Tabii
Game Review
3 inches wide by 1/2 inch thick.
Why can we only hold 2 at a time?
Drones: we can only hold 1 at a time, and only have 1 of each color. So unfortunately we can't fire as many as we want to. They also have to be solidly the red or blue color.
We need to make team props to place on the spike points, maybe we'll be able to 3D print some lightning bolts for our team name of Voltage.
Then we need to focus on placing a purple piece on the spike point with it for autonomous.
for driver control portion we need to focus on making sure our robot is short enough to be able to go underneath the rigging without issues.
then we need to figure out the fastest way to pick up and transport pieces as fast as possible.
finally we need to find the best way to position ourselves for firing the drones
need to try several paper airplane designs to find the best to almost guarantee landing in zone 1
we also need to test a few ways of launching the drones from the robot.
FTC Scoring Strategy
Santanne and I made our scoring strategy
Ava and I worked on the designing portion and Santanne worked on programming
FTC Test Bed
Per my robot design, we have chosen to use HD Hex Motors for our wheels.
A Hex motor for the arm joint
And servos for our claw.
What we mainly learned today is a reminder of how the motors work.
9/26/23
Today I and Santanne worked on the drive train. I was building The sides, with the gears, spacing, I counted the number of chains needed and it was still too lose, then I got tired of a lack of visual progress and added the battery and the control hub and started driving just the one half with some wheels attached. We didn't get many photos of our work today. But I am able to go into great detail about how funky it looked with just the one side driving in an arc.
9/28/9
Drivetrain
More completed Drive Train
Today, we finished our drive train. One side was functional meanwhile the other side won't move. I assume it's because only one side was programmed to work. Before success was more failure though, we struggled with the chains some more through miscommunication, accidentally pushing the pin all the way out, and other issues. However, we still finished with a drive train with some minor issues fixed through ingenious solutions like a zip tie. Overall, it was a successfull day for me as head builder.
10/2/23
Today we yet again tried to fix our drive train. Santanne was tired of the chains rubbing on the ground, so we asked our coach, Mr Newman, for ideas on how to fix it. He told us to use pillow blocks on the bottom of our channel to put the shafts through with the wheels on them. So that's exactly what I did all class and after school. I added pillow blocks for the shafts to go through, hence making the drive train further off of the floor and now the chains are no longer a problem. It also gave us the opportunity to tighten them so they're less likely to skip and slip. In the picture to the left we see the process of adding the pillow blocks (top right corner of the base).
10/4/23
Finally something different. We are no longer struggling with the drive train!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 Ava Claire and I moved on to building our arm! Our arm plan we took inspiration from our coach, Mr Newman, robot and the starter bot build for this year. We used two channels and a 400mm shaft for the base of it, two core hex motors and a couple gears. We also adored the drone launcher plan and took that as well, then we talked about different sizes and shapes of plans to figure out which one would be best for our needs. I found a fantastic paper airplane design and now we are sticking with that one for the season.
10/16/23
On this day, we purged everything. Outside of school hours we talked about our robot and how we could make it better. We are all on the same page that the suspension is a function hat is almost necessary to work because it is worth 20 points, and we recognize we can't rely on our alliances teams to get those 20 points.
My ideas were to:
make the drivetrain lighter, and smaller
Since Santanne was complaining about control over the robot, I suggested we only have the traction wheels attached to a chain making it a RWD robot
because of the delay, i suggested we have our drivetrain on the driver hub and the arm on the expansion hub
Ava and I are pretty much on the same page, while Santanne is on her own and Lexy will chime in with input every so often. We're hoping this works because if it doesn't, then we will have essentially destroyed a robot that worked fine before for nothing.
10/18/23
Today, my main job was to finalize our drive train. So after we took apart our drivetrain in a matter of minutes, we reflected on how long that put together and make compared to how long it took to take apart and wondered how that was a reflection on the rest of the world. Then we decided we didn't care, and I got back to work on the drive train. The plan was to cut off about 3-5 inches on 4 channels. This would take some weight off, and make the robot overall smaller. Then we were told we couldn't do that after we had already taken apart the old drivetrain. So we decided to use the small channels for our new drivetrain. This was a very quick building day, probably because we already knew how to put everything together because it was the same general design, just smaller.
