Working on the robot

I have started the design of the slalom bot. Now I'm trying to figure out a good gear ratio that will give me good speed and acceleration, I need this because it will give me sufficient turning around the cups. So far the ratios I've tried are to slow or they don't have enough torque, using NXT to build a slalom bot may be very difficult so i might decide to go back to the RCX kit. Right now the RCX slalom bot was the best and fastest one so far so I might just reuse the same design. Hopefully the team the beat us in the fall competition wont beat us in this new spring competition!

pentathlon

In Lego we have found out about the new competition at Aviation High school. The pentathlon (the competition) consists of 5 different missions, all here at this site. I have chosen to do the slalom since i won it last year, however im going to do it with the NXT instead of the RCX. The funny thing is we beat it last year with the best time and this year they made it even easier. It's easier because now the cups are further appart and the slalom is a shorter distance, the only problem is overcoming the design of the NXT slalom bot. The NXT is still a little foreign to me, but i will get used to it. I just hope i'm not falsely accredited if i win the slalom mission again.

Slowest Robot

• ≥ 3 tires, wheels

• Everyone in the group must be able to explain the final gear ratio before the start of the race.

• You must have at least one 24 tooth gear in the train.

• The drive wheel must be hidden from plain eyesight.

"Think Turtle"

Not exactly what we expected >.<

Well the competition didn't go as planned. Everything that could of gone wrong...actually did and that got me so mad because in class I got the buckyball and microscopy (the mission Gabby and I had to solve) 100% of the time and then at the end when we were at the competition, nothing worked.On top of all that Mr.Wright tells me to switch my polarities on the robot because I had them that A was on port C and C was on port A. They didn't really confuse me but whatever, and after I changed them all my programs were messed up and at that same time In was called up to compete. Not one program worked and all I got was like 20 something points just for showing up (too bad it wasn't more) then later I started to fix the programs and the next time I was called up I got 90 points (out of like 370, YAHOOOO). Ohhh yeah did I mention that GABBY NEVER SHOWED UP AT THE COMPETITON and I had to do everything by myself!! For all what happened I have an excuse and that is that I was terribally terribally terribally sick. I was sick, my head was hurting, my nose was runny, and my throat hurt like crazy. I hope to do alot better next time and now I have to start working on all the programs for "MY ROBOT" so they actually work next time, I know I wont be sick at that time.

Competition Day!!

Compitition day is coming up very soon and I can happily say that we are pretty much ready. Now we just have to put all of our programs to gether and figure out the order we will put them in. Gabby and I have successfully done 3 misions and what helped us was segmenting and a lot of changes. Daniel and Gary have successfully done 3 missions but they are soso on a fourth one. Robert and Eugene have completely done 2 missions, doesn't sound like a lot, however they did do one of the hardest ones. The biggest problem in solving the missions was the aiming, my solution was to mark a spot in the base using the letters and pictures, and now Gabby and I are always consistant. One problem that might occur is that when we load our programs on each other robots that might not work perfectly until we tweak them a bit, but thats not a big problem. I just hope I don't shake while aiming my robot which was funny to everyone except me :)

Whats NXT!!

As you probably know I didn't post in a very very very very very very long time but I wanted to talk about the new nxt, but to my dismay the kit wasn't really the NXT step in technology. When I opened the kit and when I looked inside the kit all I saw was grey, white, and black (the pieces were those colors, which was pretty cool). The diveristy in pieces was heartbreaking, I mean the kit was basically made up of technics and and connecters. The newest pieces in the kit was a legoman and blue and red balls, I guess they just add extranious pieces to make it look like the kit has hundreds of pieces. Another bad thing is everytime you build a bot it is always on an angle (personaly i hate that). Even though there are a couple of bad things to this kit there are some upsides. For example the motor has a built in rotation sensor which saves a lot of building time, another thing is there are a couple more sensors in the NXT that the original lego kit doesn't have, like:

A sound sensor

An ultrasonic sensor

(let me just say that they are really cool, and they are a big help with different robots). This is just my opinion of the NXT. Well this kit isn't that good for winning compititions, I think it is really cool for just messing around with it at home and to learn robotics. Personally I would get this kit for myself at home. Also dont worry, I will blog more often.

The new kid on the block

Last Friday I met the new student that comes after school, his name is Abadoub. He seems very excited about Lego and he got off at a great start because he already has built a robot and it looks great. He already understands robust design on his robot, but he didn't understand how to make his robot turn left or right so this Wednesday or Friday I hope to show him how. He also needs a little help with programming, so I intend on showing him around and teaching him all about Lego robotics. Mr. Wright and Mr. Daly say that was how I was in sixth, but I'll have to look into that a little more.