Looks great, makes me wish I was still a South Australian. Arena has come a long way, looks like it could handle some powerful little ants
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Remember to trust me, I am an Engineer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp8hvyjZWHs

Evening folks! It's a bit over one week left before our next big fight night! 16th of April, 6pm!

Exciting!!!

With that and the addition of spinning weapons in our little Antweight group in mind, we should all brush up on some rules documentation. This all may seem overkill for such small bots, but please keep in mind that there were a lot of kids at the last event and I feel that safety needs to be the first thing in mind here.
Also with some better safety restrictions and control (such as nominating a referee for each match), this will help work towards making our little group into a great club or league one day.

Here are links for the current rules standard that most other leagues use:
http://sparc.tools/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/SPARC_Robot_Construction_Specifications_v1.0.pdf
http://sparc.tools/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SPARC_Match_Rules_v1.0.pdf
http://sparc.tools/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/SPARC_Tournament_Procedures_v1.0.pdf

All content can be found at: http://sparc.tools/

After reading through the rules however, there are a few minor addendums that might need to be made to accommodate Antweight fighting. I was thinking that we could discuss any addendum ideas at the next fight night.

Good call Chris, I certainly think there are a few things to think about/discuss. First things that come to mind are:
-> making sure spinning weapons have weapon locks (I need to do this for Picobyte - I will do by the 16th)
-> do we nominate referees per match and how do we judge a tie?
-> we've done both round robin and single elimination, I think round robin works well for 5 or less bots, do we want to try double elimination when we have 6 or more? I'm keen for this as it means people aren't screwed by one poor match or unlucky draw
-> how do we want to handle unsticks? (can the arena countdown be paused Chris?)
-> do we want to allow weight bonuses for non-wheeled bots?

Looking forward I'm also curious what people think about using the open-air sportsman rules for 30lb bots, like they have done at Dragon Con for many years. This might make for exciting demos if we can arrange them at events like the Maker Fair without needing a full featherweight arena.

me and Chris have done a little discussing of this at work.
other than safety we mainly discussed how we could work the rounds out to try and minimize a "bad luck round".

my suggestion is to have a single elimination how ever make a match a best of 3 rounds. There will be time to repair between each round.

unsticks have been sorted out. (a pause in the program has been added).
As well as getting rid of the power cable going to the arena is gone to.
A Referee could be nominated before a match.

I am more than happy to be a safety rep. for the events.
I have done some referencing of my scales to the calibrated ones at work as well and is fairly accurate around the 150g.

the open-air sportsman arena for feather weights is a great idea.

I like the idea of the best of three rounds for each elimination match.
But I'm still unsure on what to do in the case of a tie or a round where both bots are left standing at the end of the 3 minutes. Maybe we could just work through all three rounds (no one gets a point in a draw) and have just some overtime if it still works out to be a draw at the end of the 3 rounds?

As far as weight bonuses go, I reckon we allow them and see how it goes. Every rule version that I've looked at from the past decade has allowed them, so there must be some logic to the rule.

The match pause function works well; just push the start button during a fight and the match is paused (with led and sound indication). Push the start button again and the match resumes.

Currently I am building pit boxes, mounted below each pit, to further segregate the bots and their weapons from the spectators. They will detach by sliding a padbolt out and dropping down.

Two updates folks:
- Two removable pit boxes are now complete.
- Plus a new polycarbonate box for testing your spinning weapon bots! (featuring the new and almost complete bot, Shrapnel)

Awesome work Chris! How big is the test box?

250x250x150mm with 3mm polycarbonate and 1.5mm aluminium holding it together

Hey all Saturday isn't far away. 6pm start. So rock up from 5 on.
Hope everyone has there bots ready or almost ready.
Just so everyone knows its at my place again.
We have prizes this time to thanks to bot bitz.

The big question is pizza or bbq?

Also pm me with some numbers of people coming.

Last edited by James2 on Mon Apr 11, 2016 6:46 pm; edited 1 time in total

Are we imposing the size limitations on ants?
My current design sits at about 11cm wide

just weight for now, (will be setting the rest of the rules on Saturday as a group)

Owen has specifically requested pizza for this month

Quick question, how big do we want to to get? and would people be up for public display matches?

Something to think about so we can discuss it over the weekend, its just I have a few contacts in the Adelaide maker community and could rope a few people in and or get us some space at events like Adelaide maker-fair or science alive so we can put on a show

Those were the sort of events I was thinking of. Not sure if it would be best to run demos with full contact insects, or Dragon-con-esque feathers, or both. Certainly stuff to talk about tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I was charging/prepping our bots last night and couldn't resist this group shot. I ... may have a bot building problem ...

I think i have the same problem, just waiting on parts for 4 bots...