FTC 7314 Engineering Notebook 2014-12-15

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Competition Season Meeting

Meeting Date Meeting Time Location Attendees
Monday, December 15, 2014 6pm-9pm TCHS Brandywine Akhila, Josh, Laura, Nick, Braden, Brad, CJ, Justin


Tasks Reflections
Driving Practice
  • To test the FCS that was set up for Wednesday's scrimmage, and to practice driving, the team ran a few practice matches (without an autonomous).
  • Josh filled the the tube up about halfway.
  • Justin, the driver, and Braden, the operator, filled up the 60 cm tube all the way and got both it and the 30 up the ramp.
  • Brad worked on scoring and timing each of the different pairs to see who could work together well and efficiently
  • CJ also drove with Akhila for a set up very similar to the competition.
  • Akhila really enjoyed operating, and learned the controls really fast! It was really fun, and she definitely wants to do more of it.
  • Trevor coached during the entirety of the practice ad learned quite a few things and received constructive criticism that helped him even tonight.
  • Braden and Justin worked great as a team.
Developing an Auton
  • Nick watched the scrimmage and began testing autonomous. However, driver practice was extended eliminating the majority of testing time for autonomous.
  • Laura and Akhila helped Nick, and Laura suggested a possible debugging plan. Due to lack of time, it was not tested, but hopefully on Thursday they can test further and solve the bug we are experiencing.
  • There is a bug which results in the robot stopping after it sees the IR beacon. The NXT doesn't freeze, as it had done previously, but it did not continue on to the rest of the program.
Reviewing the Qualifying Tournament
  • Since it was our first full meeting since the tournament, we decided to review what went well, and what we need to improve on.
  • Quite a bit went well, and overall the robot never broke, and performed well. We won the Rockwell Collins Innovate Award and were nominated for the Think Award. It was a great honor, and a really fun tournament.
  • We also learned quite a few lessons from this tournament, including things we still need, such as drivers practice, judging practice, team spirit, better scouting systems, a 90cm/center goal scoring ability, and much more.
  • We only have 4 weeks and 5 days before the next tournament, and we have a lot to do.


Recorded by: Date: Journal Editor: Akhila Date: