Lessons for Future teams
- Start to integrate related systems as soon as possible
- Navigation will be the trickiest part - focus on the sensors AND working out your desired motor behavior
- Arduinos need more than 5V to behave properly
- When you're having a problem, always check that your power supply and ground wires are all connected
- Rewiring and reorganizing wires is time consuming. Build your circuits using long wires from the start, and keep the wires well organized when you start to build your bot.
- Secure bumpers well - glue is not enough, they will shear off the glue in enough hits
- Include code to restart your bot if it overshoots it's goal and hits the wall instead
- Most problems have both a hardware and a software solution. Don't forget about the software solution.
- Be careful with naming directions. We used "left, right, front, back" in our code but Winklebot reversed directions so left/right was counter-intuitive- clockwise/counterclockwise may be less confusing.