Inspiration After walking to the engineering building yesterday morning for this makeathon, there was lots of ice still on the pathways around campus. We took this as inspiration to solve a problem we just faced.
What it does A Salter is an automated robot that uses Telus LTE-M along with soft boundries GPS driven to go around pathways and break any ice, disperse salt, and prepare to plow snow in an incoming snowfall
How we built it The first thing we did was cad the tank treads so we could get 3d printing right away. Once we printed 3 of them to ensure good tolerance and fit around the sprocket, we began printing several dozens of them. We then got certified in the machine shop so we could cut wood for the base of our bot. We then made the plow and holes for the hammer. While this was happening on of our teammates was working on the Telus kit so we could have the robot automatically know when to go out and do its duties.
Challenges we ran into At about 15 hours in we realized our drive motors were not strong enough to move the robot. This was abit of a crisis but eventually a fellow hacker came by and told us to checkout the hardware booth as they had just recieved strong gearbox motors. We adapted those new motors to our old wheel hubs and the robot was able to drive great. We had lots of trouble with the azure side of IoT as it is just so complicated it is hard to learn exactly what you need in 24 hours.
Accomplishments that we're proud of We created a fully working, driving robot in less than 24 hours from salvaged parts and things we cadded from scratch. None of us have ever even created a tank tread robot before. We also were proud of the amount of work we got done in 24 hours, we made use of every minute we could to create the best product possible.
What we learned We learned alot about how powerful azure is. We have been afraid to use it because of the sheer complexity, but this hackathon forced us to use it and we have learned so much about it that it actually is such a useful tool to have for the future, with all its capabilites. Mechanically we learned how to queue prints and work effeciently to have the printers running 24/7 with no down time.
What's next for A salter Having the GPS automatically trace google maps pathways and sidewalks. Currently the Telus GPS doesnt work here because it is not reliable, so we could not test that functionality.
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