Bumblebee

Bumblebee was built for the Fire fighting contest.  He was a team entry with me, my brother Robert, and my sister Jessica.  He uses an HC811E2 with 2k EEPROM internal, and programmed in WCC11. (The board was hand-built)

    Bumblebee also had a Lego RCX on him.  The original plan was to have the RCX do everything, but, the Lego motors were too fast, and we didn't have much time to play around with gears (we started building him 5-days before the contest!).  So all the RCX did was turn on the fans when it was told to! (I ran out of L293D H-bridges)

    Well anyway, Bumblebee used one GP2D05 IR sensors with the same type of bumpskirt as Gandalf's.  He is an oval shape and three layers (very top layer is smaller than the others).  A UV tube is used for detecting the candle.  He uses two servos for drive motors.

    Now, Bumblebee uses an HC11 to navigate the maze, find a candle, and go up to it.  The HC11 then sends a signal to the RCX via an LED telling the RCX to turn on the fans.  The RCX then turns a motor, which pulls on a line, which flicks a knife switch!  The knife switch is then the pwr. On/Off switch for the fans!  Why go to all this trouble when I could have just used the HC11 without the RCX???  Well, it was kind of neat to have two brains talking to each other.

He blew the candle out 2 out of 3 times, and took 6'th place!

Here is Bumble Bee, you can see the UV tube, and the two fans which were used to blow out the candle. The main electronics are right under the bee decoration. You can also see the bump skirt.

Here's a side view. You can see the hand built HC11 board, and also you can see some of the indicator LED's, and one of the IR sensors.

Right now we are working on getting him to go faster for next year's contest!