Beginning of the week (Goals)

3-D printing and Trails

This week we now have a coded brain and can begin testing the robots ability's. We also are going to  try to print a 3-D funnel which I have already designed in solid-works. Our group plans to implement it into the shooter so that we can store many ping-pong balls at once and then fire them off rapidly

3D printer, printing

New functioning Brain

End of the week (Accomplishments)

Working on the power point

This week we accomplished a good bit of what we wanted to. We completed the finishing touches on our robot including the implementation of a new brain to insure the robot's functionality. We also begun working on the power point presentation that goes over all aspects of our game. It is not finished yet but we have until Wednesday of next week to get it done.

Working on the power point

Finished grabbing mechanism

Beginning of the week (Goals)

Testing and Organizing

This week our robot is mostly complete. We plan to test it in the arena and see how well the robot works with the new brain and controller and the ping-pong balls. We are going to be looking for how well the claw works as we can already see how well the shooter works outside the arena. We also have to find a location for the motor's wires, as of right now they are loosely hanging in the middle of the bot. Programming the brain is another thing we have to work on during this week.
Today we were issued our mid-term and what it consist of, so our group may begin working onthat this week as well.

New Brain in place

Up to date robot 12/1/14

End of the week (Accomplishments)

Short week

This week we only have had 2 days too make improvements so we haven't accomplished as much as we would have hoped too and will continue to work on our goals next week. We have established are plan on switching brains but have not made any action towards it yet. We also have not been able too make many improvements too our shooting mechanism as well but we have some ideas in mind.

Old brain too be replaced

New brain to be put installed

Beginning of the week (Goals)

Trajectory and Stability 

This week we plan to adjust the Trajectory of the shooter to have a more desirable arch. We have to improve the stability of the it as well. Our other goal is to add some flat metal to in the middle of the bot in an attempt to organize our wires. Also we have a rough idea to improve the shooter by adding a cylindrical tube made of flat metal for storing more ping-pong balls at once. This is so we can shoot more than one in rapid succession.

Messing around with the tradjectory 

Wire mess

End of the week (Accomplishments)

Updated Claw and Tightening 

New motor

New Claw

This week we replaced a faulty motor in the claw mechanism. We also adjusted to the claw itself  to better pick up the ping-pong balls. The shooter mechanism was tightened this week as well, however there is still some issues with the shooter's stability, as it loosen every time it is used.

Beginning of the week (Goals)

Claws & Motors

Defective motor 

New and improved robot

This week we have to replace a faulty motor in our claw mechanism. This will probably be finished today. We also have to adjust the metal pieces that make up our claw. At the moment they are flat and straight. We need to curve them and add anti-friction padding. Since our robot is generally new we will be perfecting the new design and making sure that everything is working up to our expectations. The overall plan for thins week will be testing and tightening  

Starting to fix the claw

End of the week (Accomplishments)

Gadgets and Changes

This week everything on our robot has changed with the exception of our chassis. Our original game design that we had, which shared similarities to basketball, has changed. Our new game consists of picking up ping-pong balls without using the pre-made VEX claw and then shooting them at red solo cups; hitting stacked ones yields more points. The arm and End of Factor design we had at the beginning of the week has been scraped. We now have a two piece mechanism in the center of our chassis. One piece is designed to pick up ping-pong balls an then place them in our "shooter" (the second piece). The first piece is a simple claw design that consist of two medium sized gears that are connected to 2 skinny metal pieces. They're curved and covered in friction resistant cloth. This will act like a Standard VEX claw. The second piece is like a scaled down tennis ball launcher made for ping pong balls. It has a very high speed compound gear ratio with 2 separate motors, each with their own large VEX wheels.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shooting Mechanism:

High Speed Compound gear-rario

Ping-Pong ready for Launch                  Launched                       

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Claw:

Custom Claw 

Arm that Claw will be attached to soon

Beginning of the week (Goals)

End of Factor & Replacing 

This week we have to replace our end of factor as it a duplicate of our previous robots. We plan on replacing our current claw with a more official claw that will be used to pick up the balls that will be used in game. On top of this we have begun brainstorming ideas for a new game and hope to have a new idea in place by the end of today so we can start making adjustments for it on our robot as soon as possible.

Coded Brain

R.I.P
2014-2014

End of the week (Accomplishments)

Finished Bot, Final Adjustments

As it stand we have finished the entirety of the robot and are only currently making small adapatations to the robot to make sure it runs as well as possible. We have also finished programming the bot and arm to a level that will suffice for our game. At this point the only major thing that we were not able to complete this week is construct the game itself and put together the field for it to be played on.

Gear ratios used on our robot.

Gear Ratio (Chassis)

Gear Ratio (Arm)

Beginning of the week (Goals)

Wires & End of factor 

This week we plan to organize the wires for the robot. At the moment they have no set place to be or  are not plugged in so we might work on a small area to contain them. We also are going to be testing the end of factor and making adjustments if necessary as it is the newest piece of our robot and has yet to see any practical use.

