Fun day

Today we are just having a Monday fun day before we go into exams. A lot of us are trying to play halo but for some reason it is nit working on some computers.

Work Hard Play Hard

Today we're taking a day off. After studying hard and taking the certification tests, we're taking a day to relax and stuff our faces with baked goods. Although not all passed, we are confident they'll make it the next time. For now we celebrate! 

Testing Practice

We are continuing GMetrix all up until game day. Again some of us will be doing Inventor or AutoCAD. AutoCAD has been the most difficult but GMetrix had made it easier in comparison to last year; the same goes for Inventor.

Testing

Today we're practicing GMetrix all the way until certification testing. Some of us will be doing AutoCAD while others do Inventor. As we work through it we hope to pass our certification tests. 

Final SolidWorks & Starstruck Challenge

Final Solidworks set of pics for the starstruck challenge. This set included the end effector.

Errors...

Today we've been working on our robot for when it picks up stars. But one of our teammates wasn't here to today to fix the coding which somehow stopped working. But nevertheless tomorrow we'll all work together to fix the problem at hand and complete the challenge.

Modifications...

So far the modifications of our robot have been us putting rubber bands around the the chain which is around the wheels. We also have finally figured out coding for the buttons on the controller and have coded them to a motor. Soon we should be finished and ready for the next challenge so until then we will have a good weekend!

Back To Work

Today we're going back to robots after four days off. Now we're going to focus on fixing our scissor lift to try to get more points on the previous challenge if possible. If not we will be better prepared for the next challenge anyways. After a much needed break we're ready to get back to it. Jimmy is especially eager.

Starstruck & SolidWorks

Our Starstruck challenge bot v.2 is nearly ready. If we only had like 20 minutes we could completely finish everything and get over 100% for a grade. We're soooo close!!!!! Below is our solid works robot robot that we have a 0 in on pinnacle but that will soon change once our blogs are graded again

Wrapping Up the Week

We are finishing everything we need and we'll be posting our SolidWorks until it's done. Most likely this blog will be posted early due to our due date being in the middle of the week. This is our last blog for week 12 as we practice for AutoCAD certification within the month and continue on robotics.

Finallizing End Effector

Today we finished our idea on how we're going to build our end effector. We strive to do an official by the end of the week before our due date. As we build we'll be working on Solidworks as much as we can.

End Effector & Drive Control

 

Today we're focusing on our end effector and drive control. So far with the scissor lift our robot can knock stars over to the other side with ease, we plan to add more to it if possible. As we focus on our drive control we notice that in the ring it has a problem moving around except when moving backgrounds so we're going to fix that. 

Operation Scissor Lift

We started building our scissor lift and its coming out very productive. We have attached rubber bands for the gearing and suspension. Our robot has been programmed but the only problem is the drive control so we have to fix it.

Gmetrix & Robotics

We're continuing to work on our robot after taking some time off to do Gmetrix. We're going for a scissor-lift sort of design and we've already installed one side, all that's left is to install another one on the right side and add two more scissor lifts on top of those. then we will just have to add our end effector.

The Process

We are currently still in the process of building our scissor lift. We have now been informed of our new challenge that is due on November 19. We now have 2 minutes to try and throw as many starts over for 10 points each. Also we must hang on the pipe.

Simplify

We took apart our robot and are remaking the entire thing. We are hoping to make the base smaller and are simplifying the drive by using multi-directional wheels. We're hoping to save motor power so we can use it on the arm. Hopefully this set up will turn out better than the last and we'll be more ready for this next challenge.  

Round 2

Today we're moving on to the next challenge. We completed the last challenge, although not as well as we would have hoped, but we're cutting our losses and taking this time to prepare for the next challenge. We hope it'll pay off and we'll have enough time to get the robot ready enough to ace the next challenge.

Testing and Finishing

Today we are testing our robot on how it flips over stars to the other side. As we do this test it has to be under one minute within a certain amount of stars over to get our grade from Mr. Martin. We put our best effort into our robot and strive for the best.

Reinventing The Wheel "Metaphor"

                               

Our end effector sucks.

We are reinventing the wheel... AGAIN!!!

It'll take us about another 4 months to finish. XD LOL 

We thank you for your patience with this developer issue

and we hope you continue to back our project on KickStarter.

bye 

SolidWorks & Motor Controllers

This is what our robot looks like on SolidWorks. For work today we took off two motor controllers out of the four. We also are going to need splitters to replace the motor controllers we took off. With these replacements our robot should move better and the motor controllers we took off will go to other groups that really need them.

Coding Help

We have started to work with Bristan to improve our robots design in return for coding his. The changes he has made look good so far but we will see how well they perform.

 

End Effector

NOTE: Hurricane Matthew hit. School closed Thursday and Friday 10/6 and 10/7. 

Today we continued to work on our end effector. So far the end effector works, it's been tested. The only problem we have is that our launcher doesn't seem powerful enough to throw a star over the border. We will continue to work on this when we come back to school after this storm. If we come back...