I’m going for the fastest
I’m going for the fastest time. but…I hope my robot will be ready on time… I’m now working on the L298n motor controllers.
Well, good news and bad
Well, good news and bad news. Good news is that I finally got over my procrastination and almost finished programming. Bad news is that my computer quit. Well, actually Windows quit, the computer is fine (writing this from Ubuntu on the same computer…). Something went wrong about a week ago, and I’ve been trying hard to fix it ever since. I finally gave up on it today, will take it to a tech Wednesday and see if he can get it working.
If not, I’ll have to reinstall Windows, wipe all the junkware that comes on new installs, and reinstall my programs before working on my entry. That will take the better part of a day plus whatever time I need to fix whatever else Windows throws my way. So, I’m not sure I’ll finish in time, though I shall try my hardest.
Sorry, should have gotten my entry in before all this happened. And I almost had beat the nine second time…
OT for the contest
If your problem is virus related, have you considered using your Ubuntu partition to run a virus scan on your windows partition?
Unfortunately, it’s not
Unfortunately, it’s not virus related. I think the culprit is actually CCleaner. I ran the registry file fixer tool the last time that Windows started correctly, and I think that it messed something up. I did back up the changes made, but I don’t think it’s possible to undo the changes (with the backup) unless Windows will start up, a bit of a catch twenty-two. I took it to one tech today, nothing he could do. Gonna write another one and see if he could do anything, if not I’ll just re-install WinXP and keep going :). Fortunately, it’s all backed up…
Well, this time it’s only
Well, this time it’s only good news (as far as I know). I was finally able to get the computer to properly boot a Windows recovery CD. It boots into Windows just fine now. I have to finish programming, and make a video, so it might still be two or three days before I’m done. Sorry to make this entry so last minute, I was hoping to get it in earlier!
RE
There’s less than a week left in this comp!!!
Any of you guys going for last minute entries?
I’ve got everything bagged up ready to ship.
We will have some winners soon!!!
I am waiting for sparkfun
I am waiting for sparkfun to send me some parts. I am currently in the US so I had to buy everything, it cost me around $100. I am starting to doubt that the parts will be here on time…
I actually have already built a robot (using a new design ) but I had to leave home before it was fully programmed and filmed.
DING!
FedEx just delivered the goods. Now I need to find someone who will lend me their tools (12" ruler, screwdriver,cutter,scissors,glue gun and soldering iron+solder).
Some improvements
Hello
After more than a month and a half of not having enough time to work on robot, I finaly made some tuning to arms extending mechanism.
I replace the screws with ones with a bigger step and calculate the right length for the arms strings to open clean, without the the need of moving robot to open them.
Hope you will like it.
or here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oBwn3j3BEI
I’m done! and waiting…
Well, I stayed up very, very late (too late actually) last night trying to finish creating a movie, and getting it uploaded. I had to figure out how to use Windows Live MM, on my new computer that replaces my somewhat dead old one. Then Vimeo does this to me. If Vimeo doesn’t get its act together pretty soon here, I shall be uploading this thing to YouTube, much as I really hate it. I may as well post about the robot here right now.
I used my Lego Mindstorms NXT kit and a whole bunch of other pieces, something that could almost be called cheating… :-O. And, it didn’t fold back up into a 12x12x12 box after crossing the gap, something which a couple of the other robots did… but aside from that I think I did pretty well. If you guys think that using Lego really almost is cheating, I didn’t really enter to win, more just to see if I really could make it :). I’ll post link to my video here, that way if it does get converted without me knowing it, you can still watch it.
Thanks for putting this contest together, winfieldrobotics!
-EDIT- Oh and if none of this makes sense it’s… the… lack of… oh look, dancing unicorns!!!
RE
This time it looks like the run was 31 seconds.
But the furniture is WAY TOO NICE to be running robots on!!! -LOL
RE
NXTreme I can’t watch your video as of 9:41 AM CST, it just says waiting in line…which is a problem on the website’s side.
I’ll try again later today.
But I’m cool with Lego robot entries. (I’ve used them for this game)
Ok, something else…
Well, lets forget about Vimeo for now, I uploaded it to my Picasa Web albums instead. I might try to add some pictures later on, once I take some :). Sorry for submitting this so late, but that week that the computer quit on me set me back by, uh, a week. Good luck to all!
-EDIT- Just got an email saying that my Vimeo video is now online and ready to be watched! Sorry for the delay.
Is the contest still open?
I just got someone to lend me their tools and I starded building but it will take a while…
RE
27 seconds.
That was a BUNCH of Lego’s!!!
I had something else to do and missed the exact deadline, but that’s ok as it was submitted before the cut-off time.
My thanks go to winfieldrobotics
for setting up this challenge, and the generosity shown in providing the prizes.
My congratulations goes to antonio.caciuc > as the winner, for an exceptionally speedy robot.
My congratulations also go to sebathorus for the latest version which is very controlled and efficient.
Great fun 
I hope you don’t mind me
I hope you don’t mind me asking, but from when to when was the 27 seconds counted? The robot didn’t actually leave it’s box till it beeped, that’s when the program started. The delay was probably because I was downloading via Bluetooth. I don’t want to argue the score, just curious and wondering.
Yes, it is a bunch of Lego’s! I’ve been collecting Technic sets for quite a while, and quantity of pieces makes up for my quality of construction :).
First of all, I want to
First of all, I want to thank winfieldrobotics for the great challenge he offered to us.
Secondly I want to congratulate the winers, they had realy neat designs, simple and efficient. Also thanks for your appreciations.
In the next days, I will make a new subject with the robot, with some more pictures and explanations and with my oppinions about what was good and what was not so good in the process of making this robot.
PS: NO furnitures were harmed during making of presentation movies 
RE
Your right, in hind sight I got confused by the caption “start the program…” at 1:09
Sorry about that.
It clears the start table at 1:37-ish
But it doesn’t actually leave the start box till much later
somewhere in the 1:28 - 1:30 time frame, the video shakes a lot in this time frame
The time I posted is clearly wrong.
You are certainly within a second of either winning this or a tie.
I’ll send you something to make up for my mistake.
It won’t be the Handy board, but it’ll be new robot parts.
Sorry, the video was rather
Sorry, the video was rather shaky. I thought that something had gone wrong in downloading the program, but nothing really had, it just took longer to start than usual. I put the video together somewhere between 2:00 and 4:00 AM, so any captions, music or other content may be confusing, crazy or… yeah :).
And don’t worry about sending me anything, I really think that antonio.caciuc does deserve the prize, as anyone can slap together a Lego bot, but it takes real skill to get that fast with an actual robot :). It was fun just entering something!