2013-2014

Lightning Bots: Team 6083

About Us Mia Kassab

Mia Kassab is a seventh grader and goes to Inza R. Wood Middle School. Her interests are playing sports and having fun. Some of her hobbies are acrobatics, art, piano, and of course, FTC. Her goal in life is to grow up and become a chemist.

Matthew Macovsky
Matthew is an eighth grade and goes to Inza R. Wood Middle School. He is in boy scouts, piano, and FTC. His goal in life is to grow up and become a physicist.

Nicholas Burrell
Nick is a seventh grade, and I go to Inza R. Wood Middle School. He does boy scouts, and loves FTC. His goal in life is to become an animator and work for Pixar.

Andrew Kassab
Andrew is an eighth grader and he goes to Inza R. Wood Middle School. He does boy scouts, piano, soccer, and FTC. His goal in life is to be a professional soccer player.

Coach Paul Burrell

Coach Paul coaches team 6083, Lightning Bots. He has had a passion for robotics his whole life, and he even helps out on the Wilsonville high schools First Robotic Competition.

Bill of Materials
Plexi glass Electrical tape (red, green, and yellow) Zip ties Plastic (for hand) Wiring loom Rubber bands Steel bars (to weigh down robot) Gaffers tape Styrofoam Velcro Ink (for team number) Cardstock (for team number)

Table of Contents
Title page ................................................................................................................. 1 About us .................................................................................................................. 2 Bill of materials ..................................................................................................... 3 Table of contents ................................................................................................. 4 Highlights................................................................................................................ 6 First meeting ......................................................................................................... 7 Conveyer belt..........................................................................................................8 Improving ideas ..................................................................................................... 9 Arm and hook ........................................................................................................ 11 Hand and arm decisions ..................................................................................... 12 Robot design ......................................................................................................... 13 Drivetrain.............................................................................................................. 15 Transferring robot parts..................................................................................16 18x18 limits .......................................................................................................... 17 Adding gears ........................................................................................................ 18 Attaching the arm .............................................................................................. 19 Fixing and electronics ........................................................................................ 20 Electronics ............................................................................................................ 21 Hand, programming, and flag turner .............................................................. 23 Checking off the list..........................................................................................26

Smoking motors ................................................................................................... 28 Setting up and practicing.................................................................................. 29 Autonomous .......................................................................................................... 30 Birthday celebration .......................................................................................... 31 Weebly website ................................................................................................... 33 Liberty high scrimmage ..................................................................................... 34 Quick improvements...........................................................................................36 Controllers ............................................................................................................ 37

Highlights
First meeting........ ................................................................................................. 7 Robot design ......................................................................................................... 13 Drivetrain.............................................................................................................. 15 18x18 limits .......................................................................................................... 17 Attaching the arm .............................................................................................. 19 Hand, programming, and flag turner .............................................................. 23 Autonomous .......................................................................................................... 30 Liberty high scrimmage ..................................................................................... 34 Controllers ............................................................................................................ 37

9-8-13

1st Meeting
Today the team read over and talked about game strategies and the rules. Some main ideas that we discussed were about being an offensive or defensive robot, the autonomous period, and the end game. Our team decided that if we were an offensive robot we would get more points. We would be likely to get more points because if we were defensive we might get penalties, and the other team will gain points. Two more reasons are because we can't block two robots at once and we aren't sure that our alliance can score points. Something else we started to discuss is how we'll pick up the blocks, the idea we started to think about was a conveyor belt.

Decisions We Made
Autonomous period: 1. put block in the crate above the IR beacon= 40 points 2. drive fully onto the bridge= 20 points Driver controlled period: 1. put many blocks in the different outside crates= 3 points each block 2. balance pendulum= 50% block score bonus End game: 1. raise flag to high position= 35 points 2. hang above bridge= 50 points

Author__________________

Edited by_________________
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9-15-13

Conveyer Belt
For the second meeting we discussed more about the conveyer belt. A good idea we thought about was we would pick up the blocks from the front of the robot and dispense them into the crates from the back of the robot. This would save us more time because we won't have to turn around every time to go to the dispenser when we get a block. Today we came up with some sketches of the robot. The team started to experiment with CAD today. We tried doing a basic CAD of the robot and conveyer belt for practice. In the future we hope to be able to make a specific CAD of the conveyer belt, or if we have time even of the whole robot. One thing we thought about is what if the blocks slipped. We decided that it would be good to have four thing on each conveyer belt sticking out (some sort of metal sheet). This would also help with only carrying four blocks at a time and it would we easier to pick up the blocks. We would have to adjust each conveyer belt by hand so that each conveyer belt would have a metal sheet picking up a block synchronized with the other conveyer belt.

