FTC 7314 Engineering Notebook 2015-10-19

Competition Season Meeting

Meeting Date	Meeting Time	Location	Attendees
19-October-2015	6:00-9:00 PM	TCHS Brandywine	Josh, Akhila, Braden, Bennett, Seth, Trent, Daniel, Wade, Myles, Amal, Jacob, Trevor

Objectives / Systems

Hypotheses, tests, observations, conclusions, plans

Intake

Daniel worked on the intake, he helped build the new intake slapper devices. These were mounted on continuous servos. this new design had two slappers that went in opposite directions like a gear
Myles finished the tank treads and helped Daniel in the Intake.
Seth helped Clem and wade finish one of the main tank treads.
The team decided on a new concept for the robot, it seems similar. we all got to work with the new design. and got a lot done.
Trevor and Braden manufactured a servo intake beater bar, then showed others how to build it.
Trent was putting together treads with miles and was milling with Josh. This was his first time milling, and he was really surprised at how precise someone has to be when milling. He finds the zeroing a little tedious, but that's okay, because he really enjoys robot-ing and building.

Milling pieces

Josh worked with Bennett in order to mill and drill the remaining drive chain pieces. They completed cutting all of the pieces, and josh has set up the mill to drill the angled pieces.
Bennett worked with Josh to help drill and cut the drive chain pieces. He learned the basics of the mill and is "filled with joy" that he may get to use it more.

Tasks

Reflections

Programming

Today, Amal, Akhila, and Snarr, mentored by Mr. Abersold, thought that the code needed to be clearer, so it was decided to create a new robot class, and moved all of the hardware map code into there. This makes it easier to call the certain motors/controllers and made the code clearer. They also tried to figure out the number if revolutions the motor/ encoder had to make before travelling a certain distance, which, in this case, was six inches.
They had trouble with the rotation number because the number listed online was a lot bigger than the ones they were plugging in. This resulted in the robot remaining irresponsive. The issue was really frustrating because figuring out the encoder situation is the first step to a successful autonomous. They also had problems with configuring the encoders. They will try to figure this out next time, and hopefully crack the code (pun intended).