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Subject: 
Re: LEGO Powered Boat Race
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.boats, lugnet.robotics
Followup-To: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:59:59 GMT
Viewed: 
3437 times
  
In lugnet.announce, Michael Huffman wrote:

The challenge was then thrown out for GFLUG members to construct
a floating vehicle from LEGO that will be able to maneuver across
a pool using LEGO-only power.

Cool. Although since the festival takes place at Downtown Disney, I think you
really should have had a race across the entire lake. Serenity could handle it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ7gQdt7Cu8

And I've got the 2.0 version (using two blue hulls... and mounting a camera that
can view above or below water) all built (around here, unfortunately, the water
is starting to freeze).

* Always remember try out your boat in water before the event.

Further note: the center of mass is an important concept, as is the center of
boyancy... and they're not the same thing :).

* Water-proof your electronics!  Can't stress this enough.

Or, since I'm not sure there's a true all-LEGO way of doing this... make *darn*
sure it won't sink. One potentially helpful almost-within-your-rules suggestion?
Fill the boat hulls with styrofoam. It really doesn't change the "LEGO" aspect
of it, but it does assure that if the hull starts taking on water, it can't take
on very much, so the system still floats even if swamped.

* The Advance Heap: The second race will be for those boats that can do a
  "pool lap" (ie. go from pool side A to pool side B, then back to pool side
  A). Similar to the America's cup, your boat will sail around buoys or
  maneuver around obstacles in the pool.

Two suggestions here: try it autonomously (a lot of fun... and *boy* do you have
to trust your programming), and try sailboats.

Do you have any video?

--
Brian Davis



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: LEGO Powered Boat Race
 
(...) Very nice; I like your design! Since it was our first challenge, we figured we still needed someone in the pool, just in case something went wrong... We had one boat capsized, one boat take on too much water, & a few circle out of control. (...) (16 years ago, 14-Nov-08, to lugnet.robotics)

Message is in Reply To:
  LEGO Powered Boat Race
 
During Festival of the Masters, GFLUG held it's first annual LEGO Powered Boat Race. What is that, you may ask? To give you a little background, the theme that GFLUG members were to build MOCs according to was "Transportation: Past, Present & (...) (16 years ago, 12-Nov-08, to lugnet.announce, lugnet.boats, FTX) ! 

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