End of factor 

unorganized wires

End of the week (Accomplishments)

Arm-joint & coding 

This week we worked on joint of our robots arm and the gear ratio for it. Micheal worked on the code for the drive piece of our robot. The arm-joint is currently being worked and we are much further in the building of our it than we were on Monday.

Coded brain

Arm-gears

Beginning of the week (Goals)

Tweaking & Code 

End of factor (Front Veiw)

This week we plan to make sure that all the screws on our robot are tight and that all axles are straight, as the majority of the basic building is completed. As some of our team members work on that, Micheal plans to make the coding of our robot work better than it does now.

Tightening all the screw 

End of factor (Back View)

End of the week (Accomplishments)

Programming and Finalizing 

This week we accomplished got done with most what we had hoped to. We programmed the brain to drive but it still remains some what faulty. We also continued to work on the design of our robot, optimizing certain aspects and improving others. This includes the arm, parts of the chassis, and the base for the robot.

Programming the brain

Back view of robot

Beginning of the week (Goals)

End-of-Factor

This week we plan to work on the end-of-factor for our game. Our plan for this is to construct a "scooper" device for picking up balls and throwing/dunking them. We also want to have our robot working with a remote control, to a higher extent then it is now. We want to have ample time to be able to have our robot practice our challenge so we can tell what doesn't work and what we can improve on. Though-out the week we will continue to edit and critique our bot.

Front Isometric view

Brain/Battery/Receiver setup

End of the week (Accomplishments)

Chassis and arm completed

This week we completed the chassis and installed the drive trains. Micheal built a prototype of our robots arm and added a base for it. I tested all the motors and batteries to ensure that are functional before we progress. Wheels have been installed, and with a test brain, we saw that our robot can move in a straight line with the speed we had hoped to reach to be successful at our challenge. We did not get as far as we planned at the beginning of the week, however, we did achieve the majority of our goals.

Arm prototype 

Completed chassis.

Beginning of the week (Goals)

Gear-ratio and Arm 

This week we plan to continue developing aspects of our robot. Today we plan too continue working on our drive train & gear ratios. We hope too have this done by tomorrow so we then begin too work on the arm for our robot. After completing these two objectives we hope too have at least one or two days at the end of the week too program and make sure everything is working properly in preparation for the challenge.

Now with wheels!

Drive-train

End of the week (Accomplishments)

Building process underway

This week we began construction on our robot  and were on pace for the most part earlier on. We had completed the chassis and were working on the claw however we had a change in planS and decided to redo the structure on the robot. Initially the chassis was a U shape and we had planned to have the claw in the middle of the robot. Now however we are working on a square chassis with a claw that will retrieve balls from the exterior rather than have it roll into the center.

Updated chassis

Game plan

Beginning of the week (Goals)

Starting the New Challenge

This week we plan to start building the robot for the challenge we created. Our hopes are too complete the chassis as well as most of the other aspects of the robot by Friday this week. One of which is a arm mechanism to pick up the balls for the game. This is to ensure that we have ample time to program and problem solve in the following week.

Redistributed parts in our box

Early stages of construction

End of the week (Accomplishments)

New challenges:

Cleaning the boxes

This week we got done with most of what we needed to begin building our robots on Monday. We took apart the robots from the previous challenge and for the most part organized them properly. The concept for the next challenge was established and we will each be building robots for our own individual competitions that we come up with. Whichever challenge has the robot best suited for it, will be used as the standard for the others as they have to modify their robots to compete in that challenge. We have decided on our challenge and have a plan on the what robot we will attempt too build for it.

Organizing part into their bins

Beginning of the week (Goals)

In with the new, Out with the old:

This weeks plan is too finish up a final few aspects of the tug of war challenge and prepare for a new one. Last week we began doing final statements from each group discussing what they did and didn't accomplish with their robot. This week part of the plan is too allow the few teams who haven't done so yet to finish their presentations. After this our goals consist of taking apart the robots from the previous competition, organizing the parts into their proper bins, establish what challenge each group will do next, and get accustomed to the new groups we are in. Hopes are to get all of these things done by Friday, to began building for the new challenges on Monday. Our new group includes Michael, Chris, Jaret, Nick, and Vishan and we will be continuing this blog from the previous tug of war competition.

Early stages of deconstructing robots

Gears n' what not

Week 4- Accomplishments

We have officially completed our robot, and done final touches. This week Jaret did some more soldering, and everyone else in the group helped other groups that were falling behind. Yet another successful week for the SPHS Butterflies. We are ready to win the Tug 'O' War challenge.

Some practice runs of the other competitors.

peter taking matts plexiglass sword up the butt

Week 4- Goals

This week we are just watching all the other teams scramble to get their robots together while we sit back and relax. We feel that we will beat all the other VEX robots, and most of the Tetrix robots.

Mike doing some final touches