Master Log -- Days: January 5th--January 30th

This is a log we created showing our progress during the first month of the six-week build session.  However, we will be making daily post updates from now on.

Kick-Off January 5th--Saturday

• Went over 2013 game manual
• Ultimate ascent
• Double checked checklist for kick-off kit-of-parts
• Strategy overview:
• Accurate shooter that can make high goals
• 1st level hang if able (not a high priority)
• Be able to pick up disks and receive from feeder station
• Prototyped shooter
• Using two pneumatic wheels
• straight guide on side
• Pneumatic piston pushes disks in to wheels.

January 6th--Sunday

• Brainstorming
• Ways to climb pyramid
• Intake design
• Testing Prototype Shooter
• Starting Intake Prototype
• PVC Pipes
• Latex tubing

January 7th--Monday

• CAD
• Designing intake on CAD
• Designing chassis on CAD
• Intake Prototype
• Testing intake a bit
• Starting to rethink design for the intake
• Testing Prototype Shooter more

January 8th--Tuesday

• CAD
• Shooter on CAD is being built
• Chassis is also being built
• Shooter
• Finalizing the shooter
• More testing
• Testing Prototype Intake
• PVC pipe is drilled
• Latex tube is wrapped around and attached to the pipe

January 9th--Wednesday

• More CAD
• Chassis is still being built
• Shooter is also still in progress
• Intake
• Finalizing touches
• Rethinking design (?)
• Shooter
• More testing outside the room

January 10th--Thursday

• CAD
• Shooter
• Intake
• Cutting Parts for Chassis
• Milling

January 11th--Friday

• CAD
• Chassis
• Intake
• Building wheels
• Working with power tools to make wheels
• Wrapping traction around wheels and attaching it
• Some of the electrical/programming team researches how to program

January 12th--Saturday

• Working on wheels more
• Making a few more
• CAD
• Chassis
• Intake

January 14th--Monday

• Mechanical team is working on wheels
• Chairman’s team is working on essays
• Speaking
• Writing
• Looking at past works
• Cleaning and sorting
• The other half of the Mechanical Team is cutting for the chassis
• Designing and working out the chassis and intake, how it will work
• Intake is being worked on
• Six week plan is in progress/is worked out
• An Activity Log has started being written out

January 15th--Tuesday

Mechanical Team

• Currently working on intake rollers, PVC pipe and Latex tubing
• Building some of the structure of the intake
• Putting together pneumatic wheels
• Drilling holes for the shooter prototype
• Starting prototype chassis

Electrical/Programming Team

• Currently figuring out how to load programs to run on the cRIO and stuff, having trouble
• Participating in online forums for help
• Got an image on cRIO
• Put together an electrical binder

January 16th--Wednesday

Mechanical

• Testing out shooter
• Working on chassis
• Working on brackets (shooter)
• Mounted the prototype intake on prototype chassis
• Prototype intake testing
• The intake worked after a few adjustments. It turned out we didn’t really need a lot of compression on the Frisbee to suck them in. The latex tubing had enough traction to suck in the Frisbees with ease.
• We also found out that the distance between the first and second rollers needed to be precise for out intake to work. When the first roller takes in the disk it goes through with ease but if the second roller was too close to the first set of rollers the Frisbee wouldn’t have enough space to change from one angle to the other (Frisbee starts off at 180 degrees and needs to change to 36 degrees because the intake ramp is at 36 degrees).

Electrical/Programming

• Uploaded and got the code to work on practice bot
• Fixing chain on practice bot
• trying to figure out an autonomous

January 17th--Thursday

Mechanical

• Completed shooter
• Currently testing shooter
• Fixing shooter
• Completed intake

Electrical

• Attempted autonomous
• trying to make a simple short autonomous- robot drive in a square. Problem with 2 motor drive open WPI occurred when we tried to run it.
• Modifying practice bot- fixing the back wheel chain problems
• Researching pneumatics
• Researching how to program sensors
• Scrolling through forums for help on sensor programming, pneumatics, kinect, etc.

