TekyInBlack Ltd

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TekyInBlack Ltd Random personal stuff of a retired infrastructure architect, making projects because he can't stop

The latest robot, yellow/white, is now working and tested, with recycled wheels from last years drag racer, the new whee...
04/09/2026

The latest robot, yellow/white, is now working and tested, with recycled wheels from last years drag racer, the new wheels still on their way from China, postage £2.25. This is another line follower, this time using 6 line sensor detectors and two stop/start and radius detectors. Expected top speed is about 6m/s even if the sums say 10m/s. Using an ESP32-S3, the robot learns the course and adapts the speed depending on straights and curve radii. The green robot is intended as a low cost micromouse maze solving robot, target cost under £20 and a lot of DIY. The wall sensor on this is made with a fixed shroud to attempt to improve the wall detection reliability two sensors facing forward to detect walls directly in front and alight the robot in a forward direction, and two looking at walls to the sides . Both have now been functionally tested so now it's just a case of fiddling with software, and trying not to get too distracted which will happen.

This is the sad state of my latest robot. It's mostly ready to go but lacks the wheels it was designed to use so it's ge...
29/08/2026

This is the sad state of my latest robot. It's mostly ready to go but lacks the wheels it was designed to use so it's geometry will be wrong with anything else. I ordered the wheels over a week ago, I got a delivery quickly, of very obviously the wrong wheels. Having arranged to send them back, I ordered the same wheels from elsewhere, at twice the price, only to be sent the wrong wheels again, waiting to send them back. I tried ordering from a specialist supplier, only to be put off by their £25 delivery charge, on a £10 item, though I suspect they'd send me the wrong wheels as well as some suppliers are listing them as 'out of stock'. I await now my £2 wheels from China.

I create lots of small projects and just forget to put them here and have done for some time. So here are a couple of pi...
13/08/2026

I create lots of small projects and just forget to put them here and have done for some time. So here are a couple of pictures of micromouse entrant robots. The first two are homebrew robots and the third is from UKMARS circuit boards.
The yellow one is an experimental line follower which learns the course it's following and gradually increases it's speed to complete a course as fast as possible. The green one is a drag racer which while fast, suffers from instability and hasn't finished a course at full speed yet and otherwise isn't fast enough to do well.
The third one is a standard UKMARS Gemini robot which can run as a line follower or a maze solver. This is a good general purpose robot for learning about the technology and solving puzzles. UKMARS have a website here https://ukmars.org/ These will be on show at Sidmouth Science Festival https://www.sidmouthsciencefestival.org/events/robot-workshop

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