Side of robot

Front of robot Author_______________ Edited by_______________

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9-20-13

Improving Ideas
Today we discussed how to improving the mechanism that would pick up the blocks. We kept thinking and thinking of new ideas, not all were very good, but we talked about them and improved them. Finally there was one idea that would work well with a bit of tweaking. The idea was to keep our robot that we used last year and remove the last segment of our arm mechanism. We would have a conveyer belt take up blocks to the hand. Then we would reach for the containers without turning around, just by bending the arm to the other side of the robot. With lots of tweaking the idea kept getting better and better. The final idea was we would add a hand to scoop up only four blocks at a time. After the hand would scoop them up it would bend to the other side of the robot. Now, all that we would have to do is bend the hand down and the blocks would fall right into the containers. Another idea we had was to have pre-set poses like we did last year. Poses are basically a program that would make the arm and hand bend to certain degrees so that in competitions you won't have to tweak the positions of the arm and hand. There would be a pose to pick up blocks and to dispense the blocks into the containers. Another thing we started to talk about is hanging for the bar above the bridge in the end game. We discussed about two different types of hooks, a grappling hook and a regular hook. We also talked about how many hooks we should have. We decided it would be best to have two hooks. It would be easier because one hook would have two carry tons of weight and the robot would probably fall and break. If we had two hooks the hook would only have to carry half the weight of the robot. The robot wouldn't have to balance on one hook, that would be unsteady there would be to hooks on either side to balance it out.

Regular hook

Grappling hook

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9-22-13

Arm and Hook

Today we spent most of our meeting trying to connect the samantha to our computer through or router. We tried reprogramming the samantha, power cycling, and a number of other things, but nothing worked. After a while we decided to move on and we started to discuss what we wanted our robot to look like. By the end of the meeting we had a vague idea of what we wanted to robot to look like. We wanted to have two identical arms on either side of the robot and have those arms connected to our hand which would be able to pick up blocks from the floor. We decided to have double arms because we are planning on using the same mechanism for picking up blocks that we do for hanging our robot on the bar above the pendulum. Another reason we need two arms is because one channel wouldn't be enough to support our robot. We also had designs for making the flag go up and the hook for hanging our robot on the bar.

Hook Ideas
1. (two hooks)

Flag Idea

2.(one hook

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10-4-13

Hand and Arm Decisions

To start off the meeting we looked at and discussed the hand that one of the team members printed off of CAD with a 3D printer. The hand fits two blocks by two blocks with one open side that has a slanted edge to help the blocks get in and two dividers in the form of a lower case t to separate the blocks and keep them from falling and knocking each other out of the hand . The hand is very light and has some problems/improvements that we discussed. One of the main problems/improvements that we discussed was adding some sort of wheel/chain on top of the hand to pull in blocks; this would help especially when they are stacked and also just to keep them from falling out of the hand. To get the blocks in, the wheel would have to turn clockwise. To dispense the blocks the wheel would have to turn counter-clockwise.

Wheel

Blocks

Hand

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10-6-13

Robot Design
For the whole meeting we decided on the pros and cons of all the ideas we had come up with. We decided on the flag, drive, hand, and hanging mechanisms. The team automatically noticed that most of us were picking the same designs so this would be easier than we had thought. The only mechanism where the votes were evenly split was for the hanging mechanism.

