Team Echo

Team Decho/Elta + Augustine and Moody! Very serious business to be sure. 

Clyde is the champion!!!!!!!

We've had our obstacle avoidance, line following, technical inspection, and presentation assessments, and all of them went really well. We're just waiting for the combat tournament to begin!

It's 7:45am. We're awake... Barely... The code is now fixed, so now we're waiting for breakfast. All our assessments are today, so wish us luck!! We'll post any results on here as they happen :)

It's 2:30 am, Clyde has fallen off a table and survived... We've broken the code and need to fix it tomorrow... And we're falling asleep at our work station... So it's bed time for us. But we're near enough ready for the assessments tomorrow, just a tiny bit of time to fix combat code in the morning. Zzzzzz

We're here in Gregynog and all set up ready for our final day working on Clyde.

What a busy three days! It started with a bit of a blip with our coach being 2 hours late but we got to Gregynog Hall eventually, and it was time to start working! Me and Ben spent most of Monday sorting out the website and organising everyone's sections for our presentation we had the next day. We finalised the slides and topics, then shared them out so everyone talked about what they knew most ready to practise later on. When this was done, it was time to help with Clydes code. It was all last minute bits and bobs, deciding which code to go with, mostly trying to get Matt to stop tinkering with it!! We had a group meeting to make final decisions and brain storm possible ways to fix our combat mode but together we ended up breaking it more… By 2am it was decided that anything changed from this point would only break it more, so everyone should go to bed and fixed it in the morning instead. Early the next morning we were up and getting ready to be assessed. One quick practice of our presentation after breakfast and we were away!! We were assessed on obstacle avoidance, white line following, technical aspects, our presentation, and the final combat competition against everyone! -Obstacle avoidance was perfect, Clyde avoided everything and didn't get stuck anywhere. -White line following was great as well, we left Clyde running round the track for ages while talking and answering questions and he only drove off the track once. It was a shame because we hadn't had any problems for ages but it still went well enough for us to win best white line following! -Technical assessment was a really good opportunity for us to show off our lovely robot. We all explained different aspects and I explained all our special features to the judges. They seemed really impressed by everything and we had some really good comments. -Our presentation went amazingly! All the animations Ben had made really made our presentation stand out and we all talked about our sections without a single stutter. Couldn't have gone better. Everyone answered questions at the end as well so it showed we all knew what we were doing. Finally, combat. We came first and we couldn't believe it. In the whole competition we only lost one fight. It was so nice because none of us expected to win at all because we didn't think our combat code was very good. Obviously we were wrong! So this, as well as winning white line following as well as everyone having such a lovely few days gave us loads of reasons to celebrate with all our coursemates and everyone that came to Gregynog with us. I’m so happy with everything that happened in this project, the group I had was perfect and we got on so well, we had lots of ups and downs with problems to do with the micromouse but none of that matters when it ended up as great as it did. Thank you for sticking with us all this time, Meg

