Robot maneuvering logistics

[lexienightshade]

Hi, if anyone here is a veteran at Robot Tour we could really use some help.

This is our first year doing the event and we're currently using a pre-made base with a micro:bit and Crickit for the "brains," coding it using MakeCode. We're currently able to get it to make simple forward/back movements and turns, using simple "wait __ seconds" commands to control how long it goes in any given direction. The issue here is that this is pretty inconsistent and not a great approach for navigating the actual competition track, so our next idea was to try and control it with a motor encoder and photo interrupter.
However, we're having a really difficult time finding tutorials or explanations of how to wire/code these materials with what we're already using (there *are* tutorials, they're just mostly using Arduino or similar, and it isn't really viable for us to change to that right now.) If anyone has suggestions--either for documentation on that approach or a different direction that would work better with our current materials--we'd love to hear it.

[brian9640]

Reading through some of the documentation, I recommend you look at different controller. I found several warnings about the MicroBit and Crickit not being supported by different softwares. This would explain why you are having issues finding documentation. I could only find poor documentation on the Circkit. The only documentation shows in the inputs on the Circkit to be general purpose I/O. These do not work well with encoders as these can be too slow to capture all the encoder pulses. Sorry I could not be more helpful.

[Serratus-Anterior]

I've also had similar issues about inconsistency in my robot, but I found that after a lot of testing (3 hours of testing or so), the timing for the movements becomes pretty consistent, or at least, consistent enough for the event!

There are a lot of variables that can affect your robot's consistency in movement, such as how clean your wheels are, the battery charge, the friction between wheel and axle...

But if you have a super fancy encoder, you could use that too!