= chosen mechanism idea

Hand Ideas
1. Hand with an arm 1a. 2x2 hand

Andrew

Matthew

Mia

Nick

1b. 4x4 hand 1c. 2x2 hand with guide 1d. grabber 2. push blocks 3. spatula with tracks

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Hang Ideas
1. hook, arm, gear lock 2. hook, winch, latch 3. wedge with momentum

Andrew

Matthew

Mia

Nick

Flag Ideas
1. single prong

Andrew

Matthew

Mia

Nick

2. double prong

Drive Train
1. center wheel

Andrew

Matthew

Mia

Nick

with two omni wheels

2. tracks

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10-13-13

Drivetrain
Today during the meeting we made almost all of the drivetrain. The team had two channels and had to attach one motor, two omni wheels, one regular wheel, and many gears on each channel. On each side of the robot there are nine wheels, three are 80 tooth and 6 are 40 tooth. This task got finished except for the fact we only have two omni wheels, so one side of the robot is not quite finished. One problem that we noticed is that the bolts rub against the wheel in the middle of the channel. To fix this problem we added one of the smaller spacers below the wheel, so now the wheel and bolts don't rub against each other and don't get stuck. The second thing we did is use the new arm and the old program and drive chain. We tried picking up some blocks and dispensing them in the containers. For this to work we had to change some of the program. One of the major things we changed in the program is that we commented out everything that uses the second arm that has now been removed. During the end of the meeting we had a little safety speech about gears, and had an unintentional demonstration from our coach (he is okay). One thing we learned is to never look away from the gear chain while you are holding it. Another thing we learned is try to always have an adult present in the room in case anything goes wrong. We also started to cad up the robot, so far we have CADed up the base of the robot. To finish the CAD, one of the team members has stepped up to volunteer and finish CADing the robot for homework. Our team goal for next week is to the drive chain, install the drive chain, and start to program the arm poses and drive. If we have extra time next meeting the team members would like to try to drive the robot and use the new arm. One other thing we could try is to see if we have enough torch to drive up the ramp and stay there for at least five minutes.

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10-20-13

Transferring Robot Parts

For most of the meeting today we were transferring stuff to the new robot. For the first couple minutes of the meeting we tried picking up some blocks and dispensing them in the basket. Then we tried driving up the ramp with our new drive train, and it worked very well and went up smoothly. We decided to use the prototype robot as our new robot since it was already working so well. The first thing we did was take off all of the wiring, NXT, samantha, and more. Next, we had to make the robot at most 18 inches by 18 inches. So what we did was took apart the two connecting channels and replaced it with the next smaller channel size. While one of us was working on this, the other two were taking the arm, battery pack holder, and arm rest off the old robot. At the end of the meeting we measured the robot and it was about 18 1/2 inches. Then we started thinking about some ways to fix this problem. The first way we thought of was to replace it with the next shortest channel, but then it would be too short and wouldn't be able to fit a lot of stuff on it. The second idea we had was to move the front and back channels to a different part of the side channels. This would help because then the spacers wouldn't be pushing the channels out further. If we move the channels into the right place it will make the robot about three fourths of an inch shorter. That will bring the overall width to about 17 3/4 of an inch. Now it is the end of the meeting, we will have to do this next time. Now we have to clean up all the kepnuts, screws, nuts, allen wrenches, etc.

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10-25-13

18x18 Limits
For pretty much all of the meeting today we were moving the front and back channels to a different area on the side channels. For us to successfully move the channels, we needed to take of the total of eight L brackets with each of their eight screws, so a total of 64 screws. Then, we had to find out exactly where on the two side channels, the front and back channels would go. We figured out that one channel would have to go towards the very back, and the other channel in the middle. When the 64 screws were connecting the four channels again, there was only about 45 minutes left in the meeting. For the next 30 minutes we discussed how we would connect the arms to the robot. After lots of discussing, we thought that we could connect the bottom part of the arm to the back channel with some L brackets. On the bottom part of the arm are some of the gears and the motor. We also discussed how far apart the two channels would have to be for us to be able to fit the hand and hooks. We thought about the width of the hand, the size of the hooks, anything else that we would need to add in that area, and any extra space we could have to be safe for the flag turner. For the last 15 minutes of the meeting, we took four L brackets, two channels, and 32 screws. We got to work and attached the two channels . By then we were tired, so we packed up, cleaned up, and left.

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10-27-13

Adding Gears
Today was a rather short meeting. For the first 45 minutes, we discussed what the line-up for the gears on the two arm channels should be. We thought and thought about it, finally, we decided that it would be best to have the pretty much the same gear line-up as we did last year. The only thing that we would change, is that we would get rid of one of the 40 tooth gears that was towards the top of the gear assembly. For pretty much the rest of the meeting, we were attaching the gears to the base of the arm. This took a lot more time than we thought it would. For the last 30 minutes of the meeting we started to discuss where we thought the different electronics such as the power switch, NXT, and motor controllers should be mounted on the robot. We had a pretty good idea of where everything was going to go, but we still had about 20 minutes left until the meeting would end. Very quickly we built up a battery pack, and attached it to the robot. The battery pack was pretty much just a flat building plate with two L brackets to attach it to the channel that is in the middle of the robot. Then we attached a strip of velcro to the flat building plate and to a couple of battery packs. We still had about 10 minutes left, so started to think about what the mount for some of the electronics would look like. We thought that on the right channel of the robot (looking from the back of the robot) we could attach three channels to form an upside down U. Then we would attach the NXT facing the outside off the top channel. We also thought that since the sides of the attachment are still empty it would be a good place to attach the power switch, also it would be easy to access.

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11-1-13

Attaching the Arms

For the whole meeting we were attaching the rest of the two arms, hand, and the hook. The first thing we did was attach the motors to the channels that are the base of the arm. Then we lined them up with the gear so that they would turn properly. When that was done we attached the second part of the arm. We noticed that the arm wasn't very stable, to fix that we connected them on the inside by a U bracket. Now that this was done we just needed to make and attach the hook and holder for the hand. To do this we split into two groups of two. The group that was working on the hook design thought long and hard. After a while they thought that we shouldn't have hooks, but instead have a channel. The channel fits perfectly around the bar above the ramp. So what we did was take a channel and attach it across the top of both arms. Not only would this act as a hook, but it would also help support the arms so that they move at the same rate. The people working on the hand started to think of an idea to attach the hand before they started to build it. They would just use lots of small U brackets and L brackets. They first laid it out so that they could make sure they work. Then we attached the servos and each of us built the attachment for each side. When they finished they noticed that both attachments were built upside down. They would have to rebuild them next meeting because now the meeting was over. What was wrong was that the L brackets in the middle of each of the attachments was upside down. This meant, when we would attach the hand to them, the hand would be dragging on the ground instead of up in the air.

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11-3-13

Fixing and Electronics

For the first 30 minutes of the meeting the whole team worked on rebuilding the attachments that would hold up the hand. We used the same layout that we thought we would, the only thing we did differently was flip the L brackets in the middle the other way around. Then, when we were done with that we attached the servo to the attachments. The last thing we did was attach the servo part of the attachment to the second channel of the arm, and we were done. For the rest of the meeting we were working on what the attachments for the electronics would be and we made some of them. We then drew out what the electronic mounts would look like and where the best place would be for us to attach them. The first thing we drew out was the NXT and power switch mount since we already knew what it would look like. Then, we drew out the battery pack holder since we also knew what that would look like. Then we thought that we could attach the motor and servo controllers on the channel in the back of the robot that held up the bases of the arms. First we figured out how many we would need, that was : 1 servo controller for the hand servos and 3 motor controllers. One of the controllers would be for the arm motors, one would be for the flag turner, and one would be for the two drive motors. We could mount two on the top and two on the side. The last electronic we would need to mount is the samantha. It would be best to attach the samantha somewhere high on the robot to get better signal. What we did was attach a channel and attached the samantha at the very top. Then we could also attach the IR sensor on the channel for when we do autonomous. For the last 10 minutes we built the upside down U that would hold the NXT and power switch. Then we attached the upside down U to the right channel on the robot (looking from the back) , but we didn't have enough time to attach the actual NXT and power switch.

