The big thing I did this week was starting work on my Micromouse project. I started with modeling the maze the robot will traverse. I want to build a Micromouse to the half-size spec, so each cell is 9cm. I’m only making a 12x12 maze, though. The maze is easily reconfigurable, so I should only need to cut/print one set of parts and they can then be used for infinite different mazes.
I also began figuring out what hardware I want in my Micromouse. I originally wanted to use a Raspberry Pi Pico, but I’m not so sure anymore. I’ve been having trouble getting the BNO055 9-axis accelerometer to work with it. I could use a different IMU, but I have the feeling that I’ll have similar problems with all the other hardware I’ll end up using. The Pi Pico is a really great microcontroller, except for the fact that nothing supports it properly. I’ll probably just find a different microcontroller to use.
In the beginning part of the week, I helped William Tseng clean the water jet cutter. It hadn’t been cleaned in… longer than it’s been at the shop, and together we managed to shovel out quite a few 5-gallon buckets worth of abrasive. We were shoveling out far more than just the garnet we use at the shop, there were lots of other materials in there, most likely from previous owners.