Our Final Post

Today is the 2nd to last Friday of the school year, We have attached and started to program our third motor located in port 6. This motor is the brain of the whole arm operation. It will provide power for our arm and will allow ability of movement and function. By monday we hope to have the arm done and ready for the challenge. Anyways this is our last post to KAMIKAZE KOBBLER. The blog will be heavily missed by everyone in the group and we hope to all of you who view that you enjoyed what we had to share.

Building the arm

We are now building a arm for our robot. The arm itself is an easy build but programming it will definetly become a challenge later on. We have built the basic structure of the arm so far but hopefully plan on having it completely assembled by friday towards the end of class. This is another step closer to another challenge.

Aiming For The Grade

Today is Friday the 15th, We previously mentioned we hope to complete this challenge today for our final grade of autonomous bot. We have to complete 2 and 1/2 laps in order to get a A for this challenge, we really need it because our group is far behind and are at low grade averages. After today we hope to leave this class better then we came in.

Are we ready?

May 11th, 2015

Henry is currently editing and finalizing the autonomous programming for our robot, which I am planning on giving a name to today. Our two other group members, are attending an assembly for juniors. We plan on finishing the programming by Thursday morning and bringing the robot to Mr. Martin for an official test. We are optimistic, and predict a good grade on the robot.

-Tanner Wheeler

2 Laps

We have made progress. Our square bot can accomplish 2 full laps before it crashes into the chairs. The first lap is very clean with a simpler 2nd lap to complete 2 full laps. It took us awhile due to all of the adjustments and what not we had to make to the program. We hope to have the square bot programmed to due at most 4 laps for a A by friday the 15th.

Blogger

Today we are taking a break from our bot and are currently updating our blogger. This primarily is to benefit you guys so that everyone can see our progress and we can collect our thoughts on everything that has been happening with our engineering class.

Trials

We have been working no stop in order to get our square bot to move a lap around the chair track. Its been a rough year for our group, we have had many setbacks and dont know if we will even pass 4th quarter because of this challenge but we hope to get this completed and done.

Autonomous

This friday we have started to program our square bot for the autonomous challenge. The challenge consists of laps for grades. Every lap we complete on autonomous we get a certain percentage of points. We have completed at least a whole lap and are on the way to complete 3.

The End

Today is a rather good Monday. On Friday a couple of our members( Algermaine the great , and Henry he magnificent) had stayed after class to work on our square bot, To my surprise they did it! They have made our robot capable of movement. It can finally move! After weeks of errors and programming our bot is now fully capable of moving with the controller. In the next few days we hope to have autonomous completed.

Maintenance

Our square bot has seen better days, especially the day after finally building it. Today we have took a long needed break from programming and dealing with error after error with no success. We have decided to do a maintenance check and repair. We are making sure all our nuts and bolts are not about to fall off and we are making sure our motors and batteries are retaining power.

Whats been happening

As previously mentioned we have made progress in the movement of our square bot. We have had teacher assistance along with peer guiding to help us solve the what we are calling a mystery about whats wrong with our bot. We can program basic autonomous movements but cannot for the sake of life pair our robot and controller. We hope to get this all done by this week.

Troubles Gone?

 Coming in with our progress  made from last week. We have finally figured out what was troubling our "Armadillo "robot. We are now on the right path and finally stopped it from going only in a circle. We are continuing on our path to Autonomous but we are still far away from completing our robot before we do Autonomous we still have to program  our robot to work with the controller. This weeks goal will be trying to finish off out robot to do the manually and autonomous and get ready for our 2nd challenge next week. which involves us building a hand like component on our robot to pick up tetrahedron and place them on a pedestal like object for points .                                                                                          

Moving Forward!

We have finally come to see the light of day. Mentioned in our last post the bot spun in circles and make a irritating sound of a repeated (WHEE) but times have changed our square bot has made some progress over the last couple of days. Our bot when turned on now moves forward instead of circles, We hope to have it fully programmed soon.

Back from spring break and ....

We came back from spring break with a happy heart to only remember how behind our robot is. All it does is spin in a circle which we have yet to find a proper solution to. Today we have been given another deadline on another challenge , but to the extent we have yet to finish the first deadline and actually program our to move other then a flippin circle....(WHEEE WHEE WHEE WHEE WHEE) the sound it forever makes as we turn it on.

Spring Break

Spring break is coming up in the next couple of days. We are still programming our square bot up till the last day before spring break. We are always having difficulties with the RobotC firmware and VEX Pic controller. We have been encountering many errors and hope to complete the programming before our little week of vacation. The errors include many different things, but most simple.

Programming Continued: The Sequel Post 3

Monday, Marks the third period of programming our square bot. We have set numerous deadlines but failed to meet them We have finally seen the light at the end of the tunnel. We have realized our recent mistakes and have been trying to fix them. We are closing our goal but we still have not finished programming for autonomous (or how ever you spell that god awful word). Our goal this week is to somehow finish programming and finish autonomous (yea that word).

Programming Continued....

Today we are still working on the programming portion of our square bot. We have had difficulties such as it seems always. We have had a problem of getting the bot to move in any other direction besides a circle. Either we have mis-programmed our bot or the factory settings are not set to default. This is a difficult and lengthy process to find out whats wrong, we are doing everything we possibly can to find a solution. Hopefully by Monday everything will be figured out.

Programming

Today we have continued on the process of programming our square bot for the ability of movement and control. We are using RobotC to program our square bot. By downloading certain files containing code we will be able to move and gain full control to our bot. Through the week we plan on getting past this stage and begin more advanced maneuvers.

