A New Idea to Rescue My Pi Wars Entry

So I need a new idea for my Pi Wars robot. Something small that will be quick to build. I am a big fan of small robots, although it can be challenging to fit everything in the limited space. For me the value of Pi Wars is that it pushes me to learn and advance. I've never really enjoyed the competitive aspect of things, but I really enjoy pushing myself to improve. So I started thinking about building on the ideas I have been working on using a Raspberry Pi communicating to a MicroPython board with the Pimoroni Yukon, but shrinking things down a little. I have wanted to build a robot with Mechanum wheels for a while now. Mechanum wheels have little rollers mounted at a 45 degree angle all around them, and by driving them in different directions it is possible to make a robot move in any direction without turning the body of the robot to face in that direction. I had all the parts I needed in my 'things I bought in Pimoroni sales but have not had time to use yet' boxes. So I swapped the Yukon board for the smaller Motor2040 board which supports 4 independently controllable encoder motors. Encoder motors are another thing on the long list of topics I have wanted to explore but hadn't found the time yet. So I laser cut a pair of acrylic plates with mounting holes for motors, a Raspberry Pi and a Pimoroni Motor2040 board. I already had some motor mounting brackets I had 3D printed on the Makespace resin printer. 

I have a robot! Albeit a test chassis to develop some code on rather than a final Pi Wars entry. I had been designing a case for the new Raspberry Pi 5, so I just mounted that on the chassis. Another step into new learning as the power requirements for the Pi 5 for mobile robotics raise more problems I wanted to solve. The Raspberry Pi 5 also requires running the Bookworm version of Raspberry Pi OS, which means python libraries not included in the apt packaging system can only be installed into a virtual environment. So this would push me to solve the problems of configuring my robot code to run on boot inside a virtual environment. So I will be learning a lot! Now I just need to find some time to work on the code.