I have seen lot’s of discussion on the forum about how to be able to retrieve the minibot after the match. You can use the following circuit with 2 household 2 way light switches (the one’s that let you control a light from 2 places) http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/3628/minibotcircuit.png
In the state the is seen in the diagram, the robot is off. when the robot is deployed, the Hostbot will flip switch1 which will turn on the motors to allow the minibot to climb.
When the minibot reaches the top of the pole, some mechanism will need to push on switch number 2 which will in effect turn the minibot off and let your monibot gracefully roll down the pole. As a bonus, this configuration will short out the 2 lead of your motors when it is off which will effectively create a break on the motors that will not let your robot gain much velocity on the way down. It will slowly slide All the way down the pole.
Please let me know if there is any clarification needed for this issue.
but, it does not make a difference which switch is used to deploy and to stop. depending on the way the motor is wired, one switch makes it go up if triggered first, while the other makes it go down if triggered.
Although we have yet to start the minibot, I’ve been thinking about using a layout like this to control the motors. I quickly sketched it up to share:
S1 is the “pole” switch, which is activated while the minibot is touching the pole.
S2 is a switch that is activated at the top of the run. It disconnects power & shunts the motors together, slowing them down.
S2 is tricky, though. It needs to be a SPDT toggle switch, not just momentary. Also, it needs to be “break before make” style, otherwise you’d short the battery & blow the fuse.
