Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

Here are some more pics...It is strange how you work and work and work, and then all of a sudden...ROBOT!

Here is a close up of our hopper and shooter wheels.


So one piston can