Finally, the time has come! The epic conclusion to our micro mouse tale! Greganog Hall! I can’t believe it’s all over, after a whole year of working on Clyde, the assessment is done and we can put down our tools, log off our computers and admire our handy work. The trip to Greganog was a blast, with plenty of ups and downs. The bus being two hours late to get us there was not a good start, especially as I was eager to get there and get to work putting the final touches on Clyde. But once the bus did turn up it got us to our destination safe and sound. After checking into our rooms and dumping our bags, we were treated to the first of many very tasty meals, and then it was down to work! Boy did I not know what was coming to me. We had a fairly easy beginning, until I realised the laptop that I had bought with me had no code editing software of any kind, which meant I would have to edit all code on notepad without the benefit of debugging, which was somewhat unsettling but I came to terms with it and we continued to move on at a swift pace. We had gone to Greganog with set goals. Ben and Meg would work on presentation and documentation, while me, Soren and Tom worked on any tweaking and testing that would be required. I also had a set of coding goals in my mind. First of all was to finish combat, and then move onto tweaking, especially with the line following improvement code, which had been plaguing me for weeks. So within an hour or so I had the combat code adjusted, and some tests with the team had confirmed that it was ready to go! Or so we thought….. more on that later. So, on I went to the line following code. As mentioned in previous blogs I had been trying to smooth out the line following code for weeks on end, with no success. However, I felt I was getting closer and closer to the solution so continued to work on it. This had me tearing my hair out for many hours and took up most of the afternoon. When it got into the evening the rest of my team had gone off elsewhere to complete other tasks, and I decided to test Clyde’s new code by myself. I armed myself with pen and paper and took Clyde to the *RAISED THREE FEET OFF THE FLOOR* test track, and as he was running around the circle my new code as it had so many times before failed. However, unlike the many times before I did not have a team of catchers around the table, and with my hands full and on the other side of the table I was not able to make it in time. Clyde crashed to the floor, and all the supports holding his modules together snapped. To say my heart dropped was an understatement. I picked up his battered and broken body, ran it back to our work station and tried the power switch. No life. Nothing. At all. I went and retrieved Soren to tell him what had happened and to help me try and save our project. Luckily after a few tense minutes, some replaced supports and switches returned to the on positions Clyde’s eyes shone bright again and he was back to perfect working order. This did not deter me from my testing however I did assemble a team of catchers from then on every time Clyde went anywhere near a table. Testing continued until it came to about 1:15 – 1:30, and the team assembled saying they wanted to go to bed. I too was getting tired so I set out a final set of tests that we could run just in case we had missed something to make sure we were all ready for the final challenges the next day. We were to test all the modes functions correctly and were ready to go! Sounds simple enough. The first test was obstacle avoidance. This test ran smoothly enough, the IR alignment was checked and everything was fine and we were happy with it. The next test was line following. Sadly, even after many many hours of work on this mode, the second iteration was just not up to standard. No matter what crazy tricks I tried to pull it was just not possible, with my skills anyway, to make the mode any better with two sensors. So the group voted to return to the original code. I begrudgingly accepted this and just came to terms with the fact that despite all my work the line following would not be the best (or would it? Again more on that later). And onto the final test, combat. Again we expected this test to run smoothly as this mode was completed to our knowledge. However, for this test we decided we would battle another couple of mice to test in the real situation that our code would hold up. Safe to say it didn’t, in all the practice fights, Clyde would be pushed into a corner and when his special edge mode activated he would then drive straight out of the arena! We had thought this bug unlikely but in practice it was a very frequent occurrence. So, it is now 1:45am or so, and we have a broken combat mode. The team then voted reluctantly that we would have to fix this problem. So I rushed back to the laptop and started bashing out code. Several iterations later it came to 3:00am, and Clyde would no longer fight. He would just sit in the ring and do nothing! We all decided bed was needed, and I said I would be up early in the morning to fix it. And early I was. After getting into bed at 3:30, 4 hours 15 minutes sleep later I was out of bed and dressed ready for breakfast. As soon as I was finished eating I was back into the main hall and coding. After coding so tired the night before I decided what I had written was probably useless, so I scrapped it and started with the previous buggy version and worked from there. Having had some sleep, I made much better progress and by the time the rest of the team had joined me in the hall I had a new working version with the bug fixed and some other safety measures in place just in case. So with Clyde ready to go we charged the batteries and waited for the final assessments. After lots of watching and waiting for what felt like forever, and some tea and cakes, our first test was upon us. Obstacle Avoidance. This was a nice first test I thought being one of our better modes. The test went very smoothly with Clyde avoiding nearly everything with only IR and using his bumpers only on occasion. The judges seemed impressed and were also interested by all the 3D printer parts of our mouse. The second test which came in rapid succession was combat seeding. Some of Clyde’s issues like his love for corners came up in this test, but his good features also came through meaning we were ended up being seeded 3rd. The third test was our technical inspection which I would say our team knocked out the park! Everyone chipped in with good explanations of Clyde’s various components. And we had an ample number of special features to tell the judges about. We also managed to answer all of those questions which was very reassuring. The comment was also made that we were the tightest nit team that had come in to be judged, referring to everything as ‘we did’ this not I did and things like that. Finally came line following. This test I was not sure about seeing as were using what I had counted as non satisfactory code. The test did go well however and the team explained in depth about our method and calibration, and about the mode that I had worked on and its improvements but why it was not able to be show cased in them. The super reliable mode which very very rarely failed of course managed to fail once in this test which we all thought was a shame but it was unlucky and there was nothing we could do about it, so overall I was very happy with the outcome of this test and I think the team were too. Our final test for the day was the presentation and again we SMASHED it. So much credit has to be given to Ben on this for making such an amazing presentation, it was so good! But also credit to my team as they all did an amazing job with the presentation. In between coding the night before we had fit in two or so hours of presentation and practice, and had done some practice while waiting for the tests to start so we all knew what we had to do. We carried it out to near perfection, one of the only stumbling blocks being me and someone else being un nerved by the judge’s reaction to the ethics part of the presentation, with heads being shaken etc. We did however find out later on that this was due to the hard hitting nature of our ethical issues and nothing to do with the quality of our presentation which is a relief. We were also able to answer all the questions apart from the final one about cost very well. We also answered the questions well as a team as much as possible. We got several very good peer reviews on our presentation and good feedback from the judges, so again hats off to Ben and Meg for putting the work in to make that happen! And finally the day is done and we are on to combat! The matches themselves were a blur and it would take forever to go into too much detail, however we left the group staged having lost only 1 round in 24 to a judge’s decision, and we had the best record of either league so we were feeling good, but very nervous also. When the finals came around we were buzzing, however I was very very nervous. Not sure why but it was really getting to me! We had a convincing with in the semi-finals against delta putting us through to the final 2. The final was a close fought match, but we took the game straight 3-0, meaning we only lost 1 round in the whole tournament. We were so happy that we had done so well in fighting after putting so much time into the code the night and morning before and it was great to see Clyde pull through for the win! So the award ceremonies begun and Team Echo were awarded the main trophy and our own trophies each to take home. I was also asked to give a speech, which was terrible but I was a little overwhelmed and didn’t really know what to say, which I imagine you can tell from this blog doesn’t happen very often. We had only just sat down when we were called up to accept the award for the best…. Line following? None of the team were expecting this after we had resorted to the original code, and I was somewhat amazed at how much time I had wasted trying to improve it. Of course there were no complaints and we were all very happy have won another one of the categories. And after both these wins I was very happy to see the code I had put so much time into had pulled through again to make Clyde the best of the bunch in two categories. So after a night of celebrations a tired day of guest lecturers and returning home, it was all done and Micro mouse was over. I have to say at the start of this project I did not think I would enjoy it as much as I have, and it became more of a labour of love working on Clyde, rather than painful assignment work. And I was genuinely sad to see him going in his box for the final time and thinking we would not be working on him anymore. However, it is nice seeing him displayed in labs as a reminder of our triumphs and what our work is capable of. Doing this assignment has also given me a passion for coding and micro controllers, especially after seeing my code do so well in this assignment. So thanks you to the rest of Team Echo for being such a great team to manage, and I think we are all much better friends now. Thanks to my team for all their great working, great laughs, and the support when coding was being maddening. And thanks to Dr Davies, Mr Moody, Mr Gareth, Augustine and everyone who helped us to make Clyde as great as he is. These people spent a lot of time, pulled personal favours for us and all sorts to help us out and I thank them for it. So that’s it, Micro mouse 2016 done. It’s been a blast (who thought that would ever come out of my mouth about uni work), now onto exams and far less fun things. Team Echo Matt, out!

