October 28, 2010 Meeting Report

Today we made some progress on the robot and on Samantha. Jared, Scott, and Logan worked on the robot's baton system and made it better. The Programming team; Brad, Sean, and Holden; tested the tele-op program using joysticks and servos. Connor wasn't here to do the blog, so Jared updated the info instead.

The Baton Manipulation team had a couple of problems. On the wheels, they had a stuck gear. This would remove a lot of mobility to get over the mountain. They had to remove a gear to find out what gear it was, and then lubricated the gear. Finally, they replaced the gear they removed.

They also found that a gear was to low, so they inserted a flat piece of metal to raise the gear. That fixed the issue.

Mr. Lanterman helped with the Baton Manipulation team, and Mr. Reidy helped with Baton Manipulation and Programming

Tonight we had pizza provided by the Reidys and sugar cookies provided by the Lantermans.

The next meeting will be sometime on Friday, November 5th, when we have off school.

Have a safe and Happy Halloween!

10/24 Meeting Report

We made a lot of great progress last night.

On the programming front, Holden, Sean and Bradley were able to get  
the programming to to allow for teleop control (using the game  
controllers) to get both the engines and servo's to respond to driver  
commands.  We should be able to test drive the robot in a week or so  
at this rate

Scott, Andrew and Logan worked on the Robot's structure and using a  
design idea from Sean, redesigned the spinners that we plan to use to  
extract the batons from the dispensers.  A few manual field tests show  
some improvement in timing for the rotation and it looks like this  
idea will work.  The new design uses the long axels and some "L"  
brackets and appears to be much simpler than our previous concept.  As  
we've learned before, in robot design simple is almost always better!

Andrew and Logan continued to prototype ideas for a magazine to hold  
the captured batons and a rotating arm to move them to be able to score.

Lastly, Scott and Andrew were forced to re-design the drive train  
given where the batons will be stored and we will likely be moving  
from four engines driving the robot (one in each corner) to two  
centrally located engines driving each side (one per side).  We'll  
need to test how this works on the field and obstacles in the next  
week or so.

The next meeting will be Thursday (10/28) from 6:00 - 8:00pm.  We'll  
have pizza waiting for the boys, please let me know of any dietary  
preferences / restrictions.

Given next Sunday is Halloween, there will be NO PRACTICE on Sunday  
night

Pics

10-17-10

People present-Scott,Logan,Jarid,James,Connor,Sean,Holden,Brad,Grant,Mr.Perie,Mr.Tinker,Mr.Lanterman, Mr. Riedy.
We have the 4 H team 4318 visiting to gather info for their competition. The team includes- Amber Driesman
John Tripp (Barb Tripp, John's Mom is also here but is just waiting for the end)
Joshua Driseman
Andy Driseman
We are very happy to have Guests!
Software- Connecting to Samantha, and programming a test for Samantha.
Maneuverability- They are testing and innovating the prototype baton collector.
Mobility- The Mobility team are building the base and baton collector base. They are also supporting the base with extra brackets.

10-17-10

People present-Scott,Logan,Jared,James,Connor,Sean,Holden,Brad,Grant,Mr.Perie,Mr.Tinker,Mr.Lanterman, Mr. Riedy.
We have the 4 H team 4318 visiting to gather info for their competition. The team includes- Amber Driesman
John Tripp (Barb Tripp, John's Mom is also here but is just waiting for the end)
Joshua Driseman
Andy Driseman
We are very happy to have Guests!
Software- Connecting to Samantha, and programming a test for Samantha.
Maneuverability- They are testing and innovating the prototype baton collector.
Mobility- Scott and Jared are building the base and baton collector base.

Robotic Work Bench and Practice Field

In addition to the software test field, the team has built a full field, with 3 baton dispensers, 2 rolling goals and all of the mid field obstacles - boy will it be crowded in there with four robots.  At tonight's practice we will be working out strategy options and coming up with proposals for the autonomous program.

Here's a photo of the work table for the project.  We've also built a small wall section and baton dispenser to facilitate more accurate measurements for design and testing of of baton removal ideas.

On Friday, 10/15, Sean and Holden were able to finally get the "Samantha" wireless link up and running.  Given some issues with wireless network in our house a new, cheap router was used to set up a robotics only network.

One new development feature we've added this year is the creation of a programming "test field" as can be seen in the second picture.  In past years programming has tended to be both frustrating and last minute as the programmers had to wait until a completed robot was available to test.

Using a basic test field allows for some parallel pathing in that the programing team can test certain aspects of their program while the robot is being built.  All of the electronics that can be used are represented on the test field.  Adopting this approach has been a big boost to productivity.  Great idea, Sean!

10-10-10

people present-Logan, Connor, James, Holden, Sean, Jerid, Andrew, Scott, Brad, Mr.Lanterman, Mr.Pontious, Mr. Tinker, Mr.Riedy, Mr. Perie.

Programing is listening to the Samantha conference.
Maneuverability are building the spinner that collects the batons.
Jerid is brainstorming an idea for what to do with the batons after collecting them.

Field update

It seems that the inside dimensions of the field are 140.5" - not the 144" we built, so it looks like the mats were correct.  Sean and I will fix the field on Friday - it's a simple change.

I also found the following diagram that shows the heights of each of the baton dispensers.  The distances are measured from the top of the SoftTile mat.  These measurements are almost exactly the same as the ones James P estimated - way to go James!

The space between dispenser is 2 6/8 inches.

Next meeting will be Sunday October 10th at 7:00pm

Samantha Update

There is a recording of a conference call regarding Samantha, which can be listened too at:

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/ftc/content.aspx?id=18093

Other Samantha resources can be found at:

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/ftc/samanthadocs.aspx?id=17465

October 3, 2010

Andrew, James, Logan, Holden, Connor, grant, Scott, Sean, Mr.P, Mr.Riedy, Brad, Mr.Perie, jerid, Mr.Lanterman
Thanks to the people who helped bring materials from the garage.
Software: Research on Samantha programming (how to program)
All other teams are building the test field.
Cleaning garage and workspace.
Measurement double check.
We had a problem with the tiles where the tiles where measured 2ft teeth to teeth, we needed 2ft in the total square. We will find a way to make what we have work.
Andrew is building the drive train, and has completed it.
James is working on making sure our baton collector is reliable.