Month: February 2013

2.7.13-So Much Work and so Little Time

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Attendance

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

Journal

Tasks

  • Get footage for a hand explainer video
  • Finish notebook
  • Finish Display
  • Driver Practice

Reflections

Today is our last day of meeting before the San Diego qualifier on Saturday.  But, just because it is the last meeting, doesn’t mean we don’t still have a ton to do.

First of all we had to finish up the notebook today.  This involved putting all of the finishing touches on all of the pages we have and also making sure our most recent meeting and competition are accounted for.  We have to get it done no matter what today so we can print it all out, all 150 pages of it.

Aside from that, we finished taking the last video today to put on our display we will have up on Saturday at the competition.  The display will be similar to the one from the qualifier we hosted last Saturday.  It will have an interactive screen that allows the viewer to choose and watch different videos.  This video will be about the hand, or bucket, that we have on our robot.

We also had to finish the physical display we will have behind the video display.  This has all of our biographies on it along with pictures of us as well as a little information about us and our robot.  With the display we will also have one-pagers that we will hand out to all the teams so they can know about our robot for outreach reasons and possible alliance selection if we don’t make it into the top four.

Lastly, we did a lot of driver practice.  The drivers, Hunter and Evan, both are still not perfect in their driving skills as was evident at the last competition.  Even on the match when we got 235 points, we had the potential to get many more because we wasted too much time on aligning the robot and trying to get a handle on all of the controls.  The driver practice we have done today has improved our drivers a lot and we feel very confident overall about the whole competition on Saturday!

 

 

2.5.13-The Broken Parts Bucket is Getting Heavy

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Attendance

  •  Mark
  • Hunter
  • Evan
  • Fletcher
  • Dante

Journal

Tasks

  • Work on notebook
  • Switch out lift motors
  • Shoot explainer video for fork lift
  • Remount IR sensor

Reflections

Mark worked on the notebook and completing the design process page of the notebook.  It details the different parts that we’ve built for our robot, both the ones we have applied in competition and the ones that we have not.

At the tournament we hosted on Saturday (2.2.13), we presented the colors during the flag ceremony by raising the scissor on our robot.  It all went horribly wrong when a screw got caught on a nut and the scissor bent sideways.  As a result of this, all four of our scissor motors have yet again been smoked.  We asked Mr. Dobson for new motors, and he gave us four that he found in his tool box that had already been used. As it happens, these were in the set of motors that we had broke last time we needed new motors, and they therefore did not work.  We asked Mr. Dobson for four new motors, and he kindly gave us replacement motors, but said that we ought to give him money for all eight of the motors he’s given us.  We are now considering various companies to become our motor sponsor.

Due to the frequency that we break motors, Mr. Dobson created a broken parts bucket where motors, servos, and game controller that have been broken for various reasons will be tossed.  The parts in the buckets, however, will not be thrown away.  As a summer project, people are invited to fix these parts and possibly make them better (though they would not be used on a robot due to modification of electrical components being illicit).

Once the motors were mounted, we moved on to filming for our fork lift explainer video.  Two takes had to be filmed due to Evan forgetting to say our team name, and an additional take had to be shot to highlight the capabilities.  The video is viewable here.

Monrovia (We Hosted) 2.2.13

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Attendance

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

Journal

Tasks

  • Help teams that need it
  • Have a display for the robot
  • Have a generally impressive competition

Reflections

Everyone got to the competition bright and early in the morning to finish setting things up and to make our display.

Hunter and Fletcher started the day off by going to the robotics room and printing stuff out for the poster board.  It had pictures and descriptions of the robot, pictures and biographies for the members of the team, our team insignia, and the logos of our sponsors.  Along with Mr. Porter, Hunter set up the monitor for our display.  Previously, it was completely  non-interactive.  This time, we had buttons powered with a Makey-Makey.  This made it so that a user could indicate what video he wanted to watch.  He could also say that he wanted to pause or play or reset the video.

Teams began showing up at about 7:30, causing inspections to commence.  It was Fletcher’s job to make sure that all teams were doing well with their inspections.  The Flee Bits struggled with getting though software inspection, so he showed them how to configure their NXT to pass.  After that, they passed inspection.  Another team had been denied field inspection, so Fletcher directed them to where field inspection was taking place (they had asked for it in the wrong place) and told them to ask the people there.  One team forgot a piece of plywood that made their ramp work, so he gave them some cardboard to replace it for the time being.

Erik, Dante, and Chris were in charge of the drivers/coaches entrance to the competition area.  They made sure that only the correct people went through that entrance.

Mark was a Queuer, and he made sure the queue line ran quickly and smoothly by getting each of the tams in their correct spots and giving each of them a red or blue flag.  He did this for most of the day and was extremely helpful and efficient.

Evan was a hardware inspector, and he inspected hardware.  After the inspections were over, Evan was around to help anyone with any task they needed which was very helpful.

Hunter was Mr. Bugert’s assistant, and he helped him with various remedial tasks such as running cables connecting displays and replacing parts, this continued until the actual competition began, when this happened there was not much need for Hunter so he helped do other various jobs whether it be film, or helping teams with their various problems.

At lunch, we showed off our robots to some children by letting them drive our robot.

 

Final alliance selection came and went and the finals happened.  The Flea Bits (whose first competition ever happened to be this one) ended up being the winning alliance captain and team Rebelution won the Inspire award.  Congratulations to them.

Setting up for the Regional Qualifier

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Attendance

  • Fletcher
  • Erik
  • Hunter
  • Evan
  • Chirs
  • Mark
  • Dante

Journal

Tasks

  • Make poster board
  • Set up competition
  • Make plan for reaching out to other teams

Reflections

Fletcher was the first to arrive and and had a conversation with Mr. Dobson about the rest of the season.  He said that there was one team that went to one of the competitions that we went to (the Rock N’ Roll Robots at the Webb school competition) that only got a small award, but they also went to a competition in San Diego (where the remainder of our regional qualifiers are held) and got the Inspire award.  Mr. Dobson suggested that perhaps we could also do well.  He also said that, because we have done a lot of outreach recently, we might have a problem getting out to the judges what all we’ve done.

Fletcher earlier had taken pictures of the robot on a black background, so he had printed them out at home.  Mr. Dobson allowed Fletcher to use his paper cutter to prepare the photos for the poster board.

Evan and Hunter came later and were assigned to moving parts of both ours and the Rock N’ Roll Robots’ field.  Fletcher was put in charge of disassembling our field.  It was difficult to disassemble the border of the field because none of the people disassembling it had ever taken apart the border.

Fletcher, Hunter, and Mark worked on assembling the field in the old gym where the pit is. They also put together the tiles for the field and taped them.  Hunter found that if you rub the area where two tiles meet that has tape, then it is easy to cut the tape so you don’t have to retape the tiles the next time you assemble the field.

We then had dinner, courtesy of Mr. Dobson.

After dinner, early check-in teams began arriving.  The Flea Bits team from Pasadena High came and so did a team from San Diego.  The Flea Bits found they needed a part for their robot that they didn’t have, so all three Monrovia teams gave them that part, so they gave us an honorable mention in their engineering notebook.

Hunter and Fletcher laid out cable for Mr. Bugert so that the pits would have an audio and a visual feed from the competition area.  The audio cable was difficult because it got very tangled.

The day ended and everyone went home with enough time to get 6 hours of sleep before the next day’s competition.