We did find a problem and that is that the right motor wont spin. I tried plugging the wire in again, making sure it was plugged into the right port, and tried replacing the wire and nothing worked. So we came to the conclusion that it was broken and we'd need a new one. But we ran out if class time so thats a problem that will have to be solved later.
New Dirvetrain
This is the only picture we have, because it perfectly includes everything I worked on and changed.
10/20/23
Today, I walked into class and Santanne ad already changed the motor out so we didn't have to mess with that. However in doing so she messed a lot of things up in the process so I had to reattach he wheels shafts. But after that we were officially done building the drive train, so we could put the arm back on. And we did exactly that. Put the arm on the base and watched Santanne play with the wrist and program. Its a lot stronger now than before, but since I am arm driver, i don;t like that it has set places it goes and stops. I need a full range of motion to stop where I need it to for accuracy and so our robot will actually properly work. This "push the button and it stops at this place" Is stupid and doesn't work for this. Hopefully we can figure this out in the future, because if we can't, were going to need to find a way to reprogram or change the motor.
Arm Attached
In this picture we can see a successful attachment between our arm and our drivetrain.
10/24/23
Today we had lots and lots of struggle with the wrist. The servo will only move from one set point to another, instead of stopping when I let go of the button. The arm also moves way too fast and is flinging itself around and top-siding the robot. So first we started with the setting the zero position of the wrist servo so it would be where we wanted it to be instead of trying to break itself off. Now that that is fixed, we are able to fit in the size requirement after we did have to move the arm back a little bit. Either way now it works, and in the size requirements. But it still does the point a to point be thing and noting in between, so that is something Santanne still needs to figure out, because changing the servo and wrist like that just for it to do the same thing as the previous one completely disregards the point.
I stayed after school with Santanne to keep working on it and to try and fix the programming. We didn't get much done other than re-plug in the encoders on the Core Hex motors on the arm, and try playing with the program.
Side view of robot
Arm Side View
Birds eye view of the robot
Front View
10/26/23
Today I had the best job of getting to organize all of our boxes and make everything neat and pretty. After trying to come up with a new suspension mechanism. But, the design I thought of won't work so I refocused on organization.
11/6/23
Today, we reevaluated our drive train opinions and decisions. and after thinking about some variables, we decided returning to our original drive train was our best bet. So I rebuilt it with some of the changes we had mad, namely the chain only connecting the motor and the traction wheel so Santanne feels like she has more control over the robot.
It didn't take me long to take the drive train apart, only about 10 minutes. And then it took me about 45 minutes to rebuild the last one. I ended up staying after school so i could also put the driver hub, battery, arm, and drone launcher servo onto the base and I plugged some wire back in. Overall, it didn't take very long because I have built and taken it apart so many times I know how it all fits very well.
11/8/23 and 11/10/23
This picture is also uploaded to our team Instagram page :)
Today, I packed the stuff we'll need for competition tomorrow! I also made 3 planes of each color and gave the paper back to Santanne. When I was done with that, i went to go see what Santanne and Ava Claire were doing, and they were working on an autonomous for tomorrow. The plan was for it to drop off two pixels on the black board. Unfortunately, Santanne only has it programmed to work on the blue side. Santanne did not provide a picture for the programming page, so I can not link that for today.
Today is competition day. Sanatnne and I worked on getting an autonomous put together for the rest of today, Ava Claire and I worked on figuring out where to place the robot in end game to launch our drone, and I folded many, many paper airplanes for these experiments. Unfortunately, today was not on our teams side. no matter what we did, or how hard we tried nothing was working how we needed it to. Our arm is way too jerky, to the point where it knocked off all the pixels we had on the backboards, our drone launcher got interfered with in 2/5 rounds, and our alliance teams couldn't do much of anything. We are changing our arm issue as soon as possible, and making a suspending mechanism. We got ideas and parts from the other robots.
11/27/23
Top View of Worm Gear
New Location for the Drone Launcher
We got our worm gear to work! It just needs a little bit of work and it should work at a normal speed. Ava Claire also repositioned our drone launcher to be on the inside of our robot so that is would no longer be subject to interference from the outside or other robots.
