Niiice 8)
Joe, were you at the games? I don’t recall meeting you there… I met spacejunk, and robomaniac…
- Jon
No I wasnt unfortunately. I do live in the area though and if I had known about it soon, I most likely would have been there.
Since this seems to have evolved into a general mini-sumo thread, I’ll add a post on a new mini-sumo I am building.
http://www.huv.com/miniSumo/seeker2x/Seeker2x-07-small.jpg
If you guys from Toronto want to see it (what I’ve got done so far) and hang out and talk robots, we’re having a build-fest on Saturday Dec. 8 at Bug’n’Bots, starting at 10:00 am. I’m going to be giving a presentation in the afternoon on using finite state machines in robot programming.
Spacejunk, if you bring your mini-sumo, I’ll bring Seeker 2, and we can go head to head…
- Jon
You don’t think this project deserves its own thread? Looks pretty amazing to me.
First of all, this isn’t a general minisumo thread. 
Second, I might be at the build fest. 
I would be glad to BEAT seeker! 
I have my money down on the seeker. 
Okay, I started my own thread
I have Seeker 2 charged up and ready, hope to see you there…
- Jon
Well, we never faced so who knows…
OH BOY!!
Take VIDEOS of that battle!
I WANNA SEE!!!
Panther will not be able to push seeker II. Seeker wheels are to large and sticky that will prevent Panther from pushing him.
If there is a head-to-head and seeker II will win.
If seekerII climb over the scoop of Panther, Seeker II will be stop by Panther front sensors and seeker will still be able to push him!
HAHA!
good luck!
Jerome
Hey guys! Sorry to go off subject… but When and where is the canadian national robot games? I would like to go!!! 
Hope to see you there!
So, Seeker 2 and Panther met up yesterday (sort of). I had my cheap digital camera with me, which doesn’t take great video, but it worked (at least until the batteries died).
In the first two matches, Seeker 2 had no trouble pushing Panther off the ring. It wasn’t clear that Panther was starting correctly or on time, or that perhaps Seeker 2 was starting early.
youtube.com/watch?v=dVVunvblY-o
youtube.com/watch?v=QPSNrrk6LgE
Next we tried putting them down on the ring already running, but for some reason Seeker 2 just insisted on running right off the ring. This pattern continued for a couple matches, although Panther did manage to get behind Seeker 2 once and push him off. Unfortunately, my camera batteries were dead by that point, so I didn’t get it on film.
youtube.com/watch?v=itzuYvcS-zI
All in all, spacejunk and I had a lot of fun, talking about advanced mini-sumo design, and what we were doing with our latest mini-sumos.
- Jon
I’m Jelous!!!
I’ll try and build a sumo bot later this year after learning how to do my own circuits for the sumo. It looks real interesting!! Haaaa Can’t wait to meet guys and do matches with our sumos.
I’m thinking about different desings for the moment, maybe I’ll put a couple in CAD During christmas time!
It was lots of fun but Jon still retains minisumo bragging rights…
I have started building Panther V2, (actually V3 but the fist one doesn’t count).
An order from Digikey is coming soon so I’ll start designing the circuit board when that arrives (sometime tomorrow). I prefer to have parts to work with before I start with my board.
The front blade is slowly being milled from a chunk of steel, and I’m about half finished.
My 17:1 maxon motors should be coming Friday of Monday so I can start on the motor mounts.
So far everything is working out. This might be the first robot I design in 3D CAD, a big step for someone who hates 3D modeling.
I’ll keep everyone posted.
My digikey order came a couple days ago!
I have lots of small SMT thingys to work with. I think I made a mistake in ordering 603 resistors. They look REALLY hard to solder.
Anyone have tips on SMT soldering? I have read most of the spark fun articles and they were very helpful.
Thanks
So, you should see if you can get some solder paste, because its a lot simpler to do with solder paste than with just normal solder.
I get mine from a local place in Burlington (Arbell), they sell it for about $12 a tube, which is about 1/4 the price Digikey charges for the same thing.
Get a magnifier headset, and squeeze a “line” of paste onto a scrap piece of paper. Use an razor knife with a sharp tip to put paste on each pad, basically enough to cover the pad. Place the components with a fine pair of tweezers.
This is the part that takes steady hands. Use your razor knife to lightly hold the top of the part down, and touch the pad with the tip of your soldering iron. Once one side is soldered, the other side is easy, as long as you give the part a few seconds to cool so the first side doesn’t come unsoldered.
Half the time I end up moving the part when I put the razor knife on it, but you just put it back and try again.
- Jon