I Built a Cart

After a much appreciated five day weekend we got right back into the swing of things today as we put the finishing touches on our robot and began the final testing ad debugging stages of the autonomous programs. Being that I am borderline useless when it comes to programing I found myself sitting aside staring at what was little more than a two layers of wood on four wheels. I then had the idea to convert it  into the two layer cart we needed as opposed to spending 100$ or more on a new one. I initially intended on putting the project off until tomorrow, but my teammate, Magic Mike as I like to call him, got me off my lazy butt and convinced me to get started. I surprised even myself when I not only started but finished the cart today with the exception  of swapping out the current clunky wheels for some omni directional wheels, which will not only make the cart easier to turn but slim it down enough to fit through a single door. All the little things seem to be coming together as we enter the home stretch before our competition on February 8th.

Progress Update

This past week we have made some of the greatest progress on our robot since we started it way back in september. We have redesigned and perfected or basket so that we can pick up 8 blocks per minute as apposed to our former average of two. Our arm also makes hanging more fluid and reliable now that we use a hook instead of our basket the actual basket and made the arm lighter. We've also made tremendous progress on our arena as we completed and tested on it for the first time. The way we're going now I'm confident in saying we will dominate our next competitions coming up in February.

Noah's Organization as seen by the Mac

I'm Noah's computer, and although on the surface he may seem organized there are plenty of things he could improve upon. His desktop gives the illusion that he has perfect organization with a separate folder for each class, but thats where it ends. Within those folders he has no sub folders and rarely names his documents as they relate to the unit. His method may not be too much of an issue now but i fear that when when finals come I'll be the one to suffer as he relentlessly slams on my keyboard trying to get through to the proper documents and assignments. He has no idea I hijacked his blog but hopefully he'll read this soon and get himself together.

Guest Blogger

Hi, I'm Noah's mom and I'm excited he finally let me see his blog to understand a little bit more what he's working on during and after school. Before reading this I though that him and his team had some kind of instruction manual to go off of but now it's clear to me that they are making their game-ready machine completely from scratch. I am both surprised and proud of what he has created so far.

Success

Though it is a small success I managed to finish my prototype for the basket design. I am hesitant to even call it a success because we have not run a test on it yet but just finishing it made me feel like I've nocked something off our laundry list of chores.

A Day In The Life

Honestly there isn't much on my calendar for tomorrow as far as my STEM class goes because we don't meet tomorrow. I do, however, meet with my FTC team after school as we do everyday. My main goals for tomorrow would be to finish my arm design and test it asap to work out any kinks that may exist. It  may not seem like much but but the arm is responsible for about half the game's play so we may either sink or swim based on how good our design is.