January 18th--Friday

Mechanical

• Attempted to a hole for the motor--no.
• Currently mounting motors on prototype shooter
• CAD
• Cutting metal for intake

Electrical/Programming

• Fixed a wheel on practice bot
• Held a meeting about camera, kinect, encoder and what to get done
• Attempted to research about kinect and camera using search engines and forums

January 19th--Saturday

TODAY WAS A SUCCESSFUL DAY

Mechanical team:
-Made shooter work!
-Experimenting with shooter:
  Trial 1:

10 9/16 compression. Tires 15 psi

angle 33 degrees
height of shooter: 23”
height of table 27”
max height of frisbee: 9 feet
estimated max distance around 38 feet.
delivery: pushed in.
  Trial 2:

Compression- with foam strip.: 11 ⅛ inches

same angle and height.

approx distance: 48 feet

estimated height: 9 feet.

delivery: pushed

 Trial 3:
compression: 10 and 9/16 + half an inch from strip.
approx distance: 62 feet.
approx height: 10 to 11 feet.
same angle and height of shooter.
delivery: pushed in.
Trial 4:
compression: 10 and ⅞ inches, foam strip
angle and height is same.
approx distance: 82 feet. and 5 in.
approx. height: 14 feet.
delivery: pushed in.
Trial 5:
compression: same
same height and angle
approx distance: 58 feet and 9 inches
approx height: high
*Delivery: not pushed in (inching)
Trial 6:
New angle: 25 degrees
*greater distance when flatter.
approx height: same as previous
approx distance: 83 and a half feet
Trial 7:
parallel to ground.
27 inches from ground.
approx height... not much
approx distance: 85 and a half feet
Trial 8:
angle increase: new angle 37 degrees.
approx height: 18-20 feet.
approx distance: around 77 to 78 feet

delivery: inching

Trial 9:

increase of angle: new angle about 42 degrees.

Approx distance: 36 feet and 3 inches.

Approx height: VERY HIGH. at least 20 feet high.

*notes: frisbee is stalling(?)

Electrical/programming team:
-Made the camera work!
-still figuring out how to program camera
-researching Kinect
-In the future: make three different distances: close medium and long

January 21st--Monday

Mechanical:
figured out the final compression of 10.25 inches! Shot the frisbee almost 30 feet high.
continue CAD

Electrical/programming
working on finding info about camera and how to program it.
(kinect is temporarily out of the picture.)

January 22nd--Tuesday

Electrical

• Camera programming

• Created a rectangle out of retroreflective tape (to mock the perimeter of the actual goal)

• Currently trying to get camera to tell the distance

Mechanical

• Currently using CAD for the intake

• Trying to get the shooter to shoot the frisbee upside down

• Weighed parts of chassis

• Milled something for the prototype intake

• Studying datalis

January 23rd--Wednesday

Mechanical

• CAD shooter
• Cutting, milling metal pieces for the shooter

Electrical

• Attempted to create the field's perimeter
• Making more goals to test camera
• Testing out the practice bot and sorta driving

January 24th--Thursday

Mechanical

• Cut out metal for the shooter
• Fixing problems on shooter with CAD

Electrical

• Discussed our autonomous plans
• Currently trying to figure out how to calculate the angular velocity
• Thinking of how to mount the mock goals up on the walls
• Talked about plans with the camera

January 25th--Friday

Mechanical:
-Finished battery mount
-working on cadding the shooter.
-cutting pieces of metal
-a lot

Electrical:
-Finished building the high goal

January 26-- Saturday

Mechanical team:
-brainstorming and prototyping the climbing mechanism

Electrical/programming team:
-Programmed the begin/finish VI’s with LabView
-Attaching fans to talons

January 28 Monday

Mechanical team:
-working on the robot frame
-working on shooter.

Electrical/programming:
-cut out a piece of polycarb for the electrical components
-Started learning how to program a potentiometer.

January 29- Tuesday

Mechanical:
-continued working on shooter and climbing mechanism

Electrical:
-Thinking really hard about how to place electrical components, given so little space...
-Started designing box to put in the front

Everyone:
-Discussed all of our problems, and possible ways to solve them.

January 30th--Wednesday

Electrical:

• Update website
• Uploading pictures
• Made a “sponsors” page
• Started layout for pneumatics
• Brainstorming where to put electrical parts
• Brainstorming camera mount

Mechanical:

• Manufacturing the shooter
• Fixing bugs on intake
• Finalizing shooter