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Coachella Valley 12.8.12

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Attendance

    • Mark
    • Evan
    • Hunter
    • Chris
    • Dante
    • Erik
    • Fletcher

Journal

Tasks

  • Either get in the top four or get chosen for an alliance
  • Make our robot work every time we have a match
  • Make it through all inspections
  • Put at least one ring on the top row
  • Win most of our matches
  • Do good

Reflections

Today was our first field competition, at Coachella valley.  Although we didn’t win or qualify,   in hindsight it went very well and was extremely good for a first competition.  With some difficulty we were finally able to get through the hardware, software, and field inspection.  With just a few more modifications to our programming and hardware design we finally got all of the components we had on our robot to work, at least after taking off the primitive forklift that was not quite ready yet to use.  In the first match out robot score one point by dropping accidentally a single ring onto the middle goal.  In our second match we actually put two rings on one of the top pegs on the center goal and won the match.  That was definitely our best run because on the others we weren’t able to put any rings on and we only won one other match because of our alliance.  Also, on a good note, our autonomous we had did make the robot move every single time which stood out from other robots of which only about 5 more even had a working autonomous.  Our autonomous did nothing but move our robot on the center goal but it was comforting to know that it worked how we wanted it to.  In the end, the biggest problem with our robot was the compete slowness of the scissor lift, that and the fact that our hand was a little too complicated and we needed to simplify and strengthen it.  It was a pretty successful first competition but we had a lot of work in the week ahead in moth modifying the robot but mostly in driver practice.  In that competition Dante drove the robot and Erik did accessories but neither of them had any prior practice because the robot didn’t start working like we wanted until the night before so we planned to spend a lot of time in the next week doing mostly driver practice and improving our notebook.

Presentation at Bradoaks Elementary

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Attendance

    • Mark
    • Evan
    • Hunter
    • Chris
    • Dante
    • Erik
    • Fletcher

Journal

Tasks

  • Present our program and robot in an interesting way to the kids
  • Get them excited about robotics to join in high school

Reflections

Today we got a new cart for our robot to hold it and all of our boxes and parts.  We went straight to Bradoaks elementary school to share our robotics program with the GATE (honors) students there.  It went very well.  All of the kids were excited and we did a before and after poll for who thought they may want to be in robotics in high school and there were many more after than before.  We let them drive the robot and talked about robotics in general, about all of its good, helpful qualities and how much fun it is as well as all of the hard work that goes into it.  Since we didn’t get to work on the robot today we will finish working on it tomorrow.


12.4.12-Getting Ready for the Tournament

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Attendance

    • Mark
    • Evan
    • Hunter
    • Chris
    • Dante
    • Erik
    • Fletcher

Journal

Tasks

  • Install elastic bands
  • Install new encoders
  • Test TeleOp
  • Get permission slip forms out to whole team
  • Test and fix the scissor lift

Reflections

Today we put the finishing touches on our robot.  We put our last encoders on two of the motors that power the scissor lift to make the autonomous more accurate.  We twisted the elastic bands together to further increase the tension on the lift.  We started to test the autonomous and had to make quite a few changes to it because it didn’t really work at first.  we also tested the TeleOp a little and had to make changes to that as well.

We discussed a lot about the competition on Saturday at Cochilla valley about things such as who the drivers and coach will be which we will finalize after more testing on Thursday, we finalized our spreadsheet of questions to ask all of the other groups.
Mr. Dobson confirmed that we would all go on Thursday to Bradoaks, one of the elementary schools, to bring our robot and talk to the GATE (honors) program about robotics to try to get them interested in it so they might join robotics in middle or high school.  A lot of testing took place today as well as a lot of changes to the programming because there were many problems.

We found that the servos on the robots are crazy; especially with coding it.  Most of the day was spent attempting to code the servo with no success.

After Evan attached the encoders to the scissor motors, Fletcher wrote a test autonomous that told the robot to rotate the scissor motors 400 units and it succeeded!  Hooray!

11.29.12-Geared for Speed

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Attendance

    • Mark
    • Evan
    • Hunter
    • Chris
    • Dante
    • Erik

Journal

Tasks

  • Fix the gears on the robot for the scissor lift
  • Test the new gears

Reflections

Today we re-geared the robot from having a 1:2 ratio to having a 2:1 ratio, or the opposite of how we had it.  Since we only need to pick up rings that are very light, we did didn’t need to gear it down so we made it for speed.  We tested it and it did work, and it was faster, but not quite as fast as other robots may be, but we were fine with it because it would still allow us to get points.

Before:

After:

We continued to program the TeleOp and are still in the process of making all the bits in it work with the robot, specifically the servos.

11.27.12-Hope, Change!

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Attendance

    • Mark
    • Evan
    • Hunter
    • Chris
    • Dante
    • Erik
    • Fletcher

Journal

Tasks

  • Reflect and perfect the changes done over the break
  • These include enlarging the drive shaft, gearing down the motors, using a servo to move the hand left and right, and installing elastic bands

Reflections

Only a few adjustments were made over the break.  We took off the driving space on the top of the robot because we decided not to lift robots at this competition, and instead just stick to rings.  We geared down the motors that power the scissor lift and we made the drive shaft bigger.

In addition we replaced the single motor for each side with two for each side to increase the overall power of the lift.  We added more tension to the lift so it could go up easier.  We made the hand able to pick up 2 rings using metal pieces for it instead of Legos.  We employed surgical tubing to replace the string that moves the hand left and right.

We tested the robot today and it was able to drive and the scissor lift actually worked for the first time!  It went up to over 50 inches which is high enough to put rings on the top peg with our hand that can also swivel up and down.  Although excited that it could go a considerable height, it was too slow to be really effective in getting us a lot of points because we geared down the motors.  We resolved to fix this at the next meeting.