INTRODUCING LARRY (check him out)!

Ali and I have been working on Larry and here he is.

This was super exciting to film since this was the first time we were seeing Larry in full action - unfortunately in my excitement I failed to get the shot in the vid sooo.....

Take 2 lol (I sound really Australian)

Hope you enjoyed this...

NEXT MEETING WILL BE SUNDAY (DEC. 27) from 3:30-7:30pm @ my house

(I sent everyone an email like usual - check it if you need my address)

Su

Sunday Meeting (Nov. 1)

Thank you to those of you who came today :)

I don't have all the photos that we took today but here are some from our previous meeting:

Our chassis with half the bristles/zip ties added for our ball collection mechanism

The first ball shooter design - the lego motor wasn't strong enough to propel the ball but it was pretty awesome nonetheless

Here is a photo from today's meeting:

Second ball shooter design - the rubber tires attached to a DC motor added better grip but we decided the motor turned the wheels too slowly so we added gears to make the wheels turn faster. Then we realized the metal bar we had attached the motors to didn't have enough space for the ball to fit between the two tires after we added the gears so we changed the design. We also changed the wheel type.

I'll upload the photos of the new design tomorrow :D BE ON THE LOOK OUT! Also, we have a meeting tomorrow from 9AM - 3PM! BE THERE and you'll get free pizza woohoo FTW!

Su

Changed from online to paper

Torrey Techies,

For the past 3 weeks I've been documenting our progress in our engineering notebook and have decided that that is a more efficient way to write down what we do at each meeting.
I will post meeting times here sometimes but most of the time I will be emailing you so check your emails please!
Thank you to those of you who showed up before school on Wednesday morning and helped fix the wheel and chassis. Also, thank you to those of you who showed up to Friday's lunch meeting.
I will see you all on Sunday and Monday since we have a long weekend :)
GET READY FOR SOME ROBOMANIA :)

Su

A post about Sunday (oct. 11) on Tuesday (oct. 13)

The usual Sunday began at 12:30.
I was late, running and juggling my laptop, bag and folder all at once (amazing right?) I toppled into Mr. Lineback's room and was glad to see a few members :) I'll take this opportunity to name the fellow Techies who showed up to this Sunday's meeting: Trevor, Jerry, David. P, David. F, Alistair, Su, Maya, Robin, Mr. L and a little later Mr. D dropped by. We assembled the field (that I made with Stu, an MIT alum, the week before - special thanks must go out to Mr. Flicker).

Okay so I tried for an hour to upload photos and vid clips from Sunday and it worked then I accidentally deleted everything so I'm going to give up - I forgot how annoying blogspot was for uploading photos :(

I'll print the photos and stick them in our engineering notebook :D

Well here's a quick update of what we accomplished:

built the chassis

experimented to calibrate the encoder as best we could

jerry made a motor thing - he still owes me a drawing with labels and description

make shift cradle for our batteries :)

On next week's agenda: START WORKING ON BALL COLLECTING AND SHOOTING!

Su

FIRST (SUNDAY) TECH CHALLENGE (MEETING)

Thank you to all you techies that came today :) I like the game strategies that we came up with and I like our "GENERAL" model of the robot

I will post up the paper plans of our robot model once I can get the scanner working so keep checking back here

Now that we've sorted ourselves into two broad groups (hardware and software) the next thing we need to do is get everyone aquainted with the basic hardware and software then each group can specialize in certain aspects after that. REMEMBER: hardware and software are interlinked so don't think the hardware/software people don't need to learn the other stuff - YOU NEED TO KNOW THE BASICS FOR BOTH :)

Here's the general game strategy we came up with today:

AUTONOMOUS PERIOD
White lines – how will it guide itself (Jerry’s soccer game): to open a ball dispenser
Color sensor – for a guide to open dispenser
Hopper to hold the ball àto collect balls and score/fire
Baseball machines?
Tennis ball collector device à to collect balls

AUTONOMOUS PERIOD
Open the gates via levers à program to open close on and far one and pick the one depending on where we are placed.
First few balls shot into high goal
If we have to open the lever further away we only want to open levers (no balls)
If we have to open the lever closer we want to shoot our first loaded balls (in high goal) and then open the close lever (8 balls)

CONTROLLED
Use IR sensor to line up to shoot into high goal and also make sure you use the white lines for a guide

QUESTIONS:
Open the other color’s lever so that the other team can’t get the points?

A bit chaotic I know (I'll write up a clearer run down for our log book) but you all get the picture. Thank you to JERRY for bringing his camera today and everyone else who managed to bring their laptops. Also, special thanks to Mr. Lineback for letting us use his room and all his cool knick-knacks (document projector, big projector, whiteboard, computers).

The Kit should be coming so as I said today if the KIT comes before Friday we are having a meeting!! I will email and update here if that happens. ALSO! I realized it is outdoor ed week next week so some of you (including myself) will not be here on Sunday, So we'll be meeting the following Sunday for 6hours instead make sure you have done the ROBOTC TUTORIAL I sent out and read up on the GAME MANUAL ETC. by then! :)

It looks like all is underway...keep up the AWESOME WORK TORREY TECHIES!

How to write on this blog...

We will be taking turns to write an entry in this blog so I'll go through the "how to become a Torrey Techie blogger" now:

1. Sign in using the username and password that I sent you via email for this blog (p.s. if you don't have a gmail account yet make one before you sign into the Torrey Techies blog)
2. Now close that window and open a new tab and type in "torreytechies.blogspot.com"
3. Click customize on the top right hand corner
4. Click settings in the top left hand corner
5. Click Permissions in the top right corner
6. Add yourself as an author
7. Go to your gmail and accept the invite to become a blogger for this site
8. DONE :) now you can blog (don't actually blog yet)

Easy right? Please do this by Wednesday's meeting :D

Thanks

Welcome

Fellow Techies,

Here is the first blog post for the Torrey Techies!
This blog will serve as the Torrey Techies' progress log for the First Tech Challenge.
Please try to bring a camera to each meeting so we can take photos/videos and post them here.
See you all Wednesday (Sept. 09) at lunch in Dr. Domanico's room to start on our mini project.

Su