This week, we mounted the bean bag detector switch. After that, we focused on integration for the practice competition. A lot of the work done this week was further tuning of small mechanical components.
Further work was done on implementing the two limit switches on the pull carriage. We now how the release limit switch tell the driver when the two carriages are separated and when they are reattached. Our initial de-bouncing code ended up being too complicated and ineffective, so instead we just did a delay counter and overlooked the initial contact.
We kept testing before the practice competition this week. The competition did not go well unfortunately, but we identified what needs to be fixed for the real competition.
Before the practice competition, the launch bearing broke. We made it a bit thicker, but it broke again at the competition. It is a significant challenge and we will need to overcome it before the real competition.
We experienced issues with our limit switch to detech interfacing between the launch and pull carriages, which caused issues when trying to launch bean bags. We are currently trying to figure out how to prevent this from happening; we may limit our sensing to when the carriage re-attaches rather than both attachment and release.
Next week, and this weekend, we will redesign the launch bearing mount and iterate the hook design so it works more consistently. The overall aim is to make everything more robust so that we can no longer keep chasing small design issues.
After fixing the mechanical issues, we will keep testing all systems to work out any bugs before the competition on Tuesday. We will also aim to get in some practice driving on the competition floor.