Team Three/Journal

Day 1 - 1/09 First day in the lab!! We now know where it is...spent a fair amount of time on the pegbot since none of us really knew what we were doing at first. Staff was very helpful. Vamsi taught the rest of us how to wire a breadboard. Blew 3 fuses because test wires (for reading voltage) were too close together, causing leads to touch. Manufacturing of pegbot was rather simple once we got tools - had to shave off sides to make room for wheels. Came up with a basic design and strategy for robot and split up tasks. Anthony and Rebecca will work on CAD while Vamsi finishes converting the Python library to Java and Katherine helps him code. First checkpoint was successfully completed after working out wiring problems.

Katherine's Quote: "I will do anything for free food"

Day 2 - 1/10 Vamsi and Katherine will work on the code for checkpoint 2, playing with vision but still using bump sensors for walls. Anthony and Rebecca are CADing like crazy to get a draft design done. Making the little parts - motors, servos, battery - is annoying but not difficult. Whole team is debating whether we want to focus on collecting and holding balls or launching them, but a preliminary launching design has been finished in CAD. Still trying to get all the library stuff to Java, but it apparently doesn't like serial communication.

Day 3 - 1/11 Decided that we want to paint red spots on our final robot to confuse the enemy into trying to collect us. Listened to chipmunks. Want to use solenoid for our launcher - will probably steal it from Vamsi's car. Agreed on basic design. Listened to Tron and Matrix music. Took initial pictures for processing. Still converting library. Learned how to use the wiki better (adding files and stuff). Katherine figured out how to find balls! :D

Day 4 - 1/12 Interesting lecture that had nothing to do with the competition. Sent off CAD drawings to Sam for laser cutting. Asked for solenoid. Spent an hour just trying to install the latest versions of Eclipse and Subclipse on all of our computers so we can all access the code. We got our first acrylic plates cut out, but due to time conflicts, Rebecca and Anthony will not be able to start assembly until tomorrow. Katherine and Vamsi stayed late trying to get the camera code to work on the little Asus.

Day 5 - 1/13 Got it once the lab opened (noon). Reinstalled Ubuntu and finally got OpenCV to install. Drilled holes into the base and made our own corner brackets at Edgerton. Watched other robots spin in circles. Still need more acrylic cut and we are waiting for the Solenoid before we can do any other major assembly (should arrive early next week...). Will build rubber band collector by jamming a metal rod into 2 gears and wrapping the rubber bands around them. We just need to find some giant rubber bands(able to stretch 12in).

Katherine's Quote: "I'm an EBay whore!"

Day 6 - 1/14 Prototype robot (Albi the Racist Robot) has a foundation. We have spots to put everything, just have to finish soldering things to the MC. Katherine is on a ski trip, so just Vamsi working on the code. But he will take Albi home today to use it for testing since the lab will probably be closed Monday (MLK Day). Rebecca was drilling and assembling while Anthony played with solder. All the wires are color coded and neat. Lab closes early today, since it's a Saturday. It's up to the coders now.

Katherine's Quote: "All of my friends are either Mexican or Jewish..."

Day 7 - 1/15 OFF - got some sleep

Day 8 - 1/16 Worked at Pi Lambda Phi, mainly on code. Decided after 8 hours of working, to use Python like we were supposed to. **Note to future generations!! USE THE CODING LANGUAGE THAT THE TAS TELL YOU TO USE!!** Got help from a course 6 grad (Andrew Sugaya) for the competition tomorrow...

Katherine's Quote: "You're a dirty, filthy Jew!!"

Day 9 - 1/17 First mock contest!! Had to throw together the rubber band collector in the morning. Weren't able to attach it because Anthony misjudged the length of the ramp when CADing the die barriers. Our friendly neighborhood course 6 grad came in to help explain how to use OpenCV and help us figure out how to identify more than one ball (currently, our bot finds ALL the red blobs and averages them together for a location). We ended up getting 4th place, but we are still really disappointed with the performance of Albi 1.0. We only collected 1 ball (bc it got caught underneath) and displaced 3. He really likes circles. The coders looked enviously at every other team's robot and decided that we need an Albi 2.0 with a circular base. Back to the CADing board.

Katherine's Quote: "Wait! Do you hear that? You hear that right?...I'm NOT crazy!"

Day 10 - 1/18 Anthony and Rebecca came in early to dismantle everything and get sensors. Vamsi wants to cut the bump sensors so we can just use the reset button instead of the annoying power button. Albi 1.0 is officially dead. Anthony is CADing 2.0. The solenoid came in - complete disappointment. It barely has any force. We thought the weight of the ball might be more than estimated, but our guess was almost exactly correct. Rebecca's calculations must've been flawed (probably bc she didn't account for the force needed to translate the pin inside of the solenoid and just expected all of the force given to be completely transferred to the ball). In her defense, she had no idea how the thing worked. Now we are stuck trying to decide how to proceed: 1)find a way to work with the solenoid we have 2)order a new, bigger solenoid to play with (would have to be 24V though) or 3)give up on that design and go with a catapult that we haven't even started brainstorming yet. The sophomores are currently deferring to Vamsi's guidance, as they are all sad and confused. Katherine got the AI to identify yellow and will check with Sugaya to make sure her code is right.

Katherine's Quote: "Sweet! I found a website of racial slurs! Apparently a BMW is a Big Mexican Woman..."

Day 11 - 1/19 Anthony is still CADing. Almost done though. Rebecca and Katherine are making and testing a catapult. They went down to Edgerton and learned how to use fancy shop equipment to 'turn' holes and tap threads for a set screw. Vamsi is in New York. Panic is setting in as the next mock contest draws near. Katherine is working on more color coding (Haha! Get it? Color coding!! ...Shut up I'm tired...)

Today's Quote: Anthony - "Hey Rebecca, have you shown Katherine your balls?" Katherine - "Yeah, my hands are too small for them."

Day 12 - 1/20 CADing was done. Ended up doing ANOTHER redesign. Technically minor, but involves reCADing everything for the new dimensions. Katherine was able to finish the color identification stuff. We still haven't decided if we care about the green box. Albi might be a peashooter - collect one ball at a time and shoot them as we get them. We don't really care where they land, so long as it's over the wall. Or we will try to collect a whole bunch in the catapult and chuck them all over. If the other teams do as we expect and just collect and hold balls for the entire round, we won't really stand a chance. Let's just hope they have a properly limited capacity (honestly, I don't see how they'd be able to hold more than ten balls without getting too fat).

Today's Quote: Rebecca - "Hey Vamsi, knock knock." Vamsi - "I don't get it..." Katherine - "It's a knock knock joke! Don't you know what that is?" Vamsi - "Oh, right...who's there?" Rebecca - "Interrupting cow" Vamsi - "...what? I still don't get it..."

Day 13 - 1/21 Katherine was skiing. Rebecca was working. Anthony was CADing. Vamsi was coding. Vamsi got Sam to stay up super late to laser cut and wet jet stuff for us. We must thank her with yummy baked goods.

Day 14 - 1/22 Anthony is assembling at Pi Lam (his frat). Rebecca and Katherine are baking a thank-you cake for Sam. Made it say "Thank you" in red gel (so it looks like a laser :P) and decided to make another box of cake mix because the cake smelled so good. We made cupcakes!! Will bring to lab tomorrow to share with the group. Assembly wasn't done bc we ran out of angle brackets. We also need to drill a hole for a set screw in the catapult thing. Hopefully the code will make up for our poor Albi 2.0?