pic: 1771 Unveils T-shirt cannon at region championship football game

[martin417]

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[daltore]

Looks like you're using a red flashlight to simulate muzzle flash, am I right? If so, very nice, I like it. Is it triggered with a digital output when the cannon goes off, or is it just always on?

[ttldomination]

What's really...*interesting*...is that this game was against Peachtree Ridge High School, which just happens to be where my team is based out of. .

Plans are currently underway to build a t-shirt cannon, but it definitely won't be ready before this year.

[MikeReilly]

Muzzle flash is a loop of synced red LEDS in the muzzle, and adding a little baby powder doesn't hurt.

We'd love to share with anyone, especially our neighboring teams!

While the team worked pretty hard on this, we once again learned so much from our Woody Flowers Award-winning mentor, Martin Wilson from Meggitt Training Systems. Go to www.fatsinc.com to see why he's the perfect man for this job.

[mikelowry]

Its actually a ring of red LEDs set into the end of the barrel. And Its just hooked up to a spike relay thats set to turn on when we fire.

[Akash Rastogi]

haha I love the use of the spare turret and shooter hood from 09. very nice

[nighterfighter]

I dont know if you can see it on here, but we also attached a ring of LED's around the bot, and I programmed in a few patterns to do various circuits, and we used the pneumatics bumper for that (not our pneumatics actually. Haha)

[daltore]

Sweet, mind if we steal that idea when we build ours (it's quite original, and I wouldn't want to infringe on its uniqueness)?

[MikeReilly]

Take a look at a couple of videos as well:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ngr1771

[martin417]

Originally Posted by MikeReilly

While the team worked pretty hard on this, we once again learned so much from our Woody Flowers Award-winning mentor, Martin Wilson from Meggitt Training Systems. Go to www.fatsinc.com to see why he's the perfect man for this job.

I did help with the cannon and lighting, but the students did all the coding and designed and built everything else. As always, they did a fantastic job. We started talking about this project the first week of October, so I am proud of what they got done in just five weeks, using almost all leftover parts we had laying around. All they had to buy were the wheels, some sprockets, and the Lexan covering.

Originally Posted by daltore

Sweet, mind if we steal that idea when we build ours (it's quite original, and I wouldn't want to infringe on its uniqueness)?

Anyone is free to use any ides they see fit. If anyone has questions, I'll be happy to answer.

The cannon uses two Bimba 2 1/2" X 8" long 200 PSI stainless steel reservoirs (a little larger than the kit reservoirs) and a differential pressure valve like a potato gun This site has a good discussion of the theory of this valve. Huge reservoir volumes are not necessary, as can be seen in this early test video. The shirt easily cleared the goalpost from the 35 yard line on the hash marks.

The muzzle flash Is a ring of 35 CREE superbright red LEDs in a series parallel arrangement (5 LEDs in series with a 150 ohm restister, 7 of these strings in parallel). Timing is important to get the proper effect. The cannon valve is activated for 100 milliseconds, and the LED ring is illuminated for 100 milliseconds, starting when the valve cycle ends.

The light show on the base is just 8 bright white LED modules hooked up to the cRIO pneumatics module. The LEDS draw less current than a pneumatic valve so it works just fine. Our programmers came up with several different light show patterns that are activated by different joystick buttons.

The thing under the muzzle is just decoration. We had a three light LED module and some stainless steel tubing, so the kids stuck it under the muzzle as a kind of simulated sighting device. It kind of reminds me of the triple laser sight from the Predator movie.

Here is a picture of the team and robot.

Note the wearable drivers' station (the kids came up with that on their own) it has a battery and router in a backpack, with the DS and joystick carried out front

[daltore]

Nice recycling of old parts. I think our teacher wishes we could do more of that, he's getting tired of stuff piling up in his classroom.

Yeah, I like the DS. Our team has done something similar the past couple of years. The first time, we just mounted the entire operator interface (2007 control board, complete with 3/4' x 3' plywood) on a pieces of 1"x2" aluminum tubing, drilled out some holes, and stuck it on an old drum harness we were permanently loaned by the band... For our demo robot (adapted from our 2008 competition robot), we mounted the controller and radio to a piece of corrugated plastic, and used a gamepad to drive it like a video game, attracts a little more interest from the young crowd that way.

The main thing that strikes me about toting the 2009 control system around is its much higher power usage. We got some little 12v 1.5Ah lead-acid batteries for our OI's, and the old IFI control system could run a couple hours off of those things, while the new one drained it in about 30 minutes.

Portable driver stations for the win! And, of course, long-range pneumatic cannons, well-timed special effects sequences, and good code.