Pre-planning - There's so much to do

Whilst waiting to hear if I had been selected as one of the competitors for PiWars 2015 I did start some initial planning by scribbling all over a white board.

First I started with a list of all the challenges, trying to work out what components would be required to enter the challenge, as well as any that would improve my chance of winning the challenge (Such as faster motors for the speed test).

As I'm targeting the A4 size category I started to sketch out on the board the max size I had to work with, and started seeing how much space I'd have left after taking tyres, the RPi and battery into account. If I want to be able to use my largest wheels... well there isn't much space left.

Finally I sketched out some of the software modules needed to pull everything together.... That started to add up to quite a lot too!
But with my initial thoughts down I can start to refine them, deciding which ones are really needed, which should be done first and so on.

The initial focus will be, as always, getting the basic chassis and manual controls working.  Then with a good base to work on add the extra components required for the autonomous challenges, and then finally adding the flashy LEDs and other extras!  Assuming I have enough time to get that far!

Leo