It's officially over. We’ve spent the last three days having Clyde assessed and we now we have to move on with our lives, leaving Clyde behind in the lab trophy cabinet. Monday When we got to Gregynog hall it was straight to work. We had our laptops out, working on code, documentation and our presentation for the next day. We had many ups and downs during this first evening, code working, code breaking, but it was good fun trouble shooting Clyde together and deciding on the final code to run for the assessments the next day. Clyde took a tumble off the table while being tested which scared us all, but thankfully he survived and lived on to tell the tale. After practising our presentation, until around 1amOur obstacle avoidance was top notch, we decided to use the line following code which was most reliable, and the only function left to perfect was combat. It was this that caused us to be up until 2:30am trying to fix it, until the point of physically not being able to work anymore. We all went to bed and decided to get up early the next morning to sort it. Tuesday Matt managed to get straight up and be down coding bright and early, and by the end of breakfast, the combat was back to its original state and ready to go. And so the assessments began! First we had Our obstacle avoidance test. We were really happy with how this went as Clyde performed perfectly, avoided everything and only had to use his bumpers once or twice. 1 down. Next was our combat seeding. It went quite well but something that was giving us problems was Clyde sensing the people around the table with his back sensors and spinning around to try and get them. After this test we decided to turn them off when it actually came to the combat because we thought everyone cheering close to the table might cause problems. 2 down. Our third test was the thechnical inspection and we absolutely nailed it. We each talked about different sections we’d helped on and all answered the questions we were asked at the end. A comment we also received was that our team was the only one they'd seen who referred to everything they’d done saying “we” instead of “I”. This comment made us really happy because all of us really did bond and became so much closer as a result of this project and it just kind of showed it was true. 3 down. Test number four was line following. As a team we thought line following was going to be our worst because we’d decided to choose the code that was really juddery and didn't work as smoothly as some others we’d seen. We chose this because it was most reliable and decided that it would be better for Clyde to be juddery than to fall off the table in front of the judges! We left Clyde going round the track for ages while we were talking to the judges and answering questions and he on,y came off the track once which was a shame, but we were happy with it. And even with Clyde coming off the track, we actually came first for our line following so all of Matts tinkering over the last few weeks definitely was worth it! 4 down. Our second to last assessment for the weekend was our group presentation. Ben made an absolutely incredible PowerPoint and we’d spent so long practising it the night before that we absolutely nailed it! It had been the assessment that we were dreading a little bit so as soon as this was done we new we could chill out a bit. 5 down… 1 to go. Then… The moment we had all been waiting for. COMBAT! We didn't have much hopes for combat, after everything that happened the night before with the code, we decided we would just be happy if we didn't come last… And we didn’t… We were actually doing well. Clyde was consistently winning and suddenly the possibility of us winning started to dawn on us… We made it through to the semi finals as were going against our rivals from the start, team delta! Fighting was bought to a halt for dinner to be resumed at 8pm. It was so difficult waiting because we were just getting so nervous! The time finally came to fight delta, we won 3-0. Now on to the final, we were against kilo. Both of our mice looked quite similar and had the same kind of tactics… It began! It looked a bit rough at times but we did it. We won the whole of combat!!! We never thought that Clyde would actually win but he did! Cue the celebratory drinks… Wednesday So that was it, we were done. Time to head back to Swansea with our trophies held high! We’re all missing our micro mouse labs already, but how well we did makes all the time we put into it completely worth it. For the last time, Team Echo and Clyde out!

