Tuesday, February 9. 2010
The Pit of Despair or the Cliffs of Insanity? That was the theme for tonight. But first…
What we had for dinner! Hot-dogs with a Spanish twist! Dinner was provided by Candido (Junior)’s family. His mom explained that in Spain there is no catsup and so she cooked the hot-dogs in a tomato based sauce with a tough of red wine! They were served with a deluxe salad with corn, peas, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, and feta cheese. We also had potato chips and cheese puffs. For dessert we had chocolate cake, lemon cake and cookies!
Team announcements! Intervol is tomorrow! We might still be looking for rides for students. Crystal has sign-up sheets for Rally and for other activities. Team leader Larry reminded everyone that trip deposits are due by February 19th. And then he gave us some bad news, our traditional team shirts are not available any more. OH NO!!! Larry has done his homework and found three options of red shirts with black trim. Leann will come and visit the groups and get input. Next week is a holiday week and Larry has students who will are wanting to come in if he can get Tier 3 Mentors to cover the time. Mike H. will send out an e-mail to coordinate who is available.
Integration Notes from Parentor Val:
Electrical sub-team has been helping Controls. Probably will keep the electrical board in one place on the robot, rather than splitting it in two, but need info from mechanical teams on the CG before making a final decision. The plastic that was purchased is not actually Lexan and therefore is not legal. Must get Lexan as a top priority.
Controls sub-team has all the materials, have been wiring buttons. They should be done by the weekend.
Programming sub-team’s autonomous high and low levels are ready for debug. (High level describes functions like “go 8 feet, turn left, fire kicker,” etc. Low level actually sends commands to various motors etc. to make the robot run.) Found a safety bug to report to FIRST. Need to create fail-safe stuff for kicker, sensor overrides, etc.
Field sub-team reports that the carpeting, painting, and ball returns are essentially done. The field can be set up in the cafeteria over break week.
Drivetrain sub-team is assembling wheel guards and bumpers. They need springs and need to hold bearing block onto wheel guards somehow.
Mechanical lift sub-team made rollers and shafts, and sent parts to Harris to be made. They Will make mounting block and fork for potentiometer this week. They need someone to go over the supply checklist and see what’s needed.
Mechanical kicker sub-team is Making remaining mill parts at Van Bortel (some were made on Monday). All other parts should be at Harris. Tonight – working on weldment drawings. Need to make sure there is a hard backing for the bumpers all around, integrated into the superstructure. Need people to work on Inventor tonight!
Both Mechanical teams still need to come up with one integrated robot design tonight!!
Tonight’s random notes:
Programming was having some mixed results – leading to the statement that started the blog. Peter had unresolved symbols that he was trying to resolve. Without success. But on the positive side, Peter’s white paper on Chief Delphi has been downloaded over 140 times! Andy’s code got the robot to move forward but then it turbo’d backward, unexpectedly. Alex C. has lots of code written for the drivers station, and would really like to have the control box to test it on before he goes on vacation with his family this weekend.
The controls team were soldering the connectors according to the schematic and made the top of the box that covers the joysticks.
The mechanical team was working on designing the super-structure and the robot is starting to look like a tetrahedron. Shauna was looking at the inventory for parts they can use. Mentor Mike W., and students Alex W. and Alex V. were at Van Bortel’s Machine Shop making some more of the kicker parts.
Mentor Leann suction cupped a tiny plastic cup to her hand. (I know you all live for these totally random pieces of information.)
And onto tomorrow…before that, its time for…