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11-8-13

Electronics
For the pretty much of the whole short meeting we were attaching the electronics and building up the mounts. The first electronic we mounted was the samantha because it was the easiest. We took a 416 millimeter length channel and attached it with an L bracket in the back left corner of the robot. Then on the top of the channel we attached the samantha. The second electronic we mounted was the power switch, all we had to do was take some nuts and attach it to the upside down U that we had already made. Then we mounted the motor and servo controllers, this took some thinking. We had to make sure that when we attached the wires they wouldn't be chopped up by the gears on the base channel of the arm. We attached some wires and saw that on one of the motor controllers it was very close, to solve the problem we simply just took it off and attached it a little further towards the right. For the last 15 minutes of the meeting we thought of some ideas for the flag turner. Ideas for the flag turner 1. A flat bracket with two L brackets on either side facing opposing directions 2. A servo motor bracket 3. A U bracket 4. two axles attached to a flat bracket 5. two tubes attached to a flat bar

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TETRIX tube

TETRIX flat bracket

TETRIX servo motor bracket

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11-10-13

Hand, Programming, and Flag Turner

Today was by far the most productive meeting this season. We only had three members, but we each worked on something different. Our goal for the day was to use last year's program to drive around and hang. By the end of the meeting we did have a chance to drive around and we did end up hanging. We also had a chance to pick up some blocks and dispense them into the outer crate of the pendulum. When we picked up and dispensed the blocks it worked very well, there was one futuristic problem that we did notice. One problem that did occur was when we stopped the program it could only stay hanging about 70% of the time. The hand was pretty flimsy, in the future if our hand gets knocked it might be too weak and break. One way that we could fix this is by re-CADing the hand so that the base is thicker and stronger. Today we figured out that there is only space on half of the bar for one robot to hang. We thought about some solutions so that we can hand and our alliance partner can hang. After lots and lots of thinking we came up with a brilliant idea, but it would be hard. We could have two attachments, one on either side of the robot (on top of the channels) that would flip out. After they would flip out our alliance partner could drive up onto the attachments and when we pull ourselves up our alliance partner would also be hanging. Another advantage of this is that our alliance partner won't even have to be able to hang, all they have to know how to do is drive up a ramp. The hard part is that when our program ends it will be extremely hard to keep our robot and our alliance partners robot suspended in air, and we also will probably have to stay there for at least 10-15 seconds. During the meeting, one person worked on the flag turner. We decided that for now we could see how it would go when we attached a U bracket as the spinner. We tried it out by hand and it worked pretty well. So we decided to use the U bracket and mount it on a channel. What we noticed, is that it would be very hard to drive straight up to the flag turner. What we decided to do was mount the channel on the side of the robot at an angle. This way, we would be able to come up
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from an angle and we wouldn't be driving against the wall. When this was mounted, we started to think of where on the robot the third motor controller should go. We knew where it would go, but we didn't mount it quite yet. One other person worked on drilling and attaching the hand to the robot. We started off by drilling holes in the hand to fit the screws through. The screws would attach the channel to the hand mounts, then the hand mounts to the hand. When we were done, we attached the channel, hand mounts, and the hand together. Now the only thing we needed was to do some programming, and we would have a hand that could pick up blocks. Since there was still some extra time, we made a list of everything that we could think of that is left to do. We made this list in order of most to least important so that we would have a place to start off next meeting.

Priority
#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6

Task
Mechanism to jam arm (for hanging) Program the park button Touch sensor (to park the arms) Mount 3rd motor controller Mount IR beacon (for autonomous) Finish and clean up wiring

Done

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#7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13

Program hand to stay vertical Program the flag turner Program autonomous Program the poses

Make programs more reliable Improve drive programming Flip out ramp for hanging (optional)

The third person worked on the programming. First, we signed up for bitbucket.org and Git. bitbucket.org is a hosting service for Git. Git is a source code management system. Next, we copied all of our programs from last year onto Git. This way we could revise them so that we could use them for this year's robot. The next thing that we did was change the program for the arms. Last year we had two arm sections and one motor. We had to change the programming so that it would control one arm section and two motors.
By then, it was already 4:45 so we started to clean up. When we were done cleaning up each of us discussed about what we had accomplished and what we still needed to do. Lastly, each of us looked at the chart and tried to think of any more tasks we still needed to do.

