A quick update

I apologize for not updating any readers recently on our progress. However, we are going strong with the robotics kit, and have a design that we are attempting to use to pick up the hockey pucks and score them on the highest goal. We're having slight problems with fitting the design in the 18" cube, but I think we will arrive upon a working design soon.

I have been working on a program to keep the robot in one direction at all times with the compass sensor, and we are still assembling a proper drivetrain, while figuring out a good way to use our plastic.

We have a great set of teammates this year. We even have a side project with some 8th graders, working with the challenge that the Vex kit makers put out in response to FIRST abandoning them. Since we have our extra Vex parts and some motivated students, why not? We've adopted a second teacher, Mr. Henderson, the Biology and Math teacher, who guides the Vex group. They've made great headway over the past few weeks, with the help of Emma and Alex as mentors.

I'm very glad to see that many of the team members are interested in programming and willing to try it out. It would be sad if the programming aspect died out after I leave the school, but I don't think that will happen, since now we have a lot of enthusiasm for coding that was a bit lacking last year.

Anyway, even if it seems to our team like we aren't making too much progress, I think we are gaining knowledge and finding ideas, and will end up with a working design relatively soon. At least we have a method that we are pretty sure will work.

That's all for now! I hope to show some videos of our design as soon as we finish building it! 

--gavin

The PolyGnomes Last Year

This is a video showing our progress over the last year and our achievements, made by Noah Kaplan (our former pit crew chief and now part-time robotics team member). Great job! :)

Meet the Team: Eric

Name: Eric W.
Specialty: Programming
Joined: 2008-2009 Year

Bio: Hi. I'm currently second in command on the programming front of our team, Gavin being first. Gavin, however, is a senior and so I need to learn as much as I can from him before he graduates.

:EW

Success! Our first robot program works!

On Wednesday we had another robotics meeting, and were again quite productive. We discussed more designs and strategies and managed to run a program that controlled the chassis and 4 motors of the robot (using RobotC)!

[Since the meeting I have been trying to get a program written that uses the compass to keep the robot in the same direction.]

The motors are very powerful, but we get a message on the NXT controller that the batteries are low, when they obviously aren't (they run seemingly forever on one sliver of battery according to the meter).

I was personally excited about the new opportunity to use polycarbonate to aid in the design and aesthetics. Take a look at this video:

I hope we can use this too, though I wonder where we might get a heat gun.

A Constructive Meeting!

The PolyGnomes had an excellent meeting on Monday, and plan another on Wednesday (our new schedule is Mon/Wed).

We got some ideas about the basic design we could use, and discussed various strategies for our robot. We have a nice crisp engineering notebook with our name engraved upon it neatly which will prove quite useful.

We also took out the parts of our new robotics kit and put together a basic chassis that may or may not be the final robot's chassis. We haven't yet managed to hook the motors up to a computer or power source yet, but will most likely on Wednesday.





Eric and I also installed and began to get used to RobotC, which seems like a very powerful language that we may use for the robot's code (NXT-G is too buggy for my taste). It will be refreshing to have some neat code that is much more malleable than the stuff we've been using so far. Using NXT-G or EasyC is like LEGOs, it's fun and structured. But using text-based coding is more like clay, which you need to understand to work, but once you do gives you easy-to-make, elegant results. I think I'll dive into making the core robot code soon :).

Anyway, we'll probably update the blog with more technical stuff, using the notes we took on that meeting.

New Game Released!

Well, it's out! The game this year will be challenging but very fun. It involves hockey pucks this time instead of rings. Take a look at the video (I uploaded it to youtube, but it is NOT my video. The orignals are here: http://www.usfirst.org/community/ftc/content.aspx?id=962

Meanwhile, we will begin to formulate the optimal strategy to get the most points--before designing the actual robot. It also looks like we will be able to get some CAD software to help with designing. :) I also hope that some parents/students of the team can start building the special parts described in the video so we can test our robot well (they did an excellent job last year!).

PS: in terms of meetings, we haven't had a true "meeting" yet, since we're still organizing the best days for everyone to be able to come. As soon as we start the meetings, expect more posts from all our contributors.

Line Follower (w/ video)

Here's a quick video of the line follower I put together to try out the NXT-G code:



PS: You may want to subscribe on youtube to this username :)