Goals of Week 19

For this week we decided to try and upgrade our lifting system an improve the way in which we grabbed blocks.

Accomplishments of Week 18

Were are very close to having a complete rolling chassis, the wheels, gearing, and motors are mounted to the robot, but it still requires some programming.

Goals of week 18

So after a successful weekend competition landing us in second place we came in today to really crack down on our new robot design so that we may be able to practice against ourselves...

GOALS:
Fix certain wiring factors on the robot
Work on the new robot design to match that of our current one
create a hanging bar for any team to hang upon

Accomplishments of Week 19

This week, we attempted to create a better scoring mechanism... but ultimately came a little short. Guess we have a project over winter break. :/

Accomplishments of Week 17

This week we were able to develop and install the three wheel drive system. Also, we practiced driving the competition robot in an effort to get better scores.

Goals of week 17

This week we began brainstorming for a modification of our current chassis and three wheel drive train.
Goals:
Keep Speed High
Integrate High Traction Wheels
Better Block Grabber
Practice Driving Competition Robot

Accomplishments of Week 15

We really crunched down today getting our roll cage onto the robot not only song to it's support but we also created a two plate system for our wiring for quick access and a better wire management system. Well probably be returning throughout the break but for those of us celebrating the holiday, happy thanksgiving!

Goals of Week 15

Today were starting on creating a chassis inside the robot instead of externally switching up our drive train to a the wheel one to one gear ratio drive. 

GOALS:
Create a solid chassis that supports our inner drive train and a nice 3 wheel drive
Figure out the layout of our robot

Accomplishments of Week 14

This week was filled mainly with working on our video project halting our other activities until completion so not much pictures to show any progress were taken  but here are some of the stills from the video

Our goals were met though as we did record an overall narration of the video, we did get everyone's clips recorded , and shaina is currently taking the video clips home to piece together so that i may edit in final.

Goals of week 14

The weekend was quite the long one, While everyone rested and went partying i stayed home to test some VFX on the robot. Spending roughly 5 hours total with the robot, a lazy susan, a green screen, and my camera i took tons of footage to hopefully get the result of a floating model. However due to the metal reflecting the light the footage came out choppy and distorted leaving it unusable. This was good though not only did i get to learn more about how to use graphics we also saved time by realizing we couldn't pull this off. Our goals for this week are mainly to continue on what we were working on last week.

GOALS
Finish the rough draft of the video
Get everyone clips recorded
Record a nice sounding overall narration
Finish everything up so we can get back to working on the robot

Accomplishments of week 13

So we've all been hard at work to get this video done and even though we decided that it would be boring im still trying to turn it up just a little bit. We all compiled good scripts around 30 seconds or less and have even filmed a decent amount of the scenes. I have been trying to figure out the best way to add in some really cool vfx but on our tight timeline it might be hard. Along with that Shaina has been assembling our clips and putting them into a draft copy so it will be easier to compile. Im taking the robot home to practice some vfx over the weekend to test if ill be capable of them at a later time, All is going right on track!

Heres some screenshots of it

Goals of Week 13

WE DID IT! Well sort of, After going to the competition Saturday we learned a lot and got a huge amount of inspiration for ideas. Instantly the flow of ideas are just all over the place but were simmering them down for a little bit as we've put the full robot on hold for now as we are focusing solely on our engineering video putting everyone at a pause but were all focusing solely on our individual segments the make one rad video.

GOALS:
Have the video scripted and parts assigned
Have an idea of the voice over portion
Get Everyone to start working on their clips and segments.

Hanging high and above!

Big break through was made today as we raised our clearance over the field around 1 inch or so which is much higher than our previous system by moving the endofactor down by about and inch. Looking good were getting ready to move onto our autonomous systems!

Accomplishments of week 12 in preparation for the competition tomorrow!

Im posting this on Saturday of week 11 instead of Friday due to all the changes that took place after school Friday up into Saturday morning. We had very long week, full of hardcore devotion, constant marathons of stays after school and a huge amount of work that was put into accomplishing our goals. We in the end were able to get our robot to hang and programmed it for autonomous whiles also prepared an endofactor for picking up the cubes which we mounted onto the linear slide. We didnt believe we could finish in time so we took the liberty of taking the robot to matts house and pulled an all nighter full of monster, GtaV, foosball, and building an amazing robot. In the end before the competition we had so much new stuff that pics themselves couldnt describe it all so heres our first video :D










People might remember a lot of things about high school but for me...This is one of them

Goals of week 12

This week we want to have our endofactor mounted onto our new system for lifting which we also want to have done.
GOALS: Get the robot to be able to lift and do autonomous by Saturday, how we plan on going about this is a dual lift linear slide and a passive endofactor

Goals of week 10

Alright the new challenge is up and we are more than prepared for it.
The challenge is in two weeks to have an autonomous period resulting in one cube scored, and to have a Tele op period resulting in four cubes scored in four different boxes in a minute or less...

