FTC 7314 Engineering Notebook 2014-09-20

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Competition Season Meeting

Meeting Date Meeting Time Location Attendees
Saturday, September 20, 2014 2pm-5pm TCHS Brandywine Akhila, Eric, Nick, Brad, CJ, Laura, Amal, Braden, Justin, Josh, Morgan, Trevor


Tasks Reflections
Collect Data About IR Signal Strengths
  • Akhila learned how to use certain aspects of the Lab View programming language, and saw how the language generally worked. She ran a program that measured the signal strengths of the IR beacon in different indexes, and put the IR sensor on different paths to collect the signal strengths. The initial task is to go straight, and turn when the strength is greater than the threshold on sensor three, or the "slightly to the right" sensor.
Finishing Creating The Test Chassis
  • Brad
    FTC7314 140920 csm-4.jpg
    and Braden worked on finishing the chassis and adding in the wiring to the motors, along with the motor control and the brick. Nick helped them to program the robot so it could run.
  • We were able to get it to work and experiment on how much force and what angle it takes the robot to knock the kickstand over.
  • Nick finished the deployment of code for the test bot to correctly drive on the field. This then permitted testing the force required to knock over the kickstand.
Creating The scouting Sheets
  • Eric, Brad, and Trevor worked on making the FTC 2014-2015 prototype scouting sheet for the matches and the pits. As a group we worked on what we need to focus on in the pits, and all the objectives we wanted to know if the other teams can accomplish in the matches.
Continue Proto-typing the Shooter
  • We continued to proto-type the shooter. We made a lot of progress.
  • We had a little trouble trying to find a motor from last week. We learned our lesson--always put stuff in a safe place.
  • First, we tested a motor without a gearbox. It shot the ball really fast. We decided it probably spun too fast.
  • Then we tested a motor with a modified gear box. It spun really slow and doesn't have enough power.
  • For next meeting, we are going to test the motor without the gear box, but geared down a little. We are hoping a 2-1 gear ratio will work.


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