AVC: SHARC FSV, "Troubled Child"

Troubled Child, 1st Place in Doping and Crowd Favorite

Update: The SHARC FSV team Jeep, "Troubled Child," won Doping Class! And we were given the Crowd Favorite award! Wow! Yeehaw! Everyone on the team is super happy! Read on for details and video.

Congrats to all the other teams. I mean all of them. It's no small feat just to have something you can show up with. Anything beyond that is icing.

AVC: 5 Day Panic

The SHARC top secret AVC entry has been taking up a lot of time. It's come together very nicely but there are several problems to work through.

The heading estimate on Data Bus isn't working with the new technique I'm trying. So I have to get that fixed before I can look at path following. I tried to fix one thing and screwed up another.

I haven't even thought about testing it on the jump ramp or coding it for different starting line positions. Without the ramp I'm pretty certain not to medal in this thing. I'll be happy to get the robot around the track, though. Maybe that's asking too much. Next day or two should tell.

Good luck and safe travels to all the other entrants if I don't get a chance to post before Saturday.

AVC: 10 Day Panic

Oh crap. The competition is heating up for the Sparkfun AVC. There's only 10 days left.

And I'm doomed. As usual.

Top Contenders

I'm in the Peloton class. So are some heavy hitters.

Ayoue 852A++ Heater Problem

My hot air rework station, an Aoyue 852A++, is broken. The heater would intermittently cut out and wouldn't come back until it'd sat awhile.

I didn't see any obvious problems until the third time I took the heating wand apart and saw signs of significant heat damage.

The old, broken, charred heating element

AVC: Heading Errors, Path Following Woes

A little over two weeks to go as I write this. That's not much time.

Testing uncovered a couple of obvious problems. The robot is experiencing heading errors and the pure pursuit path following is still working poorly.