The team came into labs for the last week of the easter break in order to ensure the mouse was no longer in a state of disrepair. We arrived bright and early and spent the next few hours troubleshooting each and every component in order to find the fault. After much hardship, we concluded the microcontroller was faulty. Our suspicions were confirmed when the new microcontroller board was installed. In order to prevent any further damage, we decided to install a transistor switchboard to control power to LEDs, Line followers, and the IR PCB. This resulted in a more efficient micromouse as now any unused modules could be switched off. After some research I concluded that white LEDs were superior to yellow when it came to white line sensors, as the white LEDs drew far less current, and the LDRs were more sensitive to white light. Toward the end of the month we were finally able to print a full shell. However, due to an error with the 3d printer, the shell was scaled down and was too small to fit. Luckily I was able to sand the inside of the shell to make it fit. We faced a major setback when we noticed one of the tachometers had again become disconnected. The ribbon cable's connection to the motors was very weak so very little force was needed to break it. This set us back so much because accessing the broken connection meant disassembling the entire micromouse. Next stop was Gregynog! We worked long into the night to make sure everything was as we needed it to be, and the following day we were assessed. The white line following, obstacle avoidance, and combat was flawless! Our presentation also went very well. We were all nervous when it was time for the combat finals, but Clyde was more than ready, and we won first place!

