Coastal Quarks, Video Blog 6

This week we worked on our robot’s balance- after we added the camera to our robot, his back (Where we attached it) was heavily weighted down, meaning that whenever we tried to go over the ridges/ craters, he would tip over. To fix this, we attached a temporary penny pouch to the front, until we get Lego weights. We also attached rubber bands to the front wheels to get some better grip. Along with this, we attached every model down fully, and counted out the one by one pieces to go inside the crater. We also messed around more with Labview, and are starting to get an idea of it.

Meeting 5

This week we did a little remodeling on the robot. First of all we expanded the walls of our “Bucket” to fit more loops in, because before we actually built them, we thought that the loops were smaller then they actually are, therefore meaning that our old design would work fine. We also worked on the stabilization system on the back, moving it up so that it won’t get in the way when we go over ridges and craters. We also designed a prototype hook to help pull ourselves up the ramp. Along with all this, we messed around more with Labview.

This meeting...

This week we lay down the whole baseplate flooring and set up all the models (We finished building the ones that we hadn’t before). This was a big challenge because to make it fit in our living room, we had to remove one of the baseboards. We’re still missing a few pieces, and we have some other extras too. We found out that we can run Robolab in Labview, meaning that we can use the programming language that we’re used to. We’re going to check and make sure this is OK.

Thanks!

Technical Difficulties

Yesterday at the Moonbots meeting, we built a whole bunch of sets. It's all in the video- unfortunately, I am having some difficulties getting the video on the computer due to some cord issues. I'm still working on it though- we shall see what we shall see!

Later- Ok so we got the video up- yay! Sorry about the crappy quality!!!

Coastal Quarks, Video Blog 2

Ok, so this is our second meeting since the start of phase 2 of moonbots. We, like the rest of the phase 2 teams, received the email informing us about the delay on shipping our kits. So, once again, we were left to programing. This meeting, we succeeded in making a program (detects light sensor readings and puts them on a graph), only to discover that the version of the NXT toolkit we were using was not compatible with the version of LabView we were using! After downloading different versions multiple times, we finally got the right version, only to have the meeting end. Oh well :( ... Besides messing with lab view, we also emailed the Moonbots Staff wondering if we could use Robolab. This was because we have done FLL before, and are very experienced with it.

Also, this is Ciara's (Me :D) last meeting before she goes away for a one month summer camp! She will still be editing the video blogs, but will be unable to attend the meetings. That means only Kirk, Brennan, and Nadya will be at the next 2 to 4 meetings. (Noa is still out of town)

Coastal Quarks, Video Blog 1

Ok, so here is what is happening. Every meeting, we take videos for our blog, reporting in on what is happening. Then, within the next few days, we edit and upload the feed with music and a written blog to go along with it.



Ok, here is video blog number 1! This meeting, we mostly worked on programing, because our field has not arrived yet. We downloaded LabView and tried to figure out how it worked, it was harder than it looked! We also set up a little of the field from the Smart Move FLL challenge, so that if we had gotten the robot running, we could have picked up loops that greatly resemble Helium 3 and water elements. All of the team members were at the meeting except for Noa, who is out of town.

OMG We got in phase 2!

Our team is currently very excited, because we made it into phase two! We are meeting this friday, and are hoping that the field kit will have arrived so we can build it. Unfortunately, the whole team will not be able to attend this meeting, because one of the members is out of town. Anyways, GO TEAM!