Our camera enclosures and dropper units are made from machined aluminum, and use our existing collection of Fischer connectors. Many thanks to Mecha, Inc. for their sponsorship.

Ball-Dropper Unit

The ball-dropper unit will be used to deposit steel ball-bearings into a container during the competition. Our previous design used the magnetic field from a mechanical solenoid to release the ball bearings. Although the solenoid was in a separate, water-tight chamber from the ball-bearings, water penetrated the O-rings and caused the solenoid to rust through- rendering it completely useless. Additionally, the electrical noise and magnetic field caused by the solenoid's operation played games with the craft's electronics and the compass in the IMU.

This year, a new design was proposed to solve these issues. A servo (provided by Hi-Tech through last year's sponsorship) is used to drive a notched wheel that 'catches' a ball-bearing from the PVC pipe, and rotates to drop the wheel on our target.

The dropper unit will be attached to the craft via the PVC tube. A downward-facing camera will mount adjacent to the dropper box (see pictures above).

 

Camera Enclosures

Each camera enclosure houses a Logitech CCD webcam. We had to look around outside of the big-box stores for the CCD webcams because Logitech no longer seems to produce CCD cameras. Two thumbs up for Craigslist!

The enclosures are made from machined aluminum. They are pretty unique- The cameras we picked out do not have holes on the PCBs for mounting, so we used a different method. Set screws will hold the camera in place via the camera's focusing tube. Initially there were concerns this would permanently damage the camera, but only a small amount of force is needed to hold the camera PCB in place.