Gregynog is here! After a long coach journey we were greeted at Gregynog by Dr. Davies and Dr. Jobling, and we were given a quick tour of where we would be eating and working. After having a quick lunch we got to working on Clyde. He survived the journey in one piece and was almost ready to be assessed! After spending a long time working on our line following code, we eventually decided to go back to the original not so elegant, but consistent code for our assessment, and this won us first place in the line following category! As well as this the combat was an interesting story, as after winning our league, we were placed against Team Delta during the semi-finals, this was a fun battle as both of our teams have gotten along very well throughout the year. After winning the semi-finals we went on to have a tough battle against Team Kilo in the finals, but Clyde prevailed, and we were over the moon! As the night turned to celebration and drinking for all of the teams, everyones micromice were packed away for the last time, and students and staff alike met in the bar to talk about the amazingly fun year we’ve all had. The following day just before we left, we were given various presentations by people from industry, including Rohde and Schwarz and G.E. these gave us a good insight in to what these companies do and certainly tempted me in to looking at their graduate programs. So all in all, Gregynog was an amazing opportunity that we were given, and we are sad to no longer be working on our little micromouse, Clyde.

Our final month has been very productive! We have had our orange PLA filament delivered, during the easter break we made a transistor switchboard, we’ve decided on colours to be shown on our LED’s for each mode, the bumpers with the ghost wave on the bottom have been printed these also have small engravings on them, and our final design for the shell has been completed and printed, Ben has edited the final vlog and uploaded it to Youtube, and finally we have created a mount for our RGB LED veroboard. After a few delays we had finally managed to get some of our own filament to print the shell, it was a neon-orange PLA filament which matched the idea we had for Clyde originally. Although unfortunately we did not manage to use this filament due to time constraints, as modifying the printer to accept this filament would have taken too long. However, we did manage to get the shell printed via a job print, although it was scaled to 98% of the original design. This was because we were not aware of the constraints of the 3D printer that was being used. Although it did not initially fit the chassis we were given, after sanding it down we did manage to get it to fit. We did also create a design for a shell that would fit the chassis without modification, but we did not have the time to get this second job print done before we left for Gregynog Using the 3D printer we had available in the labs, we did manage to print a final design for our bumpers, these had waves on the bottom edge which completed the look for Clyde and made him look like the ghost that he was meant to be. As well as this the front and rear bumper have their own engravings, the front one has Team Echo written on it, as well as the logo which we designed next to it. However, the rear bumper has a small Pacman and some ghosts, and the word Clyde written between them. This gives our micromouse some individuality, and it can be easily recognised even without the shell attached. As well as this, we created and printed a simple mount for our RGB LED veroboard, this was simply to keep the board steady and consistently pointing in one directionas Clyde was moving around, as we found that the veroboard moved and twisted as Clyde turned and accelerated. And finally we have gotten our final vlog edited and uploaded, and it looks great! Although it was unfortunate that the first attempt at vlog 3 had audio issues, the second attempt looks better than ever!

