
Show HN: BattleBots Made by 5th to 8th Graders in Robotics Club - 20years
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/codedigs/build-a-battlebot-controlled-with-a-ps2-controller-fbc033
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DevOrc
My high school robotics team is working on something similar with Raspberry
Pi's. There is not much documentation but you can check out the code here:
[https://github.com/InspireRobotics/sumobots](https://github.com/InspireRobotics/sumobots)

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20years
This is awesome! You guys are using far superior materials :)

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chromaton
This is pretty cool for teaching Arduino, but most fighting robot builders on
a budget use HobbyKing/Turnigy remote control systems. These are purpose built
for this kind of thing, quite reliable, and cheap, especially if you wait for
a sale.

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20years
I was able to get the PS2 controllers at a discount at $8 per controller. If
you can link me to better and more affordable ones, I would love to see them.
Keep in mind this was self-funded, so we had to make a lot of compromises to
keep things somewhat affordable.

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chromaton
I use one similar to this: [https://hobbyking.com/en_us/hobby-king-2-4ghz-4ch-
tx-rx-v2-m...](https://hobbyking.com/en_us/hobby-king-2-4ghz-4ch-tx-
rx-v2-mode-2.html) . About $28 and includes a transmitter, joysticks, and the
receiver. Most fighting robot builders using this setup don't need an Arduino,
breadboard, sensor shield, any additional boards or configuration on the
transmitter side, etc.

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20years
Thanks for sharing this. That would have cut down on costs for sure.

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chromaton
Stop by the Facebook Combat Robotics group to ask questions.

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GeneticGenesis
Wow what a terrible website. The GDPR advertising opt-out:

1) Renders at the top of the page when the page is loaded, then because this
link contains an anchor scrolls you to that anchor, while the entire screen is
greyed out

2) Your behavior is actively being tracked by default, every click, mouse move
is sent to a third party.

3) The GDPR opt out process fails every time.

Solid violations of GDPR, well done.

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20years
It is published on the Arduino website. I will send your feedback to them.

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ptah
the cookie permission popup is impossible to close

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bigDICK
I'm a little jealous if I'm honest. I'm going to guess that the junior high I
went to still doesn't have the resources for a club like this.

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yardie
I started a First Team at our son's school. It was challenging. Raising the
money to buy the kits and equipment was the easiest part despite our school
board not having anything budgeted to it. Beyond myself, we could not get any
of the other parents to commit any time to it. So we struggled and eventually
collapsed. The other parents were treating it as a free afterschool program.
20 kids, 3 volunteers (1 parent, 2 teachers) and not a lot of time to teach
FLL and programming concepts.

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otoburb
>> _Beyond myself, we could not get any of the other parents to commit any
time to it._

Thank you for your efforts. I was thinking of starting a team myself in a
couple of years when my children are older, and have seen other fledgling STEM
programs struggle with the same issue.

Was the primary issue that parents didn't commit time at home working on the
projects, or that the parents didn't commit enough time after-school? I've
seen more struggles with the latter issue, and the only solution we are
converging on is strictly limiting the number of participants to a more
manageable size (e.g. 8-10 kids, starting with 1 grade).

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yardie
As far as I know First isn't really a take home project thing. The kits were
in the school computer lab. So it was strictly after school. At the end of the
first year we decided that 10 students would be the limit (5 teams, 2 per) for
the upcoming school year. Sadly, the afterschool teacher that was driving it
transferred to another site. And, as a volunteer, I can only provide time and
mentoring, not leadership.