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11-22-13

Checking Off the List

For the first 15 minutes of the meeting we looked at the list from last meeting. We decided that each of us would work on something different. We would try to get the first four tasks on the list done. The first four tasks were, jamming something into the arm (for when we hang), attach the touch sensor (for when we park the arms), attaching the third motor controller, and mounting the IR beacon sensor for autonomous. We accomplished all of these tasks except building the final jammer. Arm jammer- at first we were thinking that we could jam a small gear in between two of the larger gears. Then we thought, the gear might get stripped or have too much pressure on it and fall out. So what we decided to do was jam something into the hole in the gear. We were thinking about what to jam in there that would be very strong and sturdy. We decided that it should be an axle, they are strong and fit into the hole. For mounting it we decided to build a mechanism that would attach to the arm in multiple places. There would be many pivot points so the axle would go in the hole at less of an angle. Then we thought about what would happen if the jammer didn't make it into the hole. It wouldn't be too bad because there would still be friction between the gear and axle that would keep it up for a while. Then we drew an idea of what the jammer might look like (made out of legos). Programming the park button- for programming the park button we just used the same one as last year, we just made a few small changes so that it would work for the robot that we have this year. We also made it so that right as we started the program, the robot would automatically park. One other thing that we added was a noise. This noise would occur whenever we parked the robot, including at the beginning of a match. The third motor controller- we decided to mount the third the third motor controller in the front of the robot, near the other two controllers. For there to be room on the front of the robot we had to move the other controller from the
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center of the channel to the left of the channel. Then we mounted the third controller on the right side of the channel. To finish it off, we wired it up and it was ready to be used. Mounting the IR beacon sensor- for mounting the IR beacon sensor we had to figure out how high off of the ground it would be hanging. Then we measured that next to our robot. We realized that it would work to just mount the IR beacon sensor on the front right channel. So we took a hard point connector and mounted it.

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12-29-13

Smoking Motors
At the beginning of the meeting when we turned on the power and the robot parked we noticed the motors had smoke. Then we killed the power. We noticed that the arm was still trying to go down when it was in the park position. We tried to figure out why this had happened. After a while we noticed that on the touch sensor the module bush was pushed down on the lego axle. To fix this problem, we decided to put two big lego axle spacers. With these on, the module bush would not be pushed down. Then we tried to park again, we noticed that the left motor wasn't moving at all, and the right motor was moving extremely slow. We decided to switch out both of the motors, just in case the right motor wasn't strong enough to continue. Then we decided to park again to see if our new touch sensor design worked. We noticed that the right motor started to smoke again. We figured that the touch sensor wasn't the problem. So we figured that something was wrong with the encoder. We looked through the program and nothing was wrong the program. Then we noticed that the encoder motor wasn't fully plugged in. We turned on the robot and noticed that the right motor hadn't been damaged. Next, we talked about what the hand would look like. We talked about adding plexi glass on top of the hand. We decided to do this instead of having a plastic top. This way we could see through the top to see how many blocks we had in the hand. We also decided to make all of this sides and bottom thicker and wider. This way the hand would be a lot sturdier. Also, we decided to get rid of the dividers in between the blocks, this way, the blocks won't have to go in perfectly. We decided to come up with a new pose. We made a pose to un jam the arm jammer after we have hung. This way, we won't always have to turn the robot off and park it to un jam the arm.

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1-5-14

Setting Up and Practicing

Today was an important meeting. To start off, we got the field built and put together. After we built the field we started to talk about where on the field the robot would start and how autonomous would happen. Since we still didn't have the new hand we just cut out some cardboard to the right size and taped it onto the current hand. After that, we started to practice. We decided to have some practice rounds. This way we would know what it would be like in a real match. Also, with practice we would discover some new problems. One of the problems that we noticed is that whenever we drive backwards and then suddenly stop, the robot would do a wheelie. This means that there is not enough weight on the front of the robot. We noticed that with time the driver and arm controller kept getting faster and it was more reliable to get the blocks in the crate. We also made poses for dispensing the blocks. We decided to have a high dispense and a low dispense. This way, if the pendulum was tilted more towards one side (higher on one side than the other) then we would go to a different dispense so that the arm wouldn't be to high above the crate and the blocks would bounce out of the crate.