March has been a pretty good month for Team Echo! We’vebegan printing the first prototype for our shell, we’ve been filming morevlogs, resoldering resistors on the IR LED PCB, began our line following code,created a mount for the mode selection switches, as well as beginning what wehope to be the final design to our shell! For our 3D printing, Meg proposed an idea for the shell tobe attached to a post at the top of the micromouse, and for it to surround themouse and act as the bumpers, as opposed to being flush with the micromouse,and having the bumpers sticking out. After sketching out a rough draft of this,we realised that it could not be printed in piece using the 3D printer we hadavailable, so instead we opted to have the prototype printed in three sections,each of which we would glue together before attaching it to Clyde, so far wehave printed the bottom two sections, and we are just waiting to print the top!Although this looks like it could be a very good idea for the shell, we havealso decided to begin a design that could be printed in one piece. As well as this, we created a mode selection switch panel sothat we could easily change between the different modes without having toreprogram every time. To keep this steady and in once place, we printed asimple mount for the veroboard to slide in to, and that was then bolted to thechassis using 3mm bolts. Around this time, we were due to film another vlog. So wechose a location and spoke about recent on goings with the group project. Unfortunately,the location we chose to film the vlog did not have great acoustics, and it wasvery difficult to hear what we were saying. So instead we chose anotherlocation, and had to try again, this time we managed to get a good recording,as we recorded the audio on two separate devices to guarantee at least one ofthe devices would pick up our voices clearly. After we soldered our IR LED PCB, we found that it wasacting very erratically and was activating when there was nothing nearby. Weeventually found out that it was far too sensitive because of the experimentalvalues for resistors that we had tried. While they worked fine on thebreadboarded circuit, the values we chose simply weren’t practical for the PCB,so we unsoldered the old resistors, and soldered on resistors of the originalvalue for the circuit. Finally, we have also managed to begin the line followingafter eventually creating our line following boards. Although we initially hadtrouble deciding how to attach them to the chassis, we decided that blue tackwould be fine for our purposes.

This morning has been going very well

Tomorrow morning we're leaving for Gregynog! Lots of excitement but a lot of nerves to go with it. We'll let you know everything that happens while we're there on the website and our Twitter page so stay tuned.

it’s finally here. Our last week working on Clyde before the big assessment starting next Monday. Mr Moody took Clyde away from us on Friday so we had 5 days to get everything working perfectly… We spent a lot of time working on the white line following code to try and make it perfect instead of being juddery, and to eliminate the possibility of it randomly driving of the corners. Mr Moody got our shell printed on Monday night so we had it at our work station on Tuesday morning. It looked absolutely perfect and was exactly what we wanted it to look like. However, the printer it was sent to was smaller than the printer we had intended it to be printed in and it had to be scaled down to 98% of its original size. We hoped it wouldn’t be too bad but when we tried to attach it to Clyde, it didn’t fit. Tragedy!!! We were going to get a bigger one printed the next day but it couldn’t be done in time so we tried sanding down the shell, PCB, and chassis to get the shell to fit and it did! So now we have a very nice, and very snug, Pacman ghost shell special feature. We got a few extra bits of 3D printing done this week as well, we made the back bumper and added a little bumper sticker saying CLYDE with a Pacman and two little ghosts either side. As well of this, we printed a mount for the LED special feature so it sits on top nicely instead of flopping around. The final thing we printed was actually a Pacman ghost cookie cutter… We decided we’d make some biscuits to give out when we do our presentation, because why not really! After all the sanding down we put Clyde back together to see if he would still work. And yes you guessed it, he didn’t. The tachometer wires had snapped, AGAIN! Clyde had to be taken completely apart yet again and we were given a new tachometer board because ours had been taken apart so much. This took up a whole day of lab sessions so we were not a happy group. Friday was a stressful day. We ran through each mode over and over trying to change little things and make them better. We have everything working to a high standard ready to go, just a couple of last minute ideas that matt wants to try when we get down there if we have time. Something else we found is that our LED’s interfered with the IR sensors, so we needed to make little blinkers out of electrical tape for them. When our combat code was working well we asked if we could fight another team and we won! We’re really looking forward to the battles now. Along with all of this, we’ve been working on our Powerpoint presentation, deciding what we wanted to talk about and what images and videos we wanted to add. It’s looking really impressive, so now all we have to do is remember our lines! Keep your fingers crossed for us this weekend, we’ll put on the website all the results as we get them. Thanks for sticking with us. Team Echo 2016.