Team Shakey Build Diary

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AntRoboteer
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Re: Team Shakey Build Diary

Post by AntRoboteer »

Ah, yes, USB 3.0 is a bit of a problem sometimes. It probably doesn't work on some cards or controllers maybe because the ports lack the extra 5 pins which are used in USB 3.0 ports but not USB 2.0 ports, even if they are connected up to a USB 3.0 controller. I've seen macs which have this issue before.

Personally, when I built a mini-ITX computer, I used the AMD AM1 platform for it's power efficiency and of course low cost. :D Their motherboards have USB 3.0 built in if you wanted to go that route. I used a Sempron 3850 quad core (1.3GHz) and an MSI AM1I just to keep things cheap but still powerful. You can purchase them new quite cheaply but I got a good deal with mine used with a case and PSU.

New from Amazon, the Sempron is £24.95 for the quad core model (or £19.99 for a dual core if you are not too bothered about performance) and it includes graphics (because it's one of AMD's APUs) and a heatsink:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-SD3850JAHMB ... 4PN8YD6D3D
And the motherboard for £24.44 which has 2 USB ports:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/MSI-AM1I-Mini-M ... 3Q6PX2RPRX

Looking at the case though, I'm not actually sure if ITX will fit (screw mounting holes and whatnot) so you'd better check that but the PSU should be more than capable seeing as it's a very low power system. Standard DDR3 DIMMs also fit in (I'm just using XMS3 which I picked up on eBay but you can get some a lot cheaper). The motherboard has a PCIex16 slot (although it only runs at x4 for some reason) so you could potentially add in a USB 3.0 card if you had difficulties. It has full graphics capabilities if you required them so no need for a graphics card either.

It would be more than capable of doing what you require as well because that's a pretty powerful processor. Hope that's helped a bit!
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Shakey
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Re: Team Shakey Build Diary

Post by Shakey »

The case is a CFI A8989 Mini-ITX Cube Case, I need to do some load testing to see how powerful the PC needs to be to run it. I kinda forgot about the APUs and now you've reminded me that's a much more logical solution to this, thanks for the links! The PSU only has 150W so I'd be pushing it to get the 5670 I have in there aswell (Which was going to provide the graphical processing). I will have to check around for how kinects run on APU's, they are kindof oddly supported so it may not like it, I wonder if the later APUs that expose the graphical cores (like the Xbox has) would be better. Plus I do like to messa round with gpu cores, I used to have a bitcoin mining pc that had ~8500 stream processors which was really fun to run programs on! :D

The case with the USB3.0 is (while you do have to watch out for the pin counts) the fact the kinect is sending a truly impressive amount of data back and a lot of the controllers either can't actually handle the amount of data correctly or there is some odd firmware thing going on as it is using the port in a fancy way to achieve the bandwidth. Many of the intel controllers seem to work, there are lists online of people gathering configurations they know to work so I'll just have to be careful of which one I get.

Really if I wanted this to be easy I should have gotten the kinect for windows but that costs a lot of money compared to the £35 I spent a CEX and the hour I spent modifying it to work with a PC! :D

My hope is by doing this offboard processing the robot can use a greater amount of information to fight in a more complex way as opposed to being a weaponised sumo robot. The tricky part will be consistently identifying it in the arena and also dealing with things like clusters. There are so many little bits of information to grab aswell, such as whether you are on their scoop or if they are on yours. If that hit damaged yourself or if the other bot is immobile/should be left alone. Last thing I want is a spinner that keeps attacking a bot shredding it to pieces when it could back off and win!
Nuts And Bots - For all your components and ready built antweights!

Alex Shakespeare - Team Shakey / Nuts And Bots / Team Nuts:
AWS 44, 45, 49, 51 & 55 Winner - Far too many robots!
Rapidrory
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Re: Team Shakey Build Diary

Post by Rapidrory »

Theory
Shakey wrote: At first it will fight very simplistically but the eventual idea is the kinect will watch every battle that takes place (not just its own) and learn from the victor/dominant robot to draw up a fighting style(s). Hopefully it should be able to contend with a person, this would be my end goal.
Reality

*takes 6 months of coding just to keep a robot in the arena*

Computer vision is never simple :P
Rory Mangles - Team Nuts

Robots: Nuts 2 and many more...

NanoTwo Motor Controllers: https://nutsandbots.co.uk/product/nanotwodualesc
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Shakey
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Re: Team Shakey Build Diary

Post by Shakey »

Only if you're very silly and insist on writing your own libraries! The 3D depth map simplifies the entire thing quite a bit though.
Nuts And Bots - For all your components and ready built antweights!

