Programming

The drones were the first thing we worked on in this class, we learned how to use blockly codrone to program our codrones to fly. Blockly had codrone courses that we took to learn how to use the drones, and then once we finished all of the lessons and challenges that they also had like fly the drone in a hexagon or downward in a spiral motion. We took on a bigger challenge, our test for the drones. Which was to fly through the 2025 Aerial Drones Competition, we were graded on how much we could do effectively when we presented live in person to our teacher. This proved to be difficult for all of us, as with a drone there are so many different variables that go into making it fly right and because the drones are not super expensive all the fancy options they would have problems. For example, we had problems with being in such a big room the air drafts could ruin a whole run, additionally the battery became very inconsistent under 85% so most of used a battery until 85% and then swapped out so we could overcome that adversity, we also changed the way the field was oriented so that the air drafts from the vents would hit us less so we were much better off and much more consistent. We still had problems but using out problem solving abilities we were able to work together to minimize errors and maximize consistency and accuracy.

We also programed a strip of lights using Arduino, which is similar to C++ but is more of a sketch language. This part of the class was very rewarding but tedious, we were required to chose a Christmas song and create a lightshow to go with it as it was near Christmas. We all had a history in music so it came with "ease"   to us, however timing the lights up with the song we played with it was still a challenge as the song wasn't perfectly timed out how we thought it would be or it wouldn't be the amount of time we thought it was. It was almost an art creating the light shows but it was worth the end result!