Weekend meetings continue to be difficult to pull off. With other activities and obligations, it is difficult to find a time where everyone is available. At this point, we need to be dividing up the tasks and accomplishing them independently as sub-teams. When we do get together, it should be for final assembly and troubleshooting.
Sunday's meeting was called off since most of the Team was out of town. We made good progress on the drive base by troubleshooting the electrical and software for the drive system. We were successful eliminating all the bugs and moved on to configure both game controllers for wireless use. We previously had the motors and servos on one controller, but as we make the system more complex, the task of driving and running the game piece manipulator need to be divided between two controllers.
If we had the IR seeker, we would have moved on to develop the control software for the autonomous IR portion of the game. Too bad, but feeling pretty good about today's progress.
The robot is somewhat delicate and is traveling quite a bit. I decided to build a travel case for it. The interior dimensions are 18" cubed. If we can't fit the robot in this case, we'll get disqualified anyway, so it seemed like a good way to go. The box ends up being bigger than we really need for the robot, but this will be an asset for future years, since the 18" cube has always been a requirement.
Since I've built boxes before, and was looking for a challenge, I decided to hand cut dove tails to join the sides. Although I was lacking the proper tools, with a lumber saw and a dull chisel, I was able to make some nice looking dovetails. I built the box out of pine, to keep cost down, but was regretting it when I had to remove material between the pins. I was getting some tear out of the end grain in the soft wood. It is interior to the joint, and not visible, so I shouldn't have mentioned it here. (Now you all know the ugly truth.) It was fun for the first half of the box, but I was getting tired by the second half. I would have broken this task up into two days but I don't think that I'll be able to get back to it in the near future.
I'll post a picture when I get a finish on it.
Sunday's meeting was called off since most of the Team was out of town. We made good progress on the drive base by troubleshooting the electrical and software for the drive system. We were successful eliminating all the bugs and moved on to configure both game controllers for wireless use. We previously had the motors and servos on one controller, but as we make the system more complex, the task of driving and running the game piece manipulator need to be divided between two controllers.
If we had the IR seeker, we would have moved on to develop the control software for the autonomous IR portion of the game. Too bad, but feeling pretty good about today's progress.
The robot is somewhat delicate and is traveling quite a bit. I decided to build a travel case for it. The interior dimensions are 18" cubed. If we can't fit the robot in this case, we'll get disqualified anyway, so it seemed like a good way to go. The box ends up being bigger than we really need for the robot, but this will be an asset for future years, since the 18" cube has always been a requirement.
Since I've built boxes before, and was looking for a challenge, I decided to hand cut dove tails to join the sides. Although I was lacking the proper tools, with a lumber saw and a dull chisel, I was able to make some nice looking dovetails. I built the box out of pine, to keep cost down, but was regretting it when I had to remove material between the pins. I was getting some tear out of the end grain in the soft wood. It is interior to the joint, and not visible, so I shouldn't have mentioned it here. (Now you all know the ugly truth.) It was fun for the first half of the box, but I was getting tired by the second half. I would have broken this task up into two days but I don't think that I'll be able to get back to it in the near future.
I'll post a picture when I get a finish on it.