Something that has always been on our robotic to-do list is to make our own Teapot Racer.
Teapot racing became a thing due to a Simone Montgomery in Dunedin, New Zealand who wanted to create something that everyone, regardless of ability, could join in, and have fun with. We’ve always loved the idea, and when we found out that a Steampunk event in Portmeirion would be having a Teapot Racing event, we knew we had to join in.
We knew we wanted a brass/copper teapot, with the idea that we would adorn it in lots of bits and bobs that would make it look incredibly steampunk. After a long time scouring local charity shops and other for sale sites, we came across someone selling three beautiful copper teapots of varying sizes. We bought all three with the intention of using the largest as our teapot racer, setting aside the other two for future projects.
We spent roughly a week building our racer, essentially from scratch. We had an old RC car chassis that we were using but some of the gears inside it were old and needed replacing or redoing completely. We used other old RC components (old RC receiver with crystals), and a Lipo battery, most of it crammed into the teapot itself. It wasn’t easy to do, and kept throwing up problems which took a lot of the time up that we had allocated to build her. This was a big issue, given we were also trying to make it look as steampunk as possible (also time consuming).
It got to the night before the event itself, before we managed to get it working and looking beautiful. We packed it away, satisfied, after we spent an hour or so test driving it in a local car park.
With all of us dressed in our steampunk attire, we made it to the event with time to spare. After introducing ourselves, we settled down near where the race would take place. We test drove it a couple of times and our little bot worked fine. It was a beautiful day, and we got many compliments on our little teapot from people passing as they explored Portmeirion.
A few minutes before the race itself started, we decided to give her one last test run; which is where disaster struck. With a rather dramatic poof of smoke, she stopped working instantly. I ran to fetch her while she was pouring out smoke and after turning her off, we tried to diagnose her. We found that many of her wires had melted and fused together. We thought it was the battery at first so we swapped the Lipo battery for another.
She then caught fire for the second time that day, and we were in the same place we were before, except we’d now ruined two batteries. By that time, people were starting to turn up for the teapot racing. We ended up meeting Suzy and Roger, two of the people who were helping out with the race and racers themselves. We filled them in on our predicament, worried that we wouldn’t be able to actually compete after all the work and prep we’d put into getting there with a bot at all.
After some brainstorming, it was realised that there were two main problems. The wires going to our motor were much too thin (we had hastily changed the motor the night before, and forgot to check the wiring/current), which created resistance, and melted them together. It wasn’t helpful that our ESC was also set to the wrong battery type (which we realised recently [we’re used to brushless]) Suzy and Roger were kind and helpful, even letting us use parts from one of their other bots to help us compete!
We were over the moon that we would be able to have a go. We didn’t expect we would win by a long way, as we were much heavier and larger than most of the other racers there. We had also lost our ability to reverse too, which meant we had to skip a certain obstacle.
We didn’t win, as expected, but regardless of how much trouble we had, she’s a great little (big), bot and we’re very happy we got to take part. It was a great day and we were surrounded with so many inquisitive people who either offered help, or were merely interested in what we were doing. Thankfully, we now know the problems she has and we should be able to fix her and get her working properly again.
Mistakes are going to happen and when you’re in a rush to finish a project, you should expect to be doing some field repairs. It’s better to plan ahead and do a lot of testing. With any luck, she won’t catch fire next time (joke).
Cerys
#RoboticsIsForEveryone
