Antweights at Convoy4Kids

Posted on 2023-10-292023-11-06 by Half Done Things

The Wollongong crew held an antweight event at the Convoy4Kids charity event on 29th October.
I dug out some spares last minute and tried to put together Little Red Flipper (a prototype OG Botbitz GreenAnt kit).

It turns out I was missing a lot of parts…
The flipper servo.
The servo linkage.
The 2S batteries were dead.
The RX was missing.

First up was to print a linkage as I had the cad for it, however the servo I bought had a different spline. It took 8 goes to get it right for a press fit that worked…

The RX I found that would work in this robot uses micro leads, so I needed to remove the standard JR leads from the servo,

Micro lead attached.

I’ve not got a small iron these days, so doing this smaller soldering results in some burnt fingers and swearing. Need to order a smaller iron for this kind of work.

The BotBitz 10A’s needed the same treatment, getting a pair of micro leads.

Leads done!

And shrink wrapped.

With no 2S batteries, I substituted a 3S battery and prayed nothing exploded.

While trimming up the servo position for the flipper, I broke the flipper mechanism….

It was 10pm by this stage, so I designed to flick a message to a friend and see if he could print one from CF Nylon over night and bring it to the event for me.
I packed up the bot and all my gear, loaded the car and went to bed…

I arrived nice and early to find the event organisers setting up the arena.

I setup my gear and my static display of Scarlet’s.

Sitting there, waiting for the spare parts.

Soon other builders arrived and we started getting some bot appearing!

Pumpkin Wumpkin

Subdivide

Midnight Sun

Skelliwedge

Tossboss

Steelstorm 2 and Pokerface

Naughty Corner and Scissor

Spikeywacker

Mr Obvious

Deadline

The replacement flipper arrive and I assembled Little Red Flipper as quick as I could.

However I ran into something odd. The servo was only travelling 50-60% throw, which prevented the robot from lifting all the way up and self righting 🙁
The other issue was, it would not failsafe correctly. Despite being bound to the transmitter with the drives in a neutral position, the motors kept creeping. Not something I (nor safety) could allow.

So I sat down for the day and watched all the fights, before getting a chance to sneak Little Red Flipper into the end of day rumble for the non-destructive class.
Sadly it was flipped and could not self right and then ended up going down the pit :P. Highlight of the day, I was given the change to drive Tossboss in the rumble for the destruction class (Tossboss had just won the main event!) and was one of the last 3 bots standing!

There is a Youtube playlist of fights here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pwNudQRKW8&list=PLsvGjWpWp4gw241sEkaBS_2TH9emZeUNs

RoboWars Returns – 15/01/2023 – Day 2

Posted on 2023-01-242023-01-24 by Half Done Things

RoboWars Returns – 15/01/2023 – Day 2

With minimal damage taken on the first day, the battery was topped up, all the fasteners were checked over and it was go time.

Fight 3: Zenghiaro

First fight of the exhibition matches against Zenghiaro. This time The Verdict got to show off what it could do. It pushed Zenghiaro around, rammed it up the wall, hammered it, got flipped over and had to self right (completely untested!!!) and continued to give them them a tour of all the walls.

Towards the end the weapon was a little lazy on the hits, but I assume that was the controller getting on the thermal limits.

Result: Win by Judges Decision
Watch the fight here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptN-_YCyVCU

Fight 4: Zapper

Next exhibition match was against Zapper, another full fat featherweight, but with the weapon slowed down to the speed limits for sportsmen.

This would either go well or bad.

The first clash went in my favor with Zapper bouncing up onto The Verdict.
The next the drum hit bounced me back, the next few dances I was able to push it from the side and then jammed the front into the drum, trapped it against the wall, then pound it with the hammer like it owed me money.

More dancing and then I trapped it against the wall again, 10+ hits and Zapper stopped moving, with the whole top plate caved in.

Result: Win by KO.
Watch the fight here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytW84sRQSE4

The damage done to Zapper, the top lid was pounded into oblivion, jamming down onto a drive motor.

Fight 5 – The Verdict VS Gigablue VS Raptor VS Clunk.
While giving the grand finalists as much time as possible to get ready for their match, we through in 3-4 bots per round and sent it.

No story here, just watch the video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MS0VtTlGeE

What a hoot! Shortly after we sat down and watched the finals where a very close fight between Citizen Flips and Saw & Order lead to a new champion.

SAW & ORDER!

With the event completed, it was pack up time, then to hit up a bar for food and booze, then talk shit with all the other builders till we couldn’t stand.

Next time, we talk about what when well and what could have been done better!

PS: The Legnum did this 1800km trip without any issue.

RoboWars Returns – 14/01/2023 – Day 1

Posted on 2023-01-142023-01-24 by Half Done Things

RoboWars Returns – 14/01/2023 – Day 1

In December RoboWars announced a Sportsmen event to be held in Hamilton, Queensland. Below is a collection of photos and diary of the event from my fuzzy memory.

Unloaded the robot and parts/tools into the pits

Fight 1: PotHead

Other than driving The Verdict for 30 seconds prior to leaving for the event a day before, I was going into this one blind. And it really showed. I’m super rusty with my driving, doing a lot of weaving instead of straight driving, spinning in circles from over shooting when turning (Really should have put some steering rates into the radio) and I noticed one side was a little bound up compared to the other (it pulled to one side when going forward).

