First tournaments

On the 19th and 20th of November, we had our first 2 tournaments for our 2010-2011 season! They were in the bay area and were qualifying tournaments for a championship (also in the bay area). We were very excited and had loads of fun, even winning two awards, one at each tournament. They were both the same award (the connect award) and were given to our team for sharing with first to the community. Below is our team after winning this award the first event. Thanks for reading!

Benefit Concert!

Hi everyone! Well, its been a while since moonbots and now FTC season is full in flow. In fact, we are in a tournament later this month! We will update you on that when it happens, but for now, we have some other news for you. Our benefit concert!

Our team the Coastal Quarks is having a free dual robotics benefit concert at 6:30 pm, December 1st, at the Blessed Sacrament Church (4525 56th St. San Diego, CA 92115-3629)! We are very excited and would love for you to come!

Thank you sooooo much for your support!

Our virtual competition

Ok, today was the big day, the day we finally competed! We were all very exited. First, we sat down and answered some questions about the robot. We told the judge about its balanced design, large loop holder, sensors, and other features. Then, it was time to compete. We ran our robot, and unfortunately for us, it did not perform as well as it had the night before. The night before, it had been doing fine, as shown in our documentary. However, due to technical difficulties, we only scored 90 points today, which was low compared to our max, which is 180. Despite this pushback, we are still happy with our results as our robot displayed its best programming and physical attributes such as its alignment with objects on the field, its compass sensor for exact turns, and its ultra sonic sensor for alignment with the walls. Overall, we had a load of fun and wish all the remaining teams the best of luck.

GO MOONBOTS!!!!!!! Thank you for making our summer interesting, educational, and fun.

Also, here is the feed from our robot's perspective:

Video Documentary, Blog Updates, and Website Updates

Ok, the video documentary is done, (edited by me) and is up on the website along with a whole bunch of other cool stuff! Be sure to check out the robot page for a great evolution chart, the programing pages for a copies of our programs and a programing log, and the video page to watch out brand new documentary!

www.coastalquarks.org

Good luck to all the finalists!

For those people who don't want to go to our site, here is our documentary:



Also, a last minute note about our last minute programing over the weekend, As many of the team members were at karate camp, Brennan has been working hard each day to tweak our programs and make them work perfectly. Be sure to check out the programing pages on the website for more info!

Blog number 12!!!

We've just finished working on our documentary, and it seems to be working out great! We got a bunch of clips in talking about our journey, so you'll be able to see our overall experience soon. Lately, we've also been working a lot with sensors, implementing them in our programs to help us be more accurate. Watch and see!

Coastal Quarks Video 11

Last night we stayed up REALLY late working...I'm talking 2 A:M...But, we got a lot done- yay!

Meeting 10!

This video blog features a special note from our coach, Ming! In this meeting, we worked on advancing our idea involving the acceleration sensor to determine our velocity as well as discussing point strategies and making a good amount of progress on our autonomous programming. I believe that if we keep going at this pace, we will easily make our deadline and will soon have a consistent working, scoring robot.

Blog no. 9

This week we did yet more building work on the robot, as well as thinking about what we might be able to do to make our robot more intelligent. We have this cool idea that involves using calculus and the acceleration sensor to figure out our velocity and hence help determine were our robot is. We also worked on our autonomous programming and got it to go down the landing ramp and pick up some loops! Overall, we got a load of important stuff done.

Video Blog 8

This meeting we did some more work on the robot. We redesigned the side walls to hold loops better, as well as mounting several new sensors. We also adjusted our camera carrier so as to hold the new, smaller camera we had ordered. We then tested our new design with a program to go over the craters. It didn't work, but with a little adjustment, it should.

This Week...

This week we installed a new mini camera on the back of our robot to try to help with the weight problem that we were having. Then we tried going over the ridge, but it still didn't work. We're thinking about attaching a tread to the back to help us with the problem. Along with all this, we also redesigned the box on our robot in an attempt to make it stronger. However, when we conducted a test to see if we could spear loops, we found it too small, and are starting to redesign it again.

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!

Links

Here are links for the video pres and robot design proposal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYJztbpHWWM

http://www.coastalquarks.org/moonbots.html

Team picture!

Click here for a high rez image

Final Day!

It's the last day! Our robot is completed and our team video ready. We have to do a bit more work on our robot design proposal page, and then we're done! GO TEAM!

Robot Pic

<----- Our Robot, Blitzbot! It has changed a bit since this picture, but its still the basic idea.

Mega Weekend- Progress!

We have made progress! Our team has made a very awesome robot that is all terrain, able to pick up samples, and altogether AWESOME!!!! Pics to come....

We also managed to get a good start on our presentation script. Our main ideas include: colonies on the moon and the moon as a lunar base to launch further explorations into the cosmos...

Tomorrow we plan to polish everything off, as well video the pres. Hopefully, we will be able to get everything done!

Go team!

Mega Weekend!

Our team is planning a mega weekend from 5/14 - 5/16. We will stay the nights over and work all day. Our goal is to design and build our robot, as well as making our video presentation. During the time beforehand, we will exchange emails with research about the moon, and ideas for our robot. We have not decided whether we will be using Lego Digital Designer or Google Sketch as we have not used either enough to decide which is superior. Anyways, if all goes well, we're going to have a MEGA WEEKEND!

Hi, and welcome to the blog!

This is mostly a test post, to make sure I know what I'm doing... Anyways, to anyone who reads this, welcome to the blog!