Presenting Didactic Duelist 1.5

Last night we almost had another 'bot finished, but the weapon wouldn't spin up, so the first order of business this morning is figuring out why! We had put a 35A reversible ESC in the 'bot and the weapon motor kept just twitching. We hunted out the manual for the ESC and tried to go through the programming steps to calibrate it, and change some settings for a softer start, etc., but nothing helped, and the battery wound up extremely hot! Hit Back after viewing an image.

So we took the reversible ESC out and swapped back in the original 40A single-direction Plush ESC we used last time, and the weapon motor spun up just fine. The design of Didactic Duelist 1.5 isn't really invertible anyhow, so we decided to re-use this ESC.

The Plush ESC is roughly the same size as the 35A reversible one, so we were able to keep the layout the same inside, and added a power light for good measure. We also added a couple of nuts and bolts under the front of the 'bot to stop it from scraping along on the titanium plow.

And so there we go: 2lb 13.4oz - underweight with a couple of ounces to spare, and it's time for a proper test run. Unforuntately the video isn't great, and the 'bot doesn't drive particularly well on our curving driveway, but the drive works, the weapon works, and the 'bot is ready for Motorama!