Alex Shakespeare - Team Shakey / Nuts And Bots / Team Nuts:
AWS 44, 45, 49, 51 & 55 Winner - Far too many robots!
AntRoboteer
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Re: Team Shakey Build Diary

Post by AntRoboteer »

From what I can see from the Passmark GPU scores for both the integrated graphics on the APU (called Radeon R3 but I have found them to be called HD8250s) and the HD5670 and they are pretty comparable although the 5670 is a bit better. However, the APU suggested doesn't require much power at all really and has a max TDP of 25W which is great for small PSUs and I'm sure that you could get the 5670 in there if you really needed to. On the other hand, the performance improvement may not be too great over the integrated. Have you considered one of the A series APUs (FM2/FM2+) and coupling it in that APU crossfire setup with one of the cheap low end discrete GPUs such as the R7 240? That may deliver really impressive results if you needed a lot of power. :)

I believe the AM1 platform are very similar to the AMD APUs used in the PS4 and XBOX ONE so perhaps that would be an ideal combination? I really don't know.

As for the USB 3.0 controller, I see what you mean about bandwidth. I've never really had any issues with any of my ones and I believe the controller for the USB 3.0 is actually built into the APU itself on the AM1 platform as those APUs are technically SOCs and integrate pretty much everything.
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Shakey
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Re: Team Shakey Build Diary

Post by Shakey »

The heavy is still progressing nicely, the drive is now done! It's running on my feathers escs for now until the actual one arrives (N2HV will do fine right rory? :P ). The bosches have been battle hardened and the pinions welded. Also gave it a bit of paint just to spruce it up!

Image

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1yNrdb ... e=youtu.be
Nuts And Bots - For all your components and ready built antweights!

Alex Shakespeare - Team Shakey / Nuts And Bots / Team Nuts:
AWS 44, 45, 49, 51 & 55 Winner - Far too many robots!
Remote-Controlled Dave
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Re: Team Shakey Build Diary

Post by Remote-Controlled Dave »

*commenting like a typical Robot Wars poster*

Looks like Apocalypse.
Die Gracefully Robotics
Winner - AWS 39
Tashic
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Re: Team Shakey Build Diary

Post by Tashic »

No Dave, a typical Robot Wars poster is:
"That's a razzor rip-off!!"
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Shakey
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Re: Team Shakey Build Diary

Post by Shakey »

BOOOOO!

Image
Image

I've started mounting the ram into the base, the slight slant lets me get in a good bit of extra throw, it is supported on a hardox structure that bolts to the bulkhead.
Nuts And Bots - For all your components and ready built antweights!

Alex Shakespeare - Team Shakey / Nuts And Bots / Team Nuts:
AWS 44, 45, 49, 51 & 55 Winner - Far too many robots!
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Shakey
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Re: Team Shakey Build Diary

Post by Shakey »

I thought I'd share my latest ant as it's been a bit quiet here.

Image

I'm about halfway through the CAD so I'll keep you updated on that. The basic Idea is ICBINS with an EDF, I think it would be great to show EDFs don't equal not having a weapon. It's a standard 35mm EDF that I'll make a bit more low profile to aid invertability. The battery is on the smaller side at 300mah but considering my usual fight time it should be more than enough even at full tilt! It is using the same flipper as ICBINS just worked around the fan to not interrupt the airflow. The drive will be the nylon geared drive type I showed off a while back along with 2 HP motors since that had very good torque transmission and very little loss and none of the jamming hexa-chopper suffered from while being very light weight. I might experiment with tiny timing belts aswell as that would simplify the build further.

The components actually leave me a good amount of weight with which to make the chassis, I'll be experimenting with my Nylon printing aswell so it should be far stronger than even my ABS chassis for the same amount of weight. Ali armour as on ICBINS, Stanley and TEST as that seems to work very nicely.

I also have a 65mm and a 40mm setup I might put in some bots just to see how different they are. In addition I'm combining one with a spinner to allow harder hits with a greatly lowered risk of flying out.

Hopefully this should encourage EDF bots to also have a weapon rather than a pusher.
Nuts And Bots - For all your components and ready built antweights!

Alex Shakespeare - Team Shakey / Nuts And Bots / Team Nuts:
AWS 44, 45, 49, 51 & 55 Winner - Far too many robots!
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