Team Seventeen/Journal

This is our daily journal of progress, challenges, and other updates.

Week 1

1/6
We got a set of Kitbot parts! (Minus the battery.)
Vinay and Winter worked on assembling the Kitbot frame, having some difficulty finding appropriately sized screws and nuts.
Forest worked on assembling the wheels and motors.

1/7
The battery and a USB cable for connecting to the Maple arrived.
Forest connected most of the wiring between the motors, motor controllers, and Maple, and tied everything down.
Winter soldered the wires to the connecting pieces and to the motor. He uploaded the demo Kitbot code onto the Maple. Preliminary tests via serial commands from computer show that the electronics are working. We need to get the tablet part of the demo up and running.
Winter also tried to learn Solidworks. He is failing miserably slowly learning.
Forest and Vinay installed the software necessary to run the Kitbot from a laptop but didn't get it working on the tablet because of driver issues with the Maple.

1/8
Ariel gave a Power Electronics and Control Systems lecture. Apparently we will be using a PID controller, but the fastest way to get it working is just by fiddling with the three coefficients (proportional, then derivate, then integral).
Forest installed OpenCV on the tablet and tried but failed to configure it in Eclipse.
The tablet now works with the Maple.
Vinay installed Ubuntu on the tablet and the software for interfacing with the Maple. We can now run Kitbot using Ubuntu. The tablet is happy. Winter and Vinay thought about design ideas for collecting, storing, and depositing balls. We are thinking of using a wheel with a brush to scoop up balls to a higher platform, with some sort of switch to sort the balls, and maybe some internal color detection. Winter did a Solidworks checkoff and resoldered a new kitbot battery connector to the 'bot. Due to the new connector, we will no longer loose power to our robot while doing testing exercises. Winter also worked with Vinay on discussing possible plans for the mechanical version of the robot.
Our current conclusion is that we should aim to collect and deposit balls into the reactor silos at ground level first. Once we have a robot that can do that, we can expand the design to attempt some of the more complicated objectives. Yay K.I.S.S! (Keep it simple, stupid!)

1/9

There was a talk about how to generally use vision systems. Forest and Winter attended the lecture.