Entry 29

Acrylic team -

• Continue working on designing the acrylic.

Gripper Mechanism team -

• Work on attaching the extrusion slide to the entire linear slide.

• Additionally, begin working on Three Stage Cascading Lift.

Programming team -

• Our goal for today is to write/find a code that could help us test the servos.

  • This is very important as we need to know which servos work and which ones don't.

• We were supposed to pay attention to Ahmed testing the servos, and see how the expansion hub, cables, robot controller phone, servos, etc work.

  • This is to help us adapt to the technical aspects of the First Tech Challenge.

Acrylic Team -

• Our first task today was to edit the acrylics so that it fits the correct dimensions. This will prevent the top of the acrylic from interfering with the shooting mechanism.

• Afterwards, we attached the acrylic to the u-channels and made necessary holes for the screws and nuts.

  • However, our team believed that two channels would not be enough to sustain the weight, so we added two more sets of low u-channels for extra support.

• After all the edits were made, we imported the bottom acrylic into our assembly, and attached the bottom acrylic to the top acrylic using standoffs.

• However, we realized that we were still missing holes for the expansion hub, and cables on the bottom acrylic. These cables will be used to connect the expansion hub to the battery and switch as well as other components. Therefore, Vanisha worked on adding those holes.

  • Tvisha and Tessa worked on attaching screws and nuts to the standoffs and the expansion hub on the acrylic.

  • Astrid and Yuga imported the switch and attached it to the top of the acrylic design.

Gripper Team -

• We attached the 225 mm extrusion slide to the entire linear slide. Along with that, we also worked on finding a way to attach the slides onto the extrusion since there was no viable way of attaching it.

  • In addition, we attached the brackets to the linear slide and the extrusion slide by using the measurement tool on OnShape. We’re working our way towards the Three Stage Cascading Lift.

Programming Team

• We had a little trouble understanding how to code the servos.

  • That's why we asked lots of questions to Ahmed to make sure that we understand the fundamental concepts before trying to code.

  • We found a sample code to test the servos and modified it according to our preferences.

• Ahmed explained to us how to connect the expansion hub, battery, phones, get the program onto the phone, and test the servo.

  • This was an extremely important part of today's meeting because the freshmen in the programming team needed to learn about these FTC components in order to know how to operate them during competitions.

  • We also had questions about how the above-mentioned components work, but Ahmed fully answered all of our questions and resolved every one of our confusions.

Today the team will be divided into two groups.

• Acrylic team: (Tvisha, Vanisha, Yuga, Astrid, & Tessa)

  • This team will continue working on designing the acrylic.

    • This will include changing the dimensions of the two pieces of acrylic, and adding necessary holes for the channels and expansion hubs.

• Gripper Mechanism team: (Leonard & Benjamin)

  • This team will work on attaching the extrusion slide to the entire linear slide.

  • Additionally, we will also begin working on Three Stage Cascading Lift.

Acrylic Team -

• Our first task today was to edit the acrylics so that it fits the correct dimensions. This will prevent the top of the acrylic from interfering with the shooting mechanism.

• Afterwards, we attached the acrylic to the u-channels and made necessary holes for the screws and nuts.

  • However, our team believed that two channels would not be enough to sustain the weight, so we added two more sets of low u-channels for extra support.

• After all the edits were made, we imported the bottom acrylic into our assembly, and attached the bottom acrylic to the top acrylic using standoffs.

• However, we realized that we were still missing holes for the expansion hub, and cables on the bottom acrylic. These cables will be used to connect the expansion hub to the battery and switch as well as other components. Therefore, Vanisha worked on adding those holes.

  • Tvisha and Tessa worked on attaching screws and nuts to the standoffs and the expansion hub on the acrylic.

  • Astrid and Yuga imported the switch and attached it to the top of the acrylic design.

In the future we plan on importing the entire acrylic assembly into the main robot document, and attach it to the chassis.

• Along with that, we plan on spending some time looking over the completed robot and making sure there are no more complications, collisions, missing or extra parts, and parts that we have not accounted for in the budgeting list.

Today we faced major complications with our OnShape cad system. Due to the massive size of our document we faced extreme challenges while importing different components required for our design.

• Additionally, some parts of the robot including the acrylic had to be custom designed using the part-studio. We started the process of fixing the holes with the idea that we could use some type of ruler tool to make dimensions of the part. We quickly realized that it was not something we could do and reverted to the idea board. Our team has limited experience using the part-studio, so it took additional time to figure everything out.

Gripper Team -

• We attached the 225 mm extrusion slide to the entire linear slide. Along with that, we also worked on finding a way to attach the slides onto the extrusion since there was no viable way of attaching it.

  • In addition, we attached the brackets to the linear slide and the extrusion slide by using the measurement tool on OnShape. We’re working our way towards the Three Stage Cascading Lift.

One of the complications that we experienced was that the angled bracket instructed to use weren't available on OnShape, so we had to use a different piece. To attach the extrusion slide onto the linear slide, we struggled in finding a way to securely attach it. We ended up having to measure the distance on two axis in order to offset it into the right place.

In future meetings, we plan on finishing the Three Stage Cascading Lift, and look for a way to make it a four stage.

The goal today for the programming team is to write or find a code that could help us test the servos which have just arrived at our team captain's house from the school.

• We can either write the code ourselves (this could be beneficial as we would get a chance to test our knowledge of servos).

• We can also find the code from Android Studio or any website (this would help us save a lot of time).

The team also pays attention to Ahmed testing the servos, and sees how the expansion hub, cables, robot controller phone, servos, etc work.

• The team takes notes as Ahmed asks us questions on the topics later on.

We are a little confused on how to code for the servos.

• We look through websites and our past notes on servos in order to figure it out.

• We also look at the programs we have written in the past.

We also ask questions to Ahmed. He explains the concepts to us and suggests that we use a pre-written program to test the servos instead.

• We find a program on Android Studio that we could use, and use that to test the servos.

Ahmed explains to us how to connect the expansion hub, battery, phones, get the program onto the phone, and test the servo.

• The programming team paid close attention to how these concepts work as we are in-charge of taking care of the batteries and the expansion during competitions.

• At the end of the explanation, Ahmed asks the programming team a few questions regarding the components, which most of them were able to answer.

From last meeting, we change our topic from coding using OpenCV to how servos work.

• During the last meeting, we were working on implementing OpenCV into our code.

• This meeting fully focuses on checking the functionality of servos.

In the future, we would have to use the program we found to test the servos we didn’t get to test today.

• Due to there being a great number of servos with us, we are not able to test all of them.

• We have to wait until next meeting to test the rest.

We also have to test other parts of the robot; so, we have to code those test programs as well.

• As there are many components of the robot, we would need code to test all of their functionalities.

• We also plan to accomplish this task in future meetings.