Conor's March Blog

During March there were some large changes to the micromouse. There was a complete overhaul of the design of the mouse, as a team we decided to create a new PCB which includes not only obstacle avoidance but also white line following. This design change made the mouse much more low profile and aesthetically pleasing whilst improving its performance with the addition of two more LDRs to increase its accuracy when following white lines. Headway with the case started to be made as we decided to just make a simple circular design with three compartments to allow it to be assembled and disassembled quickly along with a perspex roof so that we can see the core of the mouse. I started to make good progress making this on the CAD system SolidWorks and ideas started to become reality. Alongside this the website was also continually being updated and was looking clean and full of detail. Unfortunately the second half of March took a turn for the worse, due to unforeseen circumstances work on the micromouse had to be stopped with only half of the PCB being populated and the rest of the mouse had be taken apart to be reassembled on to the new streamlined chassis. I still managed to convey the work that I had completed by the means of drawing, for example I drew out the case design with detailed annotations to give website viewers a feel for what would have been.

The team however has still remained strong and persevered in these challenging times, we now communicate with the medium of WhatsApp which we are all very active on and have planned to have zoom meetings in the forthcoming weeks. I continue to make good headway with the website whilst we all work together on completing the documentation to the highest standard possible with the information we have at our disposal. Unfortunately we are missing a lot of resources to support our designs of work we had done since the completion of obstacle however with the use of hand drawings we can overcome this. Overall the team is still performing well and we have come together to produce a great website even in these challenging times.