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1-10-14

Autonomous
Today was a short meeting so we decided it was about time that we started to work on autonomous. First, we had to figure out what the robot would do. We decided to have the robot drive forward, turn (to align with the pendulum. Drive forward until the IR sensor detects the seeker at 9. Then the robot would turn the right wheel backwards, back up and dispense the block. We decided to start off just by doing that and we would think about driving onto the ramp. The next step was to start programming. First we decided where on the mat we would line up the robot to start off. Next, in Tele-Op mode we drove the robot around to do what we wanted it to do in autonomous. While we were driving the robot around we were reading the value of the motors. This would always be accurate because at the beginning of the match when the robot parks, it resets the values. Finally, we turned all of these values into an autonomous program. At the end of the meeting we still had some time left so we decided to CAD up the new hand. This was pretty easy since we already had a drawn out picture with dimensions. All we have to do now is print it out.

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1-12-14

Birthday Celebration
Today was a very special meeting. Halfway through the meeting we celebrated Andrew's 14th birthday. For the first part of the meeting we continued to work on autonomous. For the second part of the meeting we decided to work on building up the team website. For the first part of the meeting when we were finishing up autonomous we were testing by putting the IR seeker in front of every different crate and tested that five times for each crate. Every time we tried it on every crate it worked. The next step was to start working on the second half of autonomous, driving onto the ramp. First we had to figure out how to drive onto the ramp. This would be a challenge because we wouldn't know where on the board we would end up, it all depends on where the IR seeker is placed. We started to brainstorm a couple of ideas, but we didn't do any programming for the second part of autonomous yet.

Position T R I A L
1 1 2 3 4 5 2 3 4

X = doesn't work

= works

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Next, WE ATE CAKE!!! For the second part of the meeting we started off by attaching the plexi glass to the top of the new hand. Then, we attached the new hand to the robot. The hand was a little bit too wide. We decided that eventually if it became a problem we could just add little styrofoam to each side of the hand. Finally, we started to work on the new team website. We added a picture of the website on the front page. Also, we made a team logo to put on the front page. We also decided to have a Q&A page. The Q&A page would be good for people to who just learned about FIRST and have a lot of questions to be answered. Lastly, we also decided to have a page for 2013-2014. On that page we would have pictures of the robot and a link to the block party game rules. For the last couple minutes of the meeting we started to think about some new ideas for the flag turner. We need the new flag turner to be wider, this way it would be a lot faster and easier to line up with the spinner for the flag turner. This way it would be a lot easier to do both the flag turner and hang in the end game.

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1-17-14

Weebly Website
Today was a day when we worked on community outreach. At the beginning of the meeting we got an e-mail from our 6th grade science teacher, Ms. Juras. Ever since FLL in 2010 she has come to at least one of our competitions. She e-mailed us to ask when and where our competitions were. We e-mailed her back and told her that she could come watch us and hopefully she could also go see the other Wilsonville team. We also gave her the web link to our new website. This way she could learn about the 2013-2014 game and some pictures and videos of our robot. For the almost rest of the meeting we worked on the website. We decided to add a team background paragraph. In this paragraph we talked about our previous years in FLL and FTC last year. We also decided to have a slide show with pictures of our robot. One very important thing that we to add was a survey. In the survey it asks you about your interests (programming, building, etc.) , your grade level, an if you would do FIRST (FTC, Junior FLL, FRC, etc.). Whenever somebody completes our survey it e-mails each of us the results. Lastly, we each created our own Weebly account so that we can work on it from our house. For the last 20 minutes of the meeting we tested autonomous on all of the crates one more time. Then, we decided to start working on the part of autonomous when we drive onto the ramp. We decided that it would be easiest to start off by making it drive onto the ramp only if it is at a specific crate. So we made the robot back up, turn, drive forward, turn, and drive onto the ramp. This would only happen if the IR was on the first crate (the crate closest to where we line our robot up at the beginning of the match). Then we packed up all of the materials (alan wrenches, screws, zip ties, etc.) into the cars for the scrimmage the next day.

