Team Alpha
Website
Welcome to the website
Conor Fitz Bilic and Vyshnav Sajeevan built the website. The website is of utmost importance, as it includes all of the technical details as well as the latest news, such as assessment details and project progress.
At first building, a website was ultimately a new experience, and a new skill to be learnt. Hence, a layout was first designed on paper, and extensive research was carried out on website builders. Wix.com was the most popular website builder, which was drawn out from the researches. Thus; the layout made on paper was tested on Wix. The group was happy with the website demo, and hence we proceeded with Wix. During the nascent stages, we were perplexed because of the full range of options available; our idea was to make the website simple and meaningful. However, with time and consistent practise, we got better at designing and in no time, we had created something, which was much more than what we had expected. Our idea of simple evolved into dynamic because of Wix.
The many advantages, which comes with Wix, is its ease of use, and how fast one can create a website. Furthermore, what we felt when using Wix is that it sparks creativity. There are 100’s of high-quality templates to choose from, and every template is unique to one another. Moreover, Wix offers a wide range of fonts, styles, and themes giving the users boundless freedom to design their website.
The flexibility, which Wix offers to its users, is the reason that made our website astounding. However, at certain times, we encountered minor problems while editing and saving texts. We had tried editing a few texts, they would not be saved, and hence we had to do them again, which took quite some time to fix. However, apart from that, the rest was perfectly fine.
During the month of February a decision was made to completely overhaul the website and give it a much cleaner and professional look. The task was simple enough as the old website had a host of information so it was simply the case of transferring it to the new one.
Original
New
As you can see the new website has a much cleaner and engineering based look which is what we as a team were looking for. The website contains all of the required public and private parts that the specification is looking for. There is a home page briefly outlining the project, a team page introducing the team and a bit more about them, a news page, project planning section, information on the ethics and sustainability of the micromouse, a documentation section explaining all the technical work that has gone into the mouse and a blog page in which each member has posted every month without fail.
The website has a very professional login feature (private area) which is only accessible if you are a team member and have the correct login. This allows the upload of information from any one of the team members. See below:
Alongside this the website has a very neat additional feature being a chat system which can be seen in the bottom right of the screenshot of the new website above. This allows viewers of the website who are very interested in the micromouse to have the opportunity to speak to one of the team members about a specific query they have or just to simply talk about the micromouse project. This is a little something that we wanted to add to make the website feel more personal.
The Case
Welcome to the case design section
The case is something that we wanted to make perfect as it needed to reflect the time and effort we put into making the micromouse slick and clean. As you can see there is a trend here of wanting to have the optimally designed website and micromouse.
The initial design of the case was a fairly tall cylindrical design with a ramp of the back of it to hinder other robots when they try to attack ours during combat. After some debating we realised that this was actually a pointless addition as it would not work properly as a defence mechanism as the opposing robots touch bars will still make contact regardless, if anything the ramp would be more of a hindrance as it just created a larger area to hit. Instead we decided to just make a simple circle design that made the micromouse look a lot more professional and gave it a streamlined look, this decision was made after the decision to change the pcb making the robot much more low profile so we thought that the case should also reflect this.
The case comes in three sections, these being two side pieces (front & and back) and one lid. The compartmentalised system means that it makes it a lot easier to access the robot if there are any issues with it. The front and back have two tabs that screw directly into the chassis therefore there are no ugly stuck outplace connections and also means that there are no worries of the case falling off. The lid then further connects the two pieces together; the lid does not require any screws or tabs it simply sits on the inside lip which is 3mm thick. The lid completes the design with a perspex roof which allows you to see into the internals of the micromouse, alongside side it aesthetic appeal it also allows quick and easy access to the micromouse making it extremely practical especially if any repairs need to be made. The only connecting line is the middle dividing line between the front and back but we can overcome this.
The case was being designed using the SolidWorks programme which Conor Fitz-Bilic had previous experience with so he spear headed the design process. The SolidWorks programme is a very advanced CAD software and is widely used within the engineering industry which made it perfect for making the case, especially with all its useful features such as the mirror function. Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances the case could never be made however as a team we are still very happy with what could have been.