10.13.12-A Very New Notebook

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Attendance

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

Journal

Tasks

  • Make the notebook be electronic
  • Work on designing bits for the robot

Reflections

Today was a 5-hour Saturday build day.  When we were waiting for it to start, Mr. Johnson explained an idea for a robot. It primarily focuses on the end game. For the beginning of our season, we’ve decided to focus on the end game over all else.

We discussed what sensors we want, and decided on the following:

  • IRSeeker Sensor (NSK1042) – $49.95
  • Color Sensor (NCO1038) – $54.95

We began a Wubi install (which ended up not working) on our old computer to see if it will make the computer faster. We tried turning it on, but the BIOS chooser, GRUB, failed to initialize. We videoed this whole thing.

Hunter and Fletcher are recreating the paper Engineering notebook as an electronic one.

Evan is disassembling the robot, currently it is stripped down to the chassis. Fletcher redid the motor controller setup so that they take up less space. Evan also made the chassis longer.

Dante drew pictures of a new design for the robot and built the game field floor.

Mark is designing new bits for the robot.

Mark's Drawing

Hunter and Fletcher worked on formatting the website.

Mark talked to Mr. Brian Johnson and Mr. Corey Porter. They said that there ought to be a claw on a counter balance so as to be able to tell the weight of the ring. When a heavier ring is picked up by the hand, the counterweight will pivot up which will show that the ring will be heavier and the weight of the counterweight will be greater than the lighter rings, but less than the heavy rings.

The arm will have a limited space to occupy because it cannot get in the way of the platform that the team robot will drive onto, so we had the idea of using a small spring to hold the arm in place which is on a pivot and the team robot will push the arm out of the way when driving onto our robot. We will most likely continue to use the current telescope design for the arm and we are still debating about what accessories we should add to the hand in order to pick up the rings.

10.11.12-A Little Design and a Lot of Rain

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Attendance

  • Fletcher
  • Erik
  • Dante
  • Chris

Journal

Tasks

  • Discuss the robot

Reflections

Not much happened today, we thought about new designs for a robot.  We may end up changing the entire design of the robot to maximize the number of points we can get.  It rained very hard with lightning and hail. Fletcher had to leave early; Mark, Hunter, and Evan also had to leave early due to conflicts with previous engagements.

IMG_0663

 

10.2.12-A Broken Chain AND the NXT

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Attendance

  • Erik
  • Dante
  • Mark
  • Evan
  • Hunter

Journal

Tasks

  • Diagnose problems with NXT
  • Fix motor “glitchy-ness”

Reflections

The NXT was playing a quite annoying audible tone when we would try to initialize the tele-op program.  It also was displaying a weird message.  Solution: re-write everything. Improved the “glitchy-ness” of the motors used to raise the telescoping mast of the robot.  An issue with the way that the RobotC Complier and its C programming nature deals with sequences.  The chain is hard to put back together with the chain breaker.

9.27.12-Customizing the Bot

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Attendance

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

Journal

Tasks

  • Meet with Mr. Johnson
  • Work on telescopic arm
  • Prototype and improve hands


Reflections

We got the opportunity to make parts from Mr. Brian Johnson.  He gave a talk for most of the meeting time about machining parts for us.  He is a skilled metal worker/cutter and he has offered to help us make any custom parts that we needed and he had a presentation about not only what was allowed but also possible ideas that other robots have used.  It was very interesting to see what other teams did on their robots last year as well as the wide range of parts that are available this year.  We are definitely planning on using a lot of custom parts to suit our needs which the supplies boxes we have could not otherwise supplied.  We improved upon the lifting mechanism today by mounting a sprocket high on the arm to make the chain not be rubbing against the metal parts.  We also improved upon the hand again by making a more stable design so it wouldn’t fall apart.

9.25.12-An Arm?

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Attendance

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

Journal

Tasks

  • Prototype more ideas for the hand
  • Code for the lift
  • Design the arm

Reflections

We developed new ideas for the hand, using rubber tires to grip on the rings we thought this would be a good idea so we don’t accidentally let the ring slip out of our grasp and lose us a lot of time.  We started programming for the lifting motor for the arm design which is to make a telescoping arm that has a metal U-beam sliding on another one by using chains to pull one up while the other one stays stationary.  This shouldn’t take up too much space an should be generally efficient for lifting up the hand and rings.