Laser Battle Bots

We have a working Laser Battle Bot! After learning what we needed to from the initial controller prototype, we 3D printed our final controller housing. It was a tight fit in there, as seen below, and there are definitely some things we plan to change in the next iteration, but the controller feels comfortable to hold and sends the necessary signals to the robot. We were really proud of the way it turned out. We had to do a last-minute redesign of the tank housing in order to get it printed in time, thinning the walls and bringing it in tighter to the robot base. It turned out looking nice! The IR phototransistors posed a bit more of a problem than we had realized. We had initially planned to place them in an LED shroud, then press fit them into the housing. After looking at the logistics of the wires, we realized that we either had to solder them after pressing them all in the housing or else find a way to get them into the housing with all the wires already soldered together. We c...

Last week, finally got to a position to design PCBs! We finished up some last changes after hooking up the last few LEDs and a dip switch array to the tank. The dip switches will eventually be programmed to allow any controller to be paired with any tank base. By physically configuring the 4 dip switches to a configuration, then matching that configuration on the controller through the LCD menu, we’ll be able to have any two controller and tanks pair properly! The PCBs came in today, so we'll be soldering them and getting them connected this weekend. Tank PCB: Controller PCB: In terms of the mechanical design, we've done quite a bit of refining to the robot base. We changed the motor connection to screw in rather than press fit onto pegs, then realized that our motors weren't actually symmetric, so we modified the design to account for that. We also made a turret to snap onto the servo, and prototyped various snap fit designs for the tank housing connection. Over th...