Some have think tanks or mind maps, we just threw around ideas until something stuck over the course of a few days/weeks. Of course for a while we were introducing members of the space to what the BeagleBone Black actually was:
"Well, what can it do?"
"It's like a RasPi, mixed with a PiFace/Arduino, but faster, and done properly"
"Okay, but what shall we do with it?"
"I dunno."
After everyone that turned up regularly enough was introduced to the BeagleBone and the Challenge, some ideas started to appear.
There were two main ideas for contension, one was a fire-fighting robot using a camera of some form with infra-red for light/flame detection and controlling a water gun to shoot at it, on wheels. Then the idea turned to having an automated Air Hockey table, but I think that was considered to be a bit tricky due to the way in which the player(s) piece is able to move around quite freely/some other reason. The alternative was a foosball table that was controlled by the BeagleBone Black, with the ball tracked by a camera.
We're English, foosball won, especially when a member bought one from eBay for £50. For an all-wooden table it's in pretty good condition.
The table's missing a few handles and the playing field bows upwards a bit in the middle, but with some work it'll be fine. We were already thinking up how the BeagleBone can play its part in controlling arm movement and detecting goals that could be scored by either team, of course, this raised even more questions.
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