonstration we'll leave until the next meeting.