School project - Colour sorter bot

[timpattinson]

I made this robot with my father for a school project It sorts different coloured balls and places them on moveable coloured patches


Comments/ideas welcome

[jojoguy14]

First off, I LOVE the idea of a color sorter where you can change where the areas are. Kudos to you for that! I just want to suggest a few things. First, why do you have to do all of that stop and go stuff? Why can't you just turn until red/blue/yellow/black/green is detected. That way, you can mix up the ORDER and POSITION. Just that suggestion and you'll be AWESOME!

Great job!

jojoguy10

[timpattinson]

Thanks, I am doing the stop and go stuff so the robot arm has time to stop wobbling before the reading is taken as the colour sensor reading are used to find the position of the coloured patches. I will experiment and try to make the delay as small as possible. I might also see if i can program it so it moves continuously until it sees a colour and then moves backwards and averages it's position normally

[jojoguy14]

Oh, ok. That makes sense. How bad is the accuracy when it wobbles? Pretty bad? Maybe you can use the "Motor" block (not the "Move" block) and set motor power so that it will go at a constant speed. Maybe that might help you with the wobbling. Or, instead of making the motor "Brake" have it "Coast". That will limit jerking, but if you go to fast, it will over shoot it.

These are just some suggestions. I hope they're helpful!

jojoguy10

[timpattinson]

I was experimenting with using the coast option but found that every four or so moves it would move almost double what it should have This was because of the automatic error correction mechanism and it could be fixed by disabling error correction and slightly adjusting the distance that the motor moves
Back then I had a deadline and time was running out. But now i'm in the holidays so i can work to make it faster and better
ps Thanks for the suggestions
Tim