Well, we had a pretty successful meeting last night (monday). Lots of
people turned out for the paintball robot discussions.

This email is going to be long, so sit back.

We decided to move forward with the paintball idea, rather than lasers. I
hope that you laser supporters can get behind the paintball idea... because
standing in front of it would be a good way to get a welt. <grin>

We split into 3 teams, so we'll have 3 robots at the first competition.
Some people expressed concern with the August deadline, so we'll push it
back to September. Is Sept. 8th/9th or Sept. 15/16th better for everyone?
Either is fine by me.. I don't have a life anyhow.

Laz may have a great spot for the competition. Its an outdoor hockey rink,
with boards up. The robots will be limited so that they can't fire
paintballs above vertical, so boards around the arena should work well. I
still recommend eye googles. All robots will be tested before the
competition to prove that they won't fire upwards. There also was some talk
about a standard paintball net arena... we'll have to check to see what it
costs to rent it. I'll be posting more details on the arena soon... ie:
obstacles, size, etc...

Laz also offered up motors for the robots, so we won't have to blow $60+
dollars getting these things moving. The teams that need them can arrange
with Laz to pick them up. They are similar to windshield/power window
motors. He has either 12V or 24V versions, and they are apparently pretty
efficient... in the under 4A range or something Laz?

The playing field will either be flat grass or pavement, so design around
that. <grin> I'm pro 4-wheel base, either 4 wheel drive or 2 wheel drive,
doesn't matter. A 4 wheel base will be more stable on grass.

Speaking of bases, I'd strongly recommend that the teams have their base
(wheels, motors and platform) finished or almost done for the next meeting
in a month. Wait any longer than that, and you'll be scrambling at the end
to get the hardware done and have no time for software.

I think that the West and East teams will be using the Atmel mega103 chip
on the STK300 evaluation board for the brains of the robots. Atmel handed
out free kits a couple months back, and we've been waiting to use these
babies for something. 4 Mips, lots of I/O, A/D onboard, 128K of flash and
4k of SRAM. The eval. board has space for 32k more SRAM, and if you don't
mind using banks, you can add a whole lot more. For you guys in the
Downtown group, I'm not sure what you guys are thinking. Somebody had a
JStamp kit there. (btw - check out http://www.ibutton.com/TINI/index.html
if you are into Java). If the downtown guys want, Chris L. have a spare
STK300 that he is willing to donate to you guys. It'll save bucks, and we
have C and basic compilers for it. No java though. ;-)

The robots will have IR flashers on them to aid the other robot in finding
them. We'll have a standard design that everyone must adhere to. We'll also
have a design for a detector. You are free to do whatever sort of detection
that you can come up with though. As well as the standard design for the
transmitter, we'll also have rules on where and how many of these sensors
need to be on a bot.

Speaking of standards, the guns will also have a standard height limit. The
bot can be any size or height, but the gun must be between 1 and 2 feet off
the ground. If anyone has any concerns with these restrictions, let me know
right away. I'm hoping to have the majority of the standards rules put
together by next weekend. Would anyone like to give me a hand with that?

Right now we've got 7 guys in the West team, 5 guys in the Downtown team,
and 4 guys in the East team. I guess there are lots of guys living in
Nepean/Kanata. I'm not too familiar with the guys in the downtown team, but
the east team has some pretty strong members in it. They'd be good guys to
learn from, plus I wouldn't mind seeing a couple more guys in either of
those teams. If there are some loners out there that want to build a robot
by themselves, or with a friend, go for it! The more robots the merrier.

You teams should be getting together maybe once a week to hash things out.
BTW - who will be organizing things for the Downtown team?

Team members at this point:
West: Aaron, Martin, Jean-Guy, Andrew D., Attila, Chris, Guy
Downtown: Jason, Sebastian, Luc, Yan, Gordon
East: Laz, Stephane, Ken, Andrew

I hope I got all those names right. Let me know if anything is wrong. I
know that we have a couple guys that couldn't make the meeting, so you guys
should speak up so we can get you into a group.

Did I mention that you should have a base done for the next meeting? <grin>

I know I'm forgetting some details, but this email is way too long.

Aaron