Derby
This one actually got built! As part of an amazing Beercan Derby event put on to help raise money for the Foodbank.
There’s even some pictures this time! Here’s the Arduino sketch being tested for the light sequencing and here is the finished product during setup. (That’s me on the chair on the right… I am not a tall man.)
Hardware is a special kind of beast to debug; instead of print statements, you have multimeters. The release servos were broken the day before, and the control pins weren’t responding correctly, so we just grounded the control pin and used them as high-torque motors. The victory-lights were soldered, programmed, and installed one hour before go-time, in what in hindsight was probably an egregiously irresponsible act of over-confidence. Thankfully it worked.
Not depicted is the rocket launch mechanism for the demo car, and the crusher planned to destroy cars found cheating… next year.