It doesn’t feel like I spent three hours on this project.

I think I’m mostly finished with the first version of my website! This is my first time using html and css, so I was learning that as well.
This is a website for a kids magic show. I don’t know all the information yet, but most of it is on there.
Color theme is pastel pink, purple, and blue.

4wd with belts is hard.

I think most if not all of the time here was spent working on trying to get 4wd to work.

• The first belt I tried had gear teeth as the belt tooth and they did not mesh around the turn, as well as being way to small.
• The second one had self-designed timing belt teeth on it (following a tutorial) and it still did not mesh.
• Then I changed the design and it didn’t fit again, but the new belt and the old pulley DID mesh!
• So then I had a belt that did mesh but was too tight; I could barely get it on and the motors didn’t turn when the belt was on.
• Then I made it larger and it turned only when going fast, but not slow.
• After that, I asked in the combat-robotics Slack channel and got an idea to cut out milk jug caps for friction reducing washers. That made it work when going slow but not when going fast. (Yes, this is opposite of what it did before.)

My conclusion is that the regular bolts make too much friction and when the shoulder bolts get here (AFTER the tournament) hopefully the belts will work. Sigh.

Fixed and ready to ship!

I moved the .exe file into the Releases section of my GitHub repository (which was the requested change) and typed some nonsense into the README and deleted it so enough time was tracked to post another devlog. I couldn’t tell how much time that was,(because the red text was hard to read and the number was on top of the other buttons) but it was less than five minutes.

Ready to ship!

The GitHub repository is finished, the Python script is compiled into a .exe, an icon for the .exe is ready, I am ready to ship!
I also made a couple changes to the code like not closing the terminal immediately (for the .exe file type) and adding the original weight as well as the new weight to the printed text.

Finished! (Mostly!)

I changed the code to use PyInputPlus for input validation and upgrading the user experience. I also added more colors so that the program is no longer a wall of text looking back through it. The colors also will be another way of noticing what input is wanted, either a weight unit, volume unit, or number.
I still need to finish the GitHub repository and turn the script into an executable before I will be ready to ship, but I’m almost there.

Mr. Clown is pretty much finished!

I had a little bit of trouble with finding a battery pack to power the Pico. The first one I tried was old and restarted when the servo tried to move. The second one timed out during a wait, but I changed the code to start when a makeshift button is pressed instead of waiting a set number of seconds.
In addition to adding the two wires that start the code when connected, I:

• Wrote the firmware for Mr. Clown
• Figured out the MicroPico extension for sending the code to the Raspberry Pi
• Added a cardboard box to hold the extra clown nose

I also decided what I am going to say during each section of the trick (the patter) and exactly which sleights I am going to use to make the clown nose disappear.

I did the first drive test of Ace of Sharks 3.1 and had some fun throwing beanie babies around!

The drive works amazing. With previous 2wd versions, driving backwards would not work well at all. This 4wd version fixes that issue, and backwards works just as well as forwards.
I also began redesigning a logo for stickers to hand out at the tournament! I like having one with an image of my robot on it, so I got that one redesigned from v2 Ace of Sharks.
I had to use some regular M3 bolts instead of the shoulder bolts for the wheel axels, but I think it will be good enough for the tournament!

The code is working!

The terminal has a user input given amounts and weights and the desired amount and weight unit, then spits out the weight of the new amount. Colored text makes it more readable and noticeable when something changes in the prompts.

So when I went to order the shoulder bolts off Amazon, shipping takes a couple weeks and they will not get here in time for the tournament. Sigh. I did find a listing on Home Depot for regular bolts that might work (or at least be good enough for now).
Hopefully I can find something that works for the tournament.
I also began making the GitHub repository for Ace of Sharks and wrote a README.

Finalized PCB and case design and added a spot to attach the OLED display or the rotary encoder. They both use the same pins, so I can only have one at a time and neither is currently in the firmware, but both are options for the future! I am excited that my first PCB is ready!

It works! (Mostly!)

There are a few silly bugs (like putting the screw pass through hole on the part it should screw into and vise versa) but it is assembled and can lift an old chassis iteration! I fixed the bugs in the CAD file and added some more decorations to the top plate. I was surprised at how few bugs there were in the first iteration. I have not tested the 4wd part yet because I don’t have the shoulder bolts yet, but that will come soon.

The hardware part of Mr. Clown is done! The cardboard outside is made of a Cheez-it box and spaghetti box. It uses two micro servos and a Raspberry Pi Pico for the electronics. I still need to figure out how to control the micro servos in micropython. The tutorial uses an Arduino programming in C.

I think the firmware is finished!

The QMK docs were difficult for me to understand, and I ended up following parts of a bunch of other tutorials. Compiling the firmware took longer and longer every time I added something else. Eventually, it took 55 minutes to compile.
Instead of trying to figure out how to use the OLED display, I added seven LEDs in a 7-segment display orientation and used that to display the layer number! I also designed some decorations in Inkscape to put on the top plate of the case.

Before I started the 3D printing the first robot parts, I discovered three four important things I forgot to add in the CAD. 1. I forgot screw holes to attach the top plate to the chassis! 2. I discovered that the gear on the shark arm was intersecting with the top plate. 3. There should be a wall around the gear inside the chassis to keep wires out of it. While writing this, I realized that I need a slot in the wall to have room for the servo wire.

Five weeks before the next tournament, I decided to start over from scratch and completely redesign Ace of Sharks.

Why?

Since Ace of Sharks is now four wheel drive, it doesn’t matter whether the drive motors are in the front or the back of the robot. According to the RioBotz book, you want the center of mass as far back on the robot as possible. Reversing the position of all the electronics will move the heavy servo to the back of the robot and do just that. Instead of trying to do this and fix all the stuff that will break in the current Fusion design, it was easier to just start over from scratch. Next up: 3D print the parts and see what obvious problems I missed! — Thank you @IvyMycelia for telling be about Markdown!

I made Ace of Sharks a four wheel drive robot! I modified a wheel hub from Printables to have a pulley for a belt on it, but Fusion did not like working with a mesh converted to a solid and I could not finish it. So I had to start over with Fingertech twist hubs (files free on their website) and added the pulley to the twist part of the twist hubs. When I was making the belt, I was doing a bunch of math to get the size and it turned out way too big. Then I realized the number I calculated was the circumference and I was using it as the diameter. That fixed it! Next, I will need to print out the parts and see what problems I missed in the CAD.

I made more room in the back of the robot for pinewood derby car weights (to make the robot drive better on two wheels) then changed the robot to have four wheels (which eliminates the need for the weights). I modified the washer part of a wheel hub on Printables to have a pulley for a belt to drive the front wheels from the back wheels. The file imported into Fusion way bigger than it should have been, which made me do it over twice when I realized. Found an Amazon listing for shoulder bolts which will be axels for the front wheels. I also modified the front attachments to touch the floor with the new wheels.

Moved the PCB edge to flush with the edge of the USB-C port, added the corresponding hole in the case, and added some text to the case. I also began the compiling process and ran into a whole bunch of errors and missed semicolons…
In the code that I am testing, all but one of the errors is fixed! I don’t understand the correct syntax for switching layers, and code in a different file is a ‘statement with no effect.’

Coded all the keys for the macropad! It is my first time coding in C, so we’ll see how many semicolons I missed later… I used several other tutorials that were not linked to in Hack Club guides.
Setting up QMK
Layers
Macros