Alright, a quick report before I disappear into the glow of a blue luxeon LED for a few months….

MBX worked really well for what it was (a glorified testbed built in two weekends), it was pretty lame in combat, as I spent most of the time adjusting the LED header due to the last minute hack to due to destroying the accelerometer before the event. It ran between 500 – 750RPM at various stages during the weekend and showed that it can pack a punch.

A brief list of things to do.

– move to two wheels – helps balance and spin up time, was only 1 wheel because of time restraints…
– more volts – after the event when I ran it on 12cells (39.6v) it was really kick ass, hitting around 1500rpm (but totally undriveable due to my current code limit of 1200rpm….)
– make it round – it ended up square because I built the thing in a day with what was laying around in the shed, next time it will be round for lower wind resistance, harder to jam in a corner and better for hitting with.

The future specs:

Armour: 3.2mm Hardox 450
Drive: 2 x 12v 340 Winch motor @ 33v geared 3.6:1
Electronics: Spektrum + AVR ATMEGA168 + SSR + MMA2300D 250G Accelerometer
Batteries: 1 x 33v (10cell) A123 Packs
Weapon: Translational Spinner, 13.6kg @ 1500RPM = Lots of Kinetic energy

I look forward to bringing a much better, combat ready version to the Ideas Festival.