11/29/23
Today we worked on fixing the worm gear, the arm, and our hope in the worm gear. The worm gear is very finicky so it's taking a lot of work and ideas to try and make it something that works 100 percent of the time. Ava Claire tried almost a million different things, which you can read about in her notes. Our team mentor, Racheal, suggested we use some surgical tubing to help pull the arm in whatever direction we need. This was supposed to help pull some weight off of the worm gear, and to help move faster with less force. I worked on how to attach the surgical tubing to the arm, and the base to make it work properly. Unfortunately, we do not have pictures of that as it was taken apart before I could get any pictures of it in use. Time is ticking as we are nearing our second competition, so this arm needs to be wworking by then.
12/5/23
Today, my job was to draw out our new design plans for the arm and the suspending placements. We have found the parts we need on the go builda website for the suspending mechanism, measured our parts from the REV kit, and have made a plan to mount them where there won't be any issues. The other drawing is of mine and Ava Claires new arm design. Before the last competition, I had an idea to use chains and an HD hex motor instead of the work gear to move our arm. The idea was that it would be strong enough to hold the arm where we need it to be, and not slip like our other two arm designs have. So, we would attach the motor to our base, similar to the wheels, run a sprocket through it, put a smaller sprocket on the shaft of the arm, and run a chain between the sprockets. This was changed slightly by Santanne and Racheal's ideas. A detailed drawing for that is in production.
Engineering Notes 12/7
Today in class I helped find the Go Builda parts so we can order them. I found the suspending supplies. It is called a 2 x Linear Actuator Kit. The idea is to use these Go Builda pieces to suspend the robot. We need two to balance out the weight of the robot in the piece so it doesn't rip apart our robot. This was heavily stressed by our mentor, Racheal, after I said thought it'd be fine with only one. However she did point out that most other teams do have two and there's work fine. Our goal for the suspending mechanism is that the lift system would raise up, hook onto the bar, and then retract, which will lift up the robot. Ava Claire found the motor we need too. It is called 2 x 5203 Series Yellow Jacket Planetary Gear Motor. We are getting this motor because we need it for the suspending, and the motor does not come with the Linear Actuator Kit.
Engineering Notes 12/11
Today in class, I started working on building the new arm. My focus for today was to find a way to mount the motor vertically on channel. I found that it would mount if I attached it by the middle angled wholes on the channel.
Engineering Notes 12/13
Today in class Ava Claire and I worked on figuring out a new plan for the arm. My design for the arm was to have one motor and two chains connected to the drive train and threaded similarly to the wheels. This wasn't the best course of action for a few reasons. 1. it wasn't very practical 2. it got in the way of our suspension 3. it doesn't fix the bending shaft problem 4. there was a miscommunication between me and Santanne as she though we were moving it to the middle. So we went with the latter since it fixed most of our problems. We should be beginning construction next class.
Engineering Notes 12/15
Today in class, I worked on figuring out which brackets should be used to mount the arm. At first Ava Claire and I thought of using pillow blocks. But after a little bit of miscommunication and some thinking, we decided to use L brackets. Ava Claire thinks they'll be stable and able to hold all of the weight decently, but I fear they're a little too weak. However we don't have any other options at the moment so this is our better option.
Engineering Notes 1/17
Today was my first day back from winter break. I am a week behind the rest of my team as I was absent due to a speech and debate event. So I came back to a not put together robot, Santanne not here (she was sick), and Ava Claire having to explain everything as best she could to me. Apparently, there was a plan to change our wrist, but no one could explain to me why or how the new wrist would be built and how it would work, so I vetoed it. I spent most of the class fixing the issue with the chain on the arm, it wasn't counted properly so it was too short to fit, so I made it work and fit, also mounted the motor properly for the arm.
Engineering Notes 1/19
Today in class our mentor was able to pay us a visit. We talked about what still needed to be done on the robot for competition the next day, why we want to change the wrist design, and Santanne and out mentor, Racheal, worked on programming. We have team objects and the special programming called tensure flow figured out, we just need it programmed and finished. That is Santanne's focus for the next week or two for the final tournament coming up in February. After that I had to hurriedly put our claw back on and leave, as the bell had rung and I needed to get home.
