NXP CUP


EL PLAN: THE BEGINNING
I was alone, left with 3 weekends to prepare the car for the qualifier and the final, knowing that I'm currently a full-time intern at TDK.
What I had was the newly provided kit and NO TRACK 😂 so let's start with that.
EL PLAN WEEKEND N°1 : MAKING THE TRACK
The track I had were old tracks from 2016 when the NXP CUP took place in Grenoble. Since then, no new track was available. I had to create the SVG from the tracks and use a laser cutter to cut the race track.
Big shoutout to the FABMSTIC lab and Germain for allowing me to use their laser cutter.
Afterwards, I had to do some painting and then VOILA I was done!​​​​​​​
EL PLAN WEEKEND N°2: IT IS LIGHTS OUT AND AWAY WE GO !
Before assembling the car and making all the necessary wiring, I noticed that something was wrong with the kit provided. 
The turning radius of the car wouldn't allow U-turns and 270-degree turns around a regular track.
According to my calculations, we have the following:
To find the turning radius, we can use the formula:
Turning radius = Wheelbase / sin(Turning angle)
Plugging in the values we have:
Turning radius = 23 cm / sin(30 degrees)
Turning radius = 46cm / 1 (since sin(30 degrees) = 0.5)
 The track is 55 cm wide with the two outer lines, which leaves us with 51 cm.
So basically there's no room for error, and you have to get the perfect timing. Hence, I decided to move to another platform with the Wltoys 144001 with a wheelbase of 19 cm.
SETUP
The setup of the car wasn't hard overall and the gitbook made it very easy and straightforward except for the arming method where we should use a RC remote that is prohibited during the competition. 
But after a few minutes, I found a way to fix everything up... and by fixing it I mean deleting some parts of the actual code until it worked 😎
CODING
For this part, there's not much to say. I knew before receiving the kit that the car would most likely use a PID controller. 
Honestly, there's no better video than this one below to explain what a PID means for beginners.
GOING FOR A FIRST RIDE
Here we go with the first try. Not too bad, the PID is well adjusted and I got a new support for the camera:
 The problem was that I had no tire grip and the brakes were not strong enough to get the car to the desired speed. After one whole day, I was like this:
... so I lowered the car and found out that the car had a remote to add some brake power!!!
AND NOW WOoooWieeee TAKE A LOOK AT THE CAR:
It's handling well at the intersection but I have some problems with the ZigZags...
Conclusion
Honestly, there's much to say but at this point, I'm just suuuuuper lazy to write all that down. I will make a video to explain everything in detail but from now on my goal is to add MPU support to this car and not MCU or FMU.
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