Team Update: May 28, 2009

Here is a review of what we did this week in robotics.

Tuesday:
The orders for the light bulbs were due on Tuesday. Anybody who did not turn one, it is unfortunately too late to turn one in. Mrs. Callow had to get all the order sheets to the company yesterday.

We started to clean the room. Not much progress got done, but some was started.

Towards the end of the night, many students were discussing the pros and cons of going up to Boston in August. Mrs. Danner had talked about going up to Boston because we would be able to tour the iRobot factory. Ally said that there wasn’t much to do in Boston and that she would rather go down to Wildwood. This sparked a long discussion between the students, which meant that not much cleaning was done.

Thursday:
Mrs. Kirk, Mr. Mohrfeld, and Mr. Jerry started to clean up the room. Mr. Hinde, Mr. Don, and Mr. Weick were not happy with any of the students because the accelerometer and gyro were not put on the robot before PARC and still are not on the robot. Sammy and Billy started to research information about the two and to find out how to put the two pieces of electronics onto the robot for our next two off season competitions.

Mikey was learning how to program in Java because next year the robot will be programmed in Java. He was using a program called “Alice” to learn Java. If you have any interest in learning programming for next year, download “Alice” and mess around with it at home. After a few minutes, Billy went over to learn Java as well.

Rachel and Shannon worked on the letter to send out to sponsors. They worked as a pair for most of the night. Every now and then, one of them would stop working on the letter to help clean up some things.

Collin was mostly watching the mentors work on robot tonight, looking up information about PID (Collin, care to share with the team what you learned please?). Whenever somebody wasn’t doing something like working with Java, working on a letter, or researching things, they were either helping Mrs. Kirk sweep up the room or watching the mentors work on the robot.

Publicity Team Update: May 19, 2009

Publicity Team Update

1. Billy made up a flyer for the Light Bulb fundraiser with info from Billy
a. Has been checked over by Mrs. Morhfeld
i. Just needs to be printed out with all info on it
2. Collin, Mrs. Danner, and Sammy had a meeting with the web designer professor for SCC about the web design class creating our website for us
a. They will start to work on it in September
b. We will be able to pick our text (font, color, size, etc.)
c. We also got design ideas that her students made up for a banner for the website
3. Rough drafts for a letter to iRobot were due on Thursday as part of our homework
a. Explained who we are and what we want the iRobot Create for

Team Update: May 10, 2009

Don't forget about the two assignments that were given out during last Thursday's meeting that are due this Thursday. For those who weren't there, an email was sent out that night about the assignments. Even if you are not going to be at the meeting this Thursday, the assignments still have to be turned in. Give them to another person who will be at the meeting on Thursday or turn them in on Tuesday.

Anyone who did not turn in their Health History Form:
Those are needed ASAP for those who didn't turn them in. We also need 2 copies of your insurance card(s). Front and back please.

Team Update: May 7, 2009

For those who missed tonight's meeting (and those who forget what was talked about at the meeting) here is a quick review of what happened:

• We packed batteries, chargers, and everything else needed for PARC on Saturday
• Talked about what happened at the FLL demonstration this afternoon
• Discussed ideas for the demo bot
• Received an assignment for everybody to complete

For our demo bot, we have discussed making a Home Protection Personal Robot. All of our ideas for this demo bot are up on the white board, along with the assignment we were given regarding the demo bot.Our assignment was: Bring in a rough copy of a letter to send iRobot asking for an iRobot Create and explaining why we would like one. The iRobot Create will be used for our Home Protection Personal Robot. It is used for the Roomba, the personal vaccuum cleaner that Mr. Weick has been talking about recently. With the iRobot Create, we would be able to put different additions to it and program them to do what we want them to do. Here is a link of the Premium package (has many more things than the basic package does) : http://store.irobot.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2591901&cp=&sr=1&kw=irobot+create&origkw=iRobot+Create&parentPage=searchDo not send the letter you write. Everybody is to bring in a rough draft of the letter on Thursday. From there, Mrs. Danner will give us other instructions for the letters.

The other assignment we received was to look up information about the different sensors we want to put on the demo bot. The information we are looking up is: how they work and how we will use it on our robot. Everybody who was at tonight's meeting was assigned a sensor (excluding Collin who has a reprieve from this assignment only because of AP testing for another week) , with one sensor needing an extra person. We would like more than just 2 people on each sensor, so please step up and help find information about these sensors.

Motion sensor: Sammy and Mark

Smoke detector: Shannon and ??

Carbon Monoxide detector: Mikey and Billy

Some useful websites for this assignment: sparkfun.com and parallax.comNow for information about the FLL demonstration this afternoon:We had 4 students (Ally, Sammy, Collin, and Rachel) attend the FLL demonstration along with Mrs. George. Ally, Rachel, and Mrs. George got to see the FLL team show off their robot and their skit. Sammy and Collin did not because they were late getting to the school. After telling the FLL students about the robot, we then took them and Sammy Su into the cafeteria to give them a demo of Sammy Su and to let them test her out. Collin and Sammy showed them the robot and how it worked, and then in pairs of two, helped them drive the robot and pick up balls. We did have a snag this afternoon about half way through the demonstration while two of the FLL students were driving the robot. Our pick-up mechanism stopped working right, so we started throwing the balls into the holder so the students could still try out the dumping. We have gotten together as many things as we could to hopefully fix the problem Saturday morning.

Everybody attending PARC: Don't forget, we are all meeting at SCC at 5:15 AM in jeans (not hole-y, ripped up jeans) and your new shiney shirt. We do NOT want to see any underwear please! So if that means you have to wear a belt, please do. We beg of you. :)Drive team has not been decided yet. Mr. Weick and Mr. Don are deciding who is drive team. Make sure to bring money for lunch and for a pit stop on the way home. iPods and sleep are allowed on the way to and from. We should be getting home between about 8 and 10. Everybody should have gotten an email from Mrs. Danner about which car they will be riding into. She said that any changes in cars are allowed, she just doesn't want to know about them. Just make sure that the person you are switching with is ok with it please.

I apologize for such a long review. Hope everybody had a nice day! :)