Our general work
some work on some motors
Engineering Notes 1/25/24
Today in class, I worked on fixing one of the GoBuilda motors. While Santanne pressed the triggers on the controller to move the suspending mechanism up and down, we all knew that one was going up faster and easier than the other. Santanne and Racheal insisted it was a programming issues, but I saw that while spinning the motor was skipping at a certain point. Ava Claire took apart the motor to see if there was a problem inside, because the outside gears were fine. She found that there was A whole bunch of the grease we had used at the previous tournament. I helped scoop out most of it, and then Ava Claire put it back together to see if that was the issue. Once Santanne tested it again, we saw that it was still having the same problem, and decided the problem was within the motor. So, we decided to find a new GoBuilda Motor.
Engineering Notes 1/29/24
Today in class, we decided to re-construct the wrist and claw because the gears for the wrist kept skipping, so the plan of action was to re-arrange the wrist design to make the gears closer together. Racheal found a video of people working with the Lego pieces from an EV3 kit and saw that they were using a straight piece to hold two bars in the center of the gears together so that they couldn't move away and were constantly touching. This should eliminate our skipping problem. We also changed out torque servos to see if one of the problems we have been having all season was due to the motor and not programming. The servo could move just fine one way but not the other. I tried taking weight off, but that didn't change anything, we tried changing programming all year and that also didn't change anything. So last solution was to find a new motor. And turns out the motor was the problem all along.
Engineering Notes 1/31/24
In class, we realized that the port we had a linear actuator ( the suspending piece) connected to was giving us issues, so maybe one of the terminals was not working correctly. Santanne worked on replacing our old driver hub, and plugging everything in, getting us a new control hub as well and uploading all of our programs onto that one as well. So the aforementioned issues with the GoBuilda motor were both due to a bad motor, and a bad port on the driver hub.
Meanwhile, Ava Claire and I finished up re-building our wrist. It took us longer than it probably should have but that's because we didn't pay attention while taking it apart to be able to put it back together. Our reasoning for taking it apart and putting it back together is because we want to be able to reach higher up on the backboard, and to do so we need to flip around the way our arm works. The fastest, and really only way to do that, is the flip the wrist over.
Engineering Notes 2/2/24
Today's class centered around getting our wrist mechanism to cooperate, which has been a persistent issue all season. Initially, we believed it was due to the weight of the claw. But as I said in an earlier entry, I had already tested that several times and knew it couldn't have been the problem. We also changed gear ratios all the time, and that still didn't fix anything. So we replaced the torque servo. On Thursday of this week, we went to Midland Classicals Bus Barn and worked with several other robotics teams. Santanne got help with programming, I got help with some of our build issues, and Lexy helped other teams with their issues. Unfortunately, Ava Claire couldn't go due to homework workload, but we still received and gave lots of help. In class today, I had to modify a piece someone had helped me build on Thursday because we replaced the torque servo. So, I had to drill new holes into our new, flat metal bar. I don't have access to the photos or videos, but I was doing well, and it took a while. I had Mr. Newman hold a piece that was holding the bar in place so no accidents could occur. We also got to wear our new team shirts to school for the first time!
New torque servo
Engineering Notes 2/6/24
Today in class, I worked on finishing the presentation that my team and I needed to present to the kids at Santanne's place of work. This is one of our outreach projects for the regional qualifier on Saturday. After school we headed over, got what we needed set up, and gave our presentation to the kids. After presenting we took some questions, let them drive Volt around, showed what the objectives of the game is, and how we use teamwork. Then at the very end we held a bit of trivia and gave them some prizes and candy!
Engineering Notes 2/8/24
I didn't do much in class today other than make our keychains. Then I took home all of our goodie bag supplies and I made the goodie bags for Saturday with the candy we ordered, bags, tinsel, and business cards/labels. Our first 40 keychains were made with pixels that kind of sucked, but I got them made and they still looked ok, but then Ava Claire made 40 more that looked much better. Turns out our goodie bags were a big hit at the competition on Saturday too!
Picture from out Instagram chat of my team and I showing what we were working on Friday and Saturday night.