Automated foosball table

The antishaker is finally working again, using the new calibration. It has been improved to work with subpixel precision. Also, for a long time it was known to compensate too little compared to the found ball position. This has been fixed, it seems, by multiplying the found shakiness by about 1.1.

Measurements have been made, showing that the found ball and man positions were slightly off in every second picture. This is due to the coarseness of the u and v channels. Fixed by adding or subtracting a value for every second scan picture to the found position.

A rather simple DefenseAttack mode has been implemented. It tries to move the man around the ball and shoot. Nothing more, nothing less. It works ok in the simulator but could be a lot smarter.

Various updates for the MCs were implemented. The rotation MC software lacked precision, because our regul algorithm didn’t work when the precision was set below 30 ticks-+ (1000 ticks = 2pi). The motor was oscillating around the wanted position if the precision was set lower. This has been fixed now, (with a nasty hack), simply shifting the regul results 3 bits down, when wanted position is less than 30 ticks away.

Also another problem was fixed. We noticed that the motors heated even though they weren’t in use.

When they weren’t in use the MC software set the engine voltages at 128. But tests showed that the zero voltage wasn’t 128 for the motors, in fact, they were all different, but within 128 +- 5. As a result a fix was implemented that turns the power off completely (PWM_OFF) if the motor voltage is within 128+- 15 because the rods won’t move for voltages closer to 128 value anyway.

Now the motors are nice & cool (when they aren’t in use).

The test results are attached  (more…)