GOALS: our goal by the end of this week is to have an arm our system able to pick up the blocks efficiently and by the end of next week to have it programmed to be able to pick up those blocks alone autonomously...

Upon the return

So after a field trip of being gone for a few days I came back to find a lot of improvements to the robot. The first being the redone wiring to allow for a more accessible motor controller system. Next being the wheels gear system now improved and geared up for now speed. Other than that it's looking good and ready to hang tomorrow :D

Thanks engineering!

This honestly has nothing to do with our in class engineering but I thought it related so why not? So here I am trying to learn this new plugin to emulate particles to a obj 3d object in a 3d space because the outcome looks beautiful and I couldn't figure out how to use it at all, after four hours of tutorials I was ready to give up when I realized something this plugin had a front, back, side, top, and isometric view. Just like in solidworks than when it wanted me to define the planes I literally found it was almost the exact same thing, by doing this I got my final result at roughly 3am this morning. So there you go a case that truly hours to sore that engineering can apply to all aspects of modern technology, thanks engineering :D

Renditions under construction

So were trying to move the support up for the arm but found the motor controllers to be in the way so we've removed the plastic plate and moved the support arm forward while moving the from bar back to hopefully add some space so we can fit in the fitting cube

Hanging Status What Up

Almost hanging status we so got this

Battery mount...now were set

So after being set back by being in the auditorium for two days wr hour right into it today by attaching a nice battery mount and figuring out the design for the endofactor :D

3D Quiz

Today were typing up some questions for a quiz for the 3d printer...

Cart Done Robot Hanger

Finally got the cart done, all good to go, robot chassis is fine but just needs to be programmed which were going to do today and attached the arm :D

Posted 3rd October 2013 by Brandon Becker

Chassiss almost ready, operating at max torque

Alright so we're really going ham on the chassis for the robot gearing for HUGE TORQUE!!!! Also me and Paul gave started working on the base for the field :D

Making our way downtown

Carts getting done face to the wind robot chassis looking good but now we nee to have motors on and ready

WE BEGIN!!!

Today we started discussing our robot designs and ideas and have already started with a solid chasis and gave two weeks to make it hang

The presentation of knowledge

Today weve all presented our presentations and rules for FTC to insure we are more than ready to start the competition.

COMPLETION ALMOST COMPLETE

Still citing out or super awesome cart, while also working on our PowerPoints

Making the cubes of awesome

So today we started working on our presentations for ftc and began building some toolboxs for our future use

Making the cubes of awesome

So today we started working on our presentations for ftc and began building some toolboxs for our future use

Cleaner than your web history

Today we really got a lot done as the last robot almost got taken fully apart, we cleared out the red toolbox for our personal usage, and we got two full cats ready to roll out!

Organization at almost 100%

After the long weekend we're still organizing, not much to see here 

The greatest thing since guy on a buffalo...

So today started off sadly with the removal and destruction of our last year VEX robot...but only to be followed by the arrival of Elizabeth...THE GREATEST MACHINE TO EVER ENTER ENGINEERING AS WE KNOW IT!!! We already started by printing up my favorite item...a comb WOO!!!

Regeneration

To prepare for states this weekend, we are going over sonic from top to bottom to make sure everything is in working order and replacing anything that may be worn out or likely to break

IR repositioning

The IR sensor position was great, but at the last round of competition it almost prevented us from competing as it almost didn't fit within the 18x18x18 box. We therefore moved the IR sensor a little further in so we won't have the same problem again.

Three's Company

In order to increase the power of our drivetrain, and decrease the number of burnt motors, Casey added a third motor to either side of the drivetrain. In order to stay under the limit of 8 motors, we had to remove the second motor from the linear slide to use it for the drivetrain, leaving the slide with only one motor. This decreased speed, but the slide could still rise and fall, and now the single motor can not produce enough torque to break the string, making it more reliable. With the third motor, the stress placed on each motor has been reduced considerable and torque has been slightly increased, making Sonic stronger and tougher.