                                                                 

Square Bot Completed

Today we have officially built our square bot. We are on the programming part of our square bot now. First we sat at the wrong computer and then finally transitioned on over to the right device. Once we moved we tried to restart the programming process and have had a few difficulties. The system is showing errors which we are in the process of fixing. Hopefully by Monday we will have our bot programmed and finished.

                                                           

Chassis

We are currently working on the chassis to our square bot. The past few days we have been following the builders guide and have used the step by step instructions  to put together the  beginning parts of our bot. We are planning on finish the chassis and attach  the corresponding bumpers to their  parralel   Chassis.

                                                                 

Organization is done...began to build

Over the past few days we have been set to the organization process. Each team including ourselves has had to complete this task of organizing. We matched corresponding screws to nuts which will be used to piece together our square bot. It hasn't been the funnest thing to do but as long as it helps others and our team we are glad to do it.

                              

Nothing but Screws and Nuts

We are still being assigned to organization duty and are preparing to end with it by Friday. We have just as before matched many different screws with their matching nuts. We have organized over 2 separate bins and are still in the progress of finishing up. We hope to build our square bot soon.

                                                           

Just Screwing Around

 Each team including ourselves has had to start the task of organizing. We matched corresponding screws to nuts which will be used to piece together our square bot. It hasn't been the funnest thing to do but as long as it helps others and our team we are glad to do it. Soon  in the next days ahead of us we will be getting our kit for the square bot and began to build.

                                                               

We Finished!

Finally after days of thinking we were near done we have actually completed our square bot. It took weeks and hours to finish, a lot of man hours were put into designing and building the square bot in solid works. We can officially now move on to building our square bot physically. We are glad to be done and be able to move away from the computer screen and into reality.

                                                           

Setting up the canopy

We are currently one step away from being done. All we have left to do is add the canopy to our square bot. We have ran into the problem of the canopy part not working into the assembly but we have since then fixed that problem. In the next few days we hope to achieve the ability to start to build our square bot physically and take on any tasks required by us as a team.

                                                                   

Our Bot Our Enemy

As we thought we were going to finish our square bot Friday we have ran into a few errors on our behalf. We need to continue to work on our square bot till we are completely done. We are currently adding what we hope are the last parts and will be on the way to attaching the canopy. Whats ahead is hopefully a finished bot so we can go and work on it in real life with physical matters and materials.

                                                                   

Could We Be Finished?

As previously mentioned in the past 3 to 4 posts we have been working on the assembly of our square bot. Each day we have completed a sufficient amount of work in solid works. Today we finally believe that we will finish the square bot and continue on ahead in the building process of our bot. After today we hope to move on to the next assignment or if we don't finish we will then complete the remaining.

Assembling The Parts: V3

Today we are attempting to finish the squarebot on SolidWorks. We have completed a wholesome of work since our last post and are now on the way to making the parts become a whole. We are hoping to finish the bot by the end of today or tomorrow, its been challenging but has been worth the time and effort. Coming the following days we wish to complete any task preceding this one about the square bot.

Assembling The Parts: V2

As an addition to "Assembling The Parts: V1" we are continuing to put parts together for our square bot. We have built around half of our receiver and have completed good some of the motor. We had met our goal as previously mentioned. Our focus now and for the days ahead will be to continue towards the completion of our square bot on solidworks.

Assembling The Parts: V1

As mentioned before we had began to download the necessary parts to build our square bot in solidworks. We had recently completed doing that on Friday and have now begun to assemble the parts into a whole. Starting today we introduced ourselves to the rails and brackets and have used them as our starting point in the assembly. Planning ahead we hope to have completed a good majority of the bot by at least Wednesday.

Downloading The Start

What we have been working on from these past couple days up till now is downloading and converting our Vex Robotics Files over into SolidWorks as working parts. Its been a rather challenging task for such a simple thing, We are having difficulty downloading the parts correctly and efficiently but in all we sure of what we have to do. Our goal is to have our square bot in assembly and on its way to completion. Hopefully sometime next week we will be past our problems and have the issues resolved.

Edit: We are currently on the right path and now moving towards making the Squarebot via SolidWorks.

PoE Coursework

This week we have been introduced to the Principles of Engineering Coursework. The coursework can be found on the SPHS Engineering website. This weeks plan is to make it through the Vex Online Resources and review over the files. We were also shown Robot-C and the resources it has available for us. The Vex Resources includes the inventors guide which we have mentioned about in past posts.

CRYSTAL POWER!

Recently we learned about how the controllers for the robotics we are planning to build works.  One of the marvelous things that we learned about is how the Crystals work and how they are inputted into the controller and brain of the Robot. Not only that, but we found out that each Crystal has a number which is used to control a specific wavelength to help maintain constant control. It is helpful due to multiple people having similar Crystal but different wavelengths.

The Inventors Guide

Today we are going over the inventor guide on structure. The inventors guide is going to direct us on our first robot structure and how to draw it up on solid works. Its our first step for our team in the process of making a functional robot. The inventor guide is here.

Overview of Vex

Today we learn the parts of Vex Robotics. Vex teached us things such as motion, structure, power, sensor, control and logic. We learned what parts were good to use and which ones we should stay away from. Along with that we are trying to put our first weeks post on blogger. Link is here.

                                                          

Learning Blogger/ Algermaine joins

This week our group is going to learn how to do our team blogs! We have been creating and customizing our blogs to fit our teams traits. We have managed to create our blog but hope to finish it in the next couple of days.We also encountered things such as editing html and posting schedule post. We also have a new member!( HE WASN'T READY!!)