Sunday, February 13. 2011
By Guest Mentor Rob
Hello, it is me Rob. Known for cooking bacon and wearing the bright yellow hat further down this blog, I come to you today to write this Sunday’s blog entry.
First thing Cynette wants me to mention is that Adam from the Duct Tape Bandits came for a visit yesterday. In my personal experience Penfield has always been a very welcoming FIRST team. Remember to keep up on their videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/PenfieldRobotics (Crystal is making me plug it) And today will celebrate Mentor Jeff’s birthday!
From what I hear this morning started with programmers hitting their keyboards early. They continue to focus on line following, which I know they have been doing for sometime, but practice make perfect. Autonomous can be worth a lot of points.
Review of the Chairman’s Award essay has progressed, and the results look good. It is a good read. Finalization is in progress as the length is being pared down so that it is under the 10,000 character limit.
For lunch the team enjoyed the Upstate New York fare, beef-on-weck. (Thanks to Alex R’s family) And since it was mentor Jeff’s birthday he had Chipotle. Fun was had but everyone got back to work, because we are all under the same deadline.
This afternoon had exciting news in the form of the arm being mounted. Both the arm and its mount had been assembled and painted. And, if I can say, at a distance the paint job looks professional. The arm is surprisingly light for its size, and lifting the arm is not difficult. To assemble, the base was placed on a low table, and the arm was lifted into position by mentors and students alike. I participated by using my intrinsic skill(my height) to line up the bushings in the mount with arm sprocket assembly. With any luck, there will be no need to ever take it apart, or so everyone hopes.
Since Yesterday’s post about the minibot deployment, a bunch of work has been done to see how it could be mounted in the arm base. The tower alignment device now called the drawbridge , A.K.A. the dust pan, the face mask, and the reverse cow catcher, is now connected to the arm base. Refinement will continue through the week.
Preparation has begun for Rally, as game pieces were labeled with 1511 by Jason and Crystal. Crystal continues to work on intros for the teams that have said they are coming to the January 20th event. Even if your robot can’t come, it is a great place to see other teams, and get a feel for how Logo Motion will be played. I know I will be there.
Walking into the control systems lair, I was treated to the amazing sight of the control board full of lights and knobs and buttons and one pretty cool keypad. Seeing it work is quite the sight as it interfaces with the classmate. Programming Justin has done a lot of work to pull things together and it shows.
For dinner there was pizza and wings. Though he was late to this meal, everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Jeff. There was no cake, but this was Jeff’s choice. I can only assume that the weight worries about the robot have spilled over to team members as well.
