Cleaning and setting up the new room
We spent some time organizing new bolts and nuts. We are labeling small bins to keep them organized throughout the season.
A couple groups started the process of hanging the peg boards today. They measured the dimensions and cut sizes for the peg board, and the drill holes on the wall.
If we start organizing now, it will be beneficial to us in the future because we will know where to find everything. In past years, we have had trouble finding things, especially because we had an unsorted bin. Organization now will help to eliminate this inefficiency.
This project will be ongoing for a few weeks as we continue to move in.
Our room as we begin to clean and organize.
Programming logistics, Android Studio, MIT AppInventor, disseminate info to others
The programmers spent time getting an environment set up. They did some work on equipping the existing red SAAS laptops with the tools we need (namely, Android Studio and VirtualBox with an App Inventor image loaded), but not a lot. Matt did the vast majority of the actual programming work. He got a basic opmode working based on existing example code and started trying to get a from-scratch opmode implementation working. Progress is slow.
Figure out what we don’t know and what we’ve never done before.
The team created a 10-dimensional list of important points to hit when researching design. These include chassis, lifting, manipulators, sensor algorithms, and autonomous algorithms.
We’re reading a lot of books about robots and looking up different design ideas to see if we can find something completely new.
This might not come up with anything because we don’t know the game yet, so we’re not sure what might be helpful. Also, there are a lot of ideas out there!
Our 10 deminsional list on a whiteboard.
Troubleshooting T-Shirt Cannon
The t-shirt cannon was not raising and the lights were not turning on. Arielle and Shanti looked at the wiring and decided to test each part to see if it was working. They started as close to the beginning of the wiring as possible. They tested the double solenoid and realized it was working. They had to go closer. Then, they tested the solenoids with a different cylinder and the new cylinder worked.
Of course, once they replaced the cylinder, the cannon would drive up but not down. In the future, they need to fix this and the LEDs along the side of the mechanism.
Up-Close on The Cannon.
The Cannon.