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Chris Roche & Kevin got the Arduino talking to the roboRIO so that it receives binary info from four future “front bumper” switches in the form of a 0-15 serial output over a single port. He also has the Talons and power kill switch mounted & wired to the chassis.
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Gillian, Jason et al. fabricated a boss-looking battery box that holds the battery vertically between the aft CIMs.
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David Baek is still working on designing and building the “front bumper” switches.
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David and I calculated that based on the counter-torque supplied by the battery & neighboring CIMs, the fully-loaded conveyor (5 totes + barrel) should be located no more than 4.4″ ahead of the front axle, to provide a safety factor of 1.5. Thanks to a lot of work by Sammy and others, the conveyor is fully functional and awaits hooks. We need these hooks fabricated!
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Bob Cunningham mounted a second motor to the conveyor (a PG71 #0914 gearmotor) in addition to the original window motor, to counter our fears that the window motor would not be able to hoist the total weight of a full stack. (Bob put in three big days during the snowstorm; we owe him a Gone Fishin’ jacket!) The new motor needs to be removed, wired up and reinstalled. A single Talon is capable of running both motors in parallel (rated max 60A continuous!), but we should check the rules to see if this is permitted.
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The mount that holds the lower axle for the conveyor is half-built. Someone could step in today and assemble the remaining side. In the process, some chorros and stiffening elements must be added to the chassis, to better tie the outer frame rail to the inner rail. When this is done, we only need the long diagonals to support the top of the conveyor at a 12º angle and that major assembly can be hung on the chassis. Please check dimensions with Mr Roche before making this part, because those diagonals must also carry the electronics panel.
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Barrel grabber is only a fond hope at this point, not an actual design… It should be relatively easy to tip a barrel into the conveyor hooks to lift it before loading totes beneath it. A really superior design would be able to handle a barrel that is knocked down, as well as pluck barrels off the step…
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I’ve been assembling a collection of specially fabricated second-robot parts/ spares as I’ve been going along. They are in a tub by the finger brake. It might be time to get a team on novices going on building R2D2.