There was a lot of dancing around as I tried to pin Pothead to the wall so I could wail on it with the hammer, but it was actually hard to push to the wall without it slipping off the front. Eventually I managed to get a few decent hits, mangling the pot easily.

Pothead’s saw was scratching the paint in the corners when we collided but did nothing more then that which was nice. However by the timer ran out, the judges has decided the winner was Pothead. It went the full three minutes and didn’t fail, so I consider that a good start to the event. Back in the pits, I just tightened all the nuts and bolts to ensure nothing was going to fall apart and then charged the battery, ready for the next match

Result: Loss by Judges Decision.
Watch the fight here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsgc7zcOLUM

Fight 2: Raptor
After the Pothead match, I dug into the menus of the radio and dialed in some rate limiting on the steering to try to reduce the twitchiness. Raptor is a full fat featherweight that swapped out their usually vertical discs for a pair of saw blades and wedges…… (I wasn’t expecting these since it was a sportsmen event, but the EO allowed it.)

There was a lot of back and forth, sparks and hammering through out the match, there was a moment where they actually wedged me up and onto the weapon, which missed the internals my a few millimeters. After that, as it was clear the wedgelets were not something I could defeat, I just focused on pushing against their weapon, trying to hammer, stall and push them where possible. For the last ~30 seconds, I just jammed the weapon down on them to clamped on (The APD speed controller did well here, the thermal/current limiting saving it.)

Sadly, the judges gave it to Raptor.
Once again, there was no real damage other then a slice into the tongue on the robot and some more scratched paint.

Result: Loss by Judges Decision.
Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl5Bw53AW8Q

Unfortunately we are now out of the competition, so we can only compete in exhibition matches and melees.

ToyotaFest 18

Posted on 2022-10-022022-10-09 by Half Done Things

After a COVID19 nixed the last couple of ToyotaFest’s, this year was a not to be missed event.
With ~230 cars in attendance, I was keen to see what was on display this year.
Below is some photos I took, feel free to head over to the ToyotaFest event page for more photos!

ToyotaFest

ToyotaFest – https://www.facebook.com/events/1242373266323150/?active_tab=discussion
Official Photos – https://www.facebook.com/media/set?vanity=Toymods&set=a.782735463079028

Supra Drag Night

Posted on 2022-08-032022-08-10 by Half Done Things

The Supra Club had offered and invite to Toymods to join them at the Wednesday Drags at Sydney Dragway.
So while the GC8 and Legnum were offline, I took the MR-S.

Half day at work and arrived an hour early (trying to avoid fkn Sydney traffic)

Once I got the hang of getting the SMT to do a burnout from the water box and to get it to launch (haha).
All in all, while not fast, the SMT is bloody consistent. It punched out consistent 16.5xx’s all night, ended up trying to get my R/T as low as possible, still only got it to a lazy .221. Will have to take it back for another run and try to get is as close to .001 for the usual cash prize they run.

Best run for the night was 16.514

ARDC NightShift – 15/04/2021 – Videos

Posted on 2021-04-172021-08-08 by Half Done Things

The videos from the night until she went boom.

ARDC NightShift – 15/04/2021

Posted on 2021-04-172021-08-08 by Half Done Things

Short post to cover the ARDC NightShift event this week

It was dry!

I got the RaceBox to work!

I set some new PB’s!

We raced with some mates again!

We broke the car…

I broke the car 🙁

Not entirely sure what has failed (not a rod out the block), but billowing oil smoke out. Will investigate if it’s turbo, head gasket or a piston….

ARDC NightShift – 18/03/2021 – Videos

Posted on 2021-04-082021-08-08 by Half Done Things

I finally got off my ass and edited the videos for this track day.
Enjoy!

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

Extras

ARDC NightShift – 18/03/2021

Posted on 2021-03-192021-08-08 by Half Done Things

I was hoping the weather was going to get better, oh boy was I wrong.
It rained for the week leading up to the event and the whole day and night of it.

Setting up the pits with a friend and his Nissan NX.

Checking the fluids and preparing for the first session.

My broken camera on my phone doesn’t emphasize how wet the place is.

As apart of the event we all were given a free pizza, so I kept mine here…

I had the RaceBox datalogger setup, however ran into issues with it.

Running the AR-1 tires was a massive mistake, but it was a great way to learn to drive in such conditions.

My first session… This sums it up.

I had followed the NX for the warm up lap and was pretty confident that I was faster, so I decided to get pass him on the straight. Problem was while over taking I lost track of how far down the straight we were, how fast I was going, got distracted by the car trying to change lanes when I grabbed 5th gear. Then it was a bit balancing act of trying to knock of a bunch of speed with out throwing the car into a spin down… Well that worked hahaha.

After recovering, we made it around to last corner before the red lights came on and the session was cancelled. Two other cars had come off and needed retrived and a Porsche had broken down in pit lane entry.

The rest of the night went fine, a bunch of sketchy moments but some good sessions none the less. I put a few slices of the drama here.