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Liberty High Scrimmage

For the first half hour of the scrimmage, before all of the matches started we had to download Program Chooser.c. This way, the people running the matches can easily find our Tele-Op and autonomous programs even if they are name different things. We also went through inspection. At inspection they asked for the bill of materials. They also asked us to change the NXT name to Team_6083, or something similar to that. Since we sometimes switch out the NXT, only the other NXT has the name Team_6083. So we will also have to change the name of any NXTs that we plan on using. Before the matches started we looked at who our alliances were. We did this to make sure that in autonomous our robots wouldn't have any conflicts, and also to find out if they can hang and do the flag. This way, If they can only hang, they can do that and we can do the flag. Or, if they can hang and do the flag, then they can do what they are batter at and we can do the other. Everything worked out pretty well, except for in our third match. We were paired up with the other Wilsonville team and we both had autonomous. If we did autonomous then we would get in their way. to solve this problem, we decided to let them do autonomous. We let them do autonomous because we have seen it before and it is pretty reliable. Also, they can do the IR sensor and the ramp where as we can do the block, but we can only do the ramp if the IR sensor is on the crate closest to us.

Problem
For the first two matches we were having problems with the power connections to the samantha.

Solution

We noticed that some of the wires that connected to the motor controllers were coming unplugged. All that we had to do was push the wires back into the motor connecter ports. In the last match at the end autonomous Get rid of park at the beginning of Telethe robot parked and broke off one of Op. This way we don't brake other our alliance partners attachments. robots, our robot, or the field. In all of the matches we were super Weigh down the front even more than close to tipping over. just adding an extra battery. It was hard to line up with the flag Make the flag turner wider. This way it spinner. doesn't have to be as precisely lined up.
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With all of these changes that we have noticed that we have to change we have lots of work to do on the robot before the next competition. To make all of these changes we will have to work more. This can mean more meetings or just on our free time. During the competition we noticed that all of the flag turners looked similar to ours. Most of the flag turners were wider and deeper ( the pieces coming out of the sides were longer) than ours. We came up with a lot of new ideas that we can use for a flag turner. The other Wilsonville team had an idea that we really liked, but we couldn't make that big of a change to our robot a week before our first competition. Their flag turner could also turn up and down (the height of the actual mechanism) this would make it easier to line up. It would be even easier if the mechanism could go up and down ( height of the mechanism) and also left to right (kind of like how a carousel spins around and around). We then packed up all of our materials (alan wrenches, nuts and bolts, zip ties, channels, etc.).

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1-19-14

Quick Improvements
Today we were making some improvements before the competition that was a week away. The first thing that we did was add the giant steel bolts in the front of the robot. Then we ran through a match to try them out. We saw that the bolts helped us a lot, but not quite enough. We were still tipping at some points. We weren't flipping over though. Then, in the end game we noticed that with the weights it was a lot harder to hang. Then we thought if we should keep the bolts. We decided that it would be best , because then we wouldn't flip over. Also, we can still hang, just not even close to as easily. The next thing that we did was cut out two squares with a slant made of styrofoam. This way we wouldn't pick up more than four blocks. We tried it out. We noticed that the black in the back would always go in crooked. Because of this we could only get two blocks in the front. So we decided to cut out a triangle styrofoam piece. The triangle allowed one block to go in the back, and three in the front. We noticed that this made it a ton easier to pick up blocks and only get four at a time. We also started to talk about the flag turner. We thought about what kind of new design we wanted. We decided that for now we could just take the two sides of the U bracket and pull them apart to make it wider. It was really easy to do that and it did help us line up easier.

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Controllers
Drive Controller
Hang button Slow drive Pad to control both wheels Kill switch

Left wheel controller

Right wheel controller

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Arm Controller

Pre- button Hand controller

Kill switch

Hang Button

Dispense high

Park Arm controller

Grab Dispense low

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