Team Four/Journal
From Maslab 2006
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| Team Four's Journal · Paper |
January 9th, 2006
Day 1! Today we assembled the OrcPad by first soldering on a set of necessary components, then attaching the LCD screen. Then we connected the OrcPad to the OrcBoard and Eden, and ran a "Hello world" Java program. We also attached the wheels, caster, motors, and webcam to the pegboard.
January 10th, 2006
Day 2! We installed the OrcBoard and Eden on the pegbot, got the IR sensor working and passed checkpoint 1, and came up with a team name: team zissou. I think we all feel a lot more comfortable having a team name. It brings focus and a sense of community to our endeavor. Later, back at the dorm, we had a pretty long brainstorming session, coming up with mechanical designs and thinking about cosmic microwave background radiation. That stuff is cool... 2.7 kelvin. -bryan
January 11th, 2006
Day 3! ZOMG. Today it got 1 kelvin cooler. Bryan did some sysadmining, set us up with a subversion repository and got the code on our bot backed up. He's really all purpose. Leslie fluttered about and worked on our next checkpoint, picking up a ball with our bot and escorting that ball into a goal. Checkpoint2's task was to spin about and spot a ball somewhere in the bot's vision, and signal the spotting the the botclient and with some good old fashioned stopping dead in our tracks. We passed. Gene did some high level organizing, and focused on the interaction between the Camera and the Botclient. I did some quick hacks the code from the ImageTutorial we were to have done before this week (I didn't, so spent a bit of time just reading the code). Unfortunately, our webcam had a subtle native green tinge, which made calibration sufficiently hard enough to convince us that we had a bug. After a good chuck of time debugging a vaporbug, we figured out the green business with the help of an LA, recalibrated the webcam with a plug in to a windows box, and were good to go. Team Zissou strikes!
--Weezer 01:44, 12 January 2006 (EST) Christine
January 12th, 2006
Thursday, thursday, thursday. We kind of split up today to work on long term tasks, and we collectively forgot to work on today's checkpoint... hmm... Christine wrote some general feature detection code and gene masterminded the overall control algorithm. It makes me happy that we even have an overall control algorithm. Bryan rebuilt the pegbot and added a claw to the front so we can start practicing scoring and the programmers can play with something while the bot is constructed. Sweet. -bryan
January 13th, 2006
We got a little disipated today. Bryan ironed out problems with the subversion system, eclipse, and got a stable development platform worked out. Gene Coded out a lot and worked on our wander/find code for the day's checkpoint, and Christine tweaked around and cleaned up some code. -bryan
January 17th, 2006
Work continues! Bryan has been working on the mechanical design and learning how to use subversion. He has also been brown nosing around the media lab so we can have our polycarb stuff laser cut... TOMORROW IS TODAY!!11!! Christine has been working on the optical mouse stuff so we will have super accurate odometry, and Gene has been hacking c like a mad man and almost has the mapping code finished. Today maslab, tomorrow the world. -Bnewbold 20:25, 17 January 2006 (EST)
January 18th, 2006
Design review was today! There's a link from our team page. Then Christine and Bryan went to microcenter to get cheap optical mice and a usb hub (we have receipts). We are deciding not to participate in mock contest 0... -bryan
January 19th, 2006
ITA Visit! yay! People were pretty busy with non-maslab stuff today, but slow and steady progress continues... -bryan
January 20th, 2006
Bryan was the only one who went to the super secret lecture today. He's also the best team member, all around. No one else comes close. Work has been progressing on the optical mice, but we are far to lazy to carry everything to lab, so we worked at home. -bryan
January 21th, 2006
Weekend! The robot body will be laser cut in the next few days, then it will be assembled and tweaked. Having the robot dimensions extended to 14^3 has been pretty helpful... our robot will be easier to take apart to recharge, and there will be room for extra sensors if we find ourselves needing them. -bryan
January 23rd, 2006
We put the mice on the pegbot. Then ssh broke. Then Bryan fixed that.
--Weezer 23:30, 23 January 2006 (EST)
January 24th, 2006
Bryan is working on super sweet model. Completion is iminent. Yesssss......
his story.
-Bnewbold 17:26, 24 January 2006 (EST)
January 25th, 2006
Christine and Bryan worked on the optical mice, then christine left to taunt death. we are hacking the mev program that comes with gpm to do our dastardly deeds. Sweet. -Bnewbold 21:04, 25 January 2006 (EST)
January 27th, 2006
The future is a giant laser! Went and laser cut the bot today at the stata center, and fell in love with a machine. You can put /anything/ in a laser cutter. even naughty children.
Due to lack of experience, the laser cutting itself was not perfect. We kept screwing up the focal length, which resulted in ghost cutting, so everything had a second cut a few milimeters away. This meant that the pieces had to be knocked out, because the middle plastic in between the two cuts would just melt and then reharden. Knocking out one of the side panels cracked it in half, which was pretty sad. then i forgot to knock out one of the really long thin pieces, so that got thrown out by mistake. Lastly, I forgot to adjust the hole pattern for the motor mounts, but that's an easy fix. Oh well.
-Bnewbold 23:42, 27 January 2006 (EST)
January 28th, 2006
REDACTED
January 29th, 2006
Plastic bonding epoxy smells like braaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnn caanccccccceeeeeerrrrr....... mmmmmmm. I haven't been spending much time in lab because i've been using the dremel a lot and it's super loud and annoying. I've also been needing quiet and calm and coffee to do the epoxying, which is pretty nervewracking. in addition to the above mistakes, i found one piece that was cut off at the end. Blech, at least it wasn't important and can be replaced with tape. The all clear asthetic is pretty much ruined at this point though. Damn. Hopefully it will look hot anyways. -Bnewbold 19:43, 29 January 2006 (EST)
January 30th, 2006
Lot's of progress last night. We are ready to kick it into high gear the next few days. Watch out for (codename) JAGUAR SHARK.
Some pictures:
http://static.flickr.com/38/93442971_85353715e3.jpg
http://static.flickr.com/16/93442970_bcb167a333.jpg
