SOR Contest Question

[Asellith]

Question about the SOR contest: I am thinking about competing in the contest this year. I already bought an axon before they are gone and adding an axon II to my collection for free would be great. However what I am planning to do will probably in the end generate a generic how to build the rather simple robot I have envisioned but it will also include at least 2 maybe 3 general information tutorials to go along with the robot tutorial. Will those tutorials be considered as part of the contest if they are generated with the other robot tutorial?

[SmAsH]

Will they all be one tutorial or separate ones?

[Ro-Bot-X]

I think if the main tutorial is based on the other ones, they count.
Good luck for you in the contest!

On a side note, I will not compete this time, although I am preparing MiniEric for FireFighting. I guess participating to that competition will suffice for now.

[MangoBot]

you should enter fire-fighting mini eric into the contest, the more the merrier

[Admin]

I know this is an ambiguous answer but . . . do what you think will create the most complete and most useful tutorial. If you have one main tutorial, and then branch off into mini-tutorials for any complicated steps, thats more than fine. Its quality over quantity.

Keep in mind that its unlikely for someone to ever copy your robot 100%. They'll instead borrow ideas here and there, so keep that in mind.

For example, no one has ever made airman00's butler robot. But a *lot* of people liked the section on setting up voice control for it, etc.

[Ro-Bot-X]

For example, no one has ever made airman00's butler robot. But a *lot* of people liked the section on setting up voice control for it, etc.

That gives me some thought...

[Asellith]

Well the subtutorials are not part of the robot but by products.... For instance I am tentatively planning on making a rather simple object avoiding omniwheel robot. Nothing fancy or ingenious in the robot. I will document its construction and testing. I plan to make something similar to my own version of the ERP. But I plan on working out the problems with multi-master and AVRs as well as a tutorial for OSCAR module that will hopefully be a general object avoidance/distance sensor module or at least a good code and hardware base for one.

My concern was that the simple construction tutorial would be judged and not what I hope will turn out to be very detailed and complicated companion tutorials. So if I can bundle them then that would be great.

[pomprocker]

Any add-ons to the $50 robot would be great, such as vision or arms. I guess everyone is using an axon nowadays, but a lot can be done to augment the $50 robot mcu.

[Asellith]

Well OSCAR is suppose to be the next step from the $50 robot. You can use the $50 robot parts with some mods to the code and a few extra headers to control an OSCAR module network for simple things. I just bought an Axon so I was planning on using that as my main control unit. If I have time I might write some code for the ATMEGA8 and maybe include a tutorial to modify a $50 robot platform for use as an OSCAR main controller.

Ok this will probably hijack my own thread but I'm wondering if for the oscar system we should develop some type of code name system for the different parts. Slave only, master/slave, and main control master could all have OSCAr subnames

[Ro-Bot-X]

Then I guess your robot will be a multi-modular object avoidance robot, right? So a detailed tutorial of how to do such a robot starting from scratch (well, even if one buys 2 ready made boards as a starting point) and explain expanding possibilities would have a great success. However, I would drop the atmega8 in favour of atmega168 since the latter has become available everywhere and is supported by Webbotlib. I'm really interested seeing your tutorial.

[Asellith]

I started this weekend with the physical construction. I got my Axon in the mail so I can start working everything out as far as code before I move to the modular design. I learned one annoying thing this weekend. Servo horns are expensive and hard to find locally. 3 hobby stores and they all looked at me weird or made a comment about robot guys.

[Joker94]

That happened to me with the hobby i go to. It is probably the fact that we modify our servos and come up with innovative uses for aileron parts and architectural plastic.