Troubleshooting during drive practice
During drive practice, a lot of problems cropped up. The robot continued to lose battery power and would disconnect or the treads would fall off. Samin and Isaac worked on the treads, made the scoring mechanism work, and focused on understanding why battery power is draining so fast on the robot.
There used to be a ramp when the blocks went in, but now we’re collecting straight into it. He added a back plate to the scoring mechanism so the blocks don’t fall out the back. It prevents blocks from getting stuck in the robot and us getting a penalty.
Something is draining our battery very fast and that problem needs to be fixed before we head to Super Regionals. He is finding what uses the most battery to identify this problem. They are still working on finding an answer.
After practice, the team investigated. To understand where all the power is being used, the team first measured the amps used with the whole robot. It measured 20 amps. We knew a lot of the resistance was from the treads, so we first measured the robot right side up. Measuring that, we found that the treads drew 15 amps! We wanted to see if it was the weight of the robot, so we flipped it over and measured again, but this still drew 14 amps. Next, we took off the treads and only measured 0.4 amps and thought something was wrong. But, measuring just a 40:1 motor not on the robot, we measured 0.03 amps, meaning our measurement is probably correct.
Clearly, treads and tensioning are the problem. We’re not exactly sure what to do yet because there is not enough time to make drastic changes. We could try wheels, we could try taking pieces off the treads, but we decided to think about it over the weekend.
Isaac On The Field.
Pit Work feat. Origami Party
The pit is coming together! The poster, business cards, and caramels have arrived at the school. Gabe emailed the athletics department and is procuring a 10x10 tent for Super Regionals. The poster will be hung in this tent and the business cards and caramels will be passed out there.
Because the season is winding down and there aren’t a ton of projects, a lot of work has been going into doing the pit. The team finished folding 200 origami blow up cubes to put on lights in the pit! They engineered an assembly line using some wood, a box, and yarn to pull the partially folded origami cubes to the next group of people who finished them and put them in a box. It was really fun, accompanied by some zen music to establish the Japanese Garden style that was our focus for the day.
Oragami Party.
2856 Website
Wilson and Matt worked on creating the 2856 website. Currently, there is a Red Shift website that Wilson was working on, but because just 2856 is going to Super Regionals, we needed to make our own. The Red Shift website will link to our page, 2856.io. They started running a Jekyll server. This will allow them to easily interpret word documents into an online format. This will allow the team to post the entire notebook online, which we currently can’t do. This will take a lot more time to make it the best it can be, so Matt and Wilson will continue doing it outside of drive practice.
Aligning Axles
Peter helped fix the drive train by making a part that holds the axles together. He used a small piece of steel with two holds in it to hold the axles in place. The axles move apart and messes up the angle of the sprockets, which makes the chain fall off. This fixed the problem so far.
Outreach Essay
Our team worked on writing about some extensive outreach events we have worked at. These included hosting our school’s robotics summer camp last year and teaching students to code in Zambia.
Going out to Lunch
Our team went out to lunch today during our long Saturday practice. We all went over to Rancho Bravo, which is a Mexican restaurant close to our school. We enjoyed walking over there together and hanging out outside of our robotics studio. After we came back from lunch, we were very refreshed and continued to work efficiently.
We Just Got Back From Lunch!
Super Regionals Decorations: Chain and Necklaces
Our team was able to make quite a few decorations for Super Regionals. We first made a nice chain out of 3D printed tesseracts and “2856” signs made out of acrylic.
We then worked on putting string on the necklaces Wilson had cut out of acrylic. These necklaces are personalized, and say the last name of our team members. We also made a few necklaces that say “fan” for parents that fly down to California.
The driver, operator, and field coach also have special labels on them!
Pit Signs.
Sit Signs.