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The 2007 entry in the Florida TSA Electronics and Research competition was the robot Robot Erwin Peary. It was an autonomous robot that is programmed to find north or any other compass direction. Once it finds the proper direction, it will follow that direction indefinitely by making cource corrections. The robot was named after Robert Erwin Peary in honor of being the first person who claimed to reach the North Pole.
The robot uses a Dinsmore 1490 digital compass with outputs of active lows that permit LEDs to light and to drive a PIC microcontroller. Depending upon which of the pins are lows, the program reacts to turn servo motors. The servos are "hacked" so they will turn endlessly rather than stopping at a fixed point. The compass car won first place at the 2007 Florida TSA conference on April 20, 2007 and was a finalist at nationals in June, 2007.
TSA State Entry:
Florida TSA Compass Car
Entry Showing the
Dinsmore 1490 Digital
Compass in White
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| Testing the Circuit on a Breadboard |
Programming a PIC Microcontroller |
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| Florida TSA Display |
Preparing for Nationals |
TSA National Entry:
The team built an entirely new compass car for TSA nationals. The car incorporated a front bumper which permitted the car to react to obstacles in its path. See Video
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| National Entry with Front Bumper |
Rear View |
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| Piezo Buzzers on Bottom Breadboard |
Underside of National Entry |
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| One Side of Dinsmore1490 Digital Compass on Breadboard |
Dinsmore1490 Digital Compass Pins Straddle Center Gap of Breadboard |
National TSA Report
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