On the season 10 show, the contestants had a 450 pound budget, which works out to a bit over $800. I could buy quite a bit of scrap at Pick N Pay Less for that much...

Perhaps we should set the budget when we pick the challenge - some ideas will cost less than others?

was watching tons of rube goldberg machine videos on youtube this arvo. that could be a cool challenge. each team has to make a rube goldberg device and include some kind of specified junk that has to be scrounged by the teams.

get some randoms to judge the best one.

dunno just throwing stuff out there. thought it might be cools
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That sounds like a worthy idea - post up some of your fave videos!

Perhaps we can modify the concept to be bigger, louder and generally funnier?

OK i'm getting a bit sick and tired of bots, next beetle's gonna probably be a wedge, as with feather. But i'm keen with this... Has anyone had any more thoughts? More than happy to put my hoard of robot bits to 'alternative' uses.
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quote:

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Originally posted by dyrodium:
OK i'm getting a bit sick and tired of bots, next beetle's gonna probably be a wedge, as with feather. But i'm keen with this... Has anyone had any more thoughts? More than happy to put my hoard of robot bits to 'alternative' uses.

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I have a feeling that Rube Goldberg machines would be either very fail or very boring o build. To get everything to work just right, every step has to be done perfectly, which means endless testing. That OK go clip took a large team and WAY more time than we have to make an excellent but short film clip - do we have either the resources or the patience?

I want to see maximum bang for my time & buck, so something that involves brute force and ignorance seems ideal. I'm willing to dial back on ignorance and ratchet up the brute force if required!

Its been in discussion for quite a few months - do we want to short-list 3 to 5 ideas?

I don't really care much for the idea either. I'd love to instead do something eg that involves huge drops or terrain challenges, maybe even a UAV challenge, Covelly baths around the corner would be perfect, concrete sidewalls and deep calm ocean.
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UAV may have a bunch of hoops to jump though with the regulators in your state if done legit.
might get around a lot of it if you go to a model aircraft airfield and program via remotes. Last time i checked however a lot of them had a big hatred of 2.4ghz
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quote:

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Originally posted by seanet1310:
UAV may have a bunch of hoops to jump though with the regulators in your state if done legit.

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only reason i made a point of it was a friend at uni did a presentation on uav today and a large point was the issues and crap with regulations with testing UAV's.
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I recall that in Sydney, an ordinary RC plane becomes a UAV the moment you put a camera on it, then the government want something like $10K for a license

I don't see how any regulations limit an RC sized ground UAV though...

After two pages and several months, its time to short-list ideas. after reading back through the thread, the following ideas seem popular:

* Medieval siege weapons: could be based on distance, accuracy, rate of fire, or all three.

* EV race, could be speed or endurance

* UAV, either remote controlled or autonomous. This could also incorporate bomb disposal or fire fighting UAV IMHO, fire fighting might be more of a challenge

* Behemoth bottle rockets - harder than it sounds

* pumpkin chucking - kind of like option one, but with veges

For all options the machines will have to be transportable and follow the general format of the TV series.

find a quarry and have buggy races, best time wins?
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Possibly a bit large to transport? Anything we build needs to be movable in a van or smaller vehicle. It could unfold or assemble into something larger, but if we cannot move it about, the machine will be much harder to build or use.

Glen's suggestion for Nar Karts is probably a good size, although I think the format is a bit limiting. Perhaps we can invent a 'Super Nar Kart' for the competition. Did someone say "Etek"?

Let's keep in mind that whatever we build its a single-use device - if it lasts more than a day, that's a bit of a bonus, but not required.

Narkarts or similar allows for too much advantage to budget, not everyone can pull an etek out of their arse *except glen*
My vote is for smaller single purpose machines for sure, like you suggested bomb disposal, or navigation/ search and retrieval missions. Nothing autonomous, we should stick to what we know best which is RC or similar. Anything which can be made from cheap materials is great, scrap or pvc tubes/ tube steel etc. I'll do a post with my 5 top ideas after some thought, but whatever we do, we should film it and edit it into a mini youtube series!
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