samedi 15 février 2014

And finaly after a lot of trial and error we finay got our system working. Because at first one of our wheels was blocked by an elastic band. And then we quite a few problems with the motor itself because it just was not working. At first we weren't sure if it was the motor or the panel that wasn't working. But it was the motor and we fixed it.
AND HERE WE GO THE FINAL PRODUCT:



AND THE MOMENT YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR:


vendredi 14 février 2014

And then we FINALY got started on the antiblock system (thanks Vincent) so at first we thought of putting some form of triangle like thing on the front(as shown below) but we scraped that idea in the end because Vincent came up with a much more logical idea, of just inversing the polarity of the motor by flipping a switch which would be linked to a polarity inverser which in turn would be linked to the motor and the solar panel. We started with some sketches:
Then we realised that we were going to have to weld some cable to the actual switch. And for those who were wondering this is how did it:
 
And in the end it looked like this:
And for any sceptics out there it does work!(insert video)
We still had to figure out a way to fix the switch to the rover and a way to flip the switch when it did eventually hit the wall. this is what we came up with:
Yes those are cocktail sticks!
What actually happens is the cocktail sticks will hit the wall and flip the switch which is cunningly put trough the cocktail sticks hole. We did put a second cock tail stick in the opposite direction so that the rover can hit a wall one way and then hit another and jus t go back the other way and can now do that for the rest of eternity.
And we decided that this was probably the best system:
So what we did was put the system you saw above (+the second cocktail stick) through the midle of the rover 

Rotation system

At first we were having problems actually finding a way to make the solar panel rotate because we tried to put the panel on 4 retractable poles. We figured that we make one or more poles longer or shorter than the others which would in turn rotate the panel from side to side. But unfortunatly that didn't work for multiple reasons first of all we couldn't fine any retractable poles and secondly we didn't have a way to move them even if we had them (unfortunatly we don't have any photo sof that idea). So after scraping that idea we figured why not go back to basics and just use good old Lego and we do have photos of that so here they are
What we actualy did was incredibly simple we just took a Lego brick which could pivot from side to side. As shown below:
And then we then put a brick that can  pivot upwards and downwards. As shown below:
And then we put a Lego slab on top with little grooves in them so that we could simply slot the pannel in.
To see the final effect just look at the photos above.