Driving Practice and Lights
The main focus of build today was to iterate the shooter index mechanism to improve consistency. Many other projects were run on the side including pit lights, Social Media award, Chairman's award, and the Bill of Materials.
Design
Students designed a new robot stand on Solidworks. They fixed the current robot stand by giving the robot less room to slide and by allowing it to fit into the robot cart.
Other students and mentors continued working on new designs to improve the functionality of the intake.
Mechanical
In the past week, the team experienced many difficulties trying to index frisbees consistently. They manufactured a new frame for the indexer and replaced the polycarbonate side hooks with ones in a steeper angle. The robot now appears significantly more efficient in transferring frisbees from the intake to the shooter.
Upgraded practice robot
Driving
The drive team practiced maneuvering through the field and inside the pyramids in preparation for next week's tournament in San Diego.
Programming
The programmers change the configuration of the operator controls and tested autonomous mode. They changed the shooter switch so it now only changes speed and not angle.
Meanwhile, Pat obtained a lightweight USB scanner (Scansnap) for use with scouting matches at competitions. Currently, the software is set up to scan each sheet (starting with the bottom of the stack, allowing more sheets to be added simultaneously) and save it as an image file. He is currently working on code to recognize and read certain parts of the sheet (QR code, bubbles).
Scan-tastic!
Pit Lights
Students wired the pit flood lights and are working on the power supply for them.
Other programmers worked on the pit LEDs and were able to use an off-the-shelf IR module (receiver) to capture the signals sent by the remote controller. They then changed the configuration of items on the breadboard and replaced the IR module with an IR LED (transmitter). Using the data, they managed to emulate the remote and send signals to the lights to change their color.
There was a small issue where the lights turned themselves off occasionally when they were sent remote signals. The code for this project will be uploaded to GitHub.
The box o' lights
Action Items
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Enhance intake system
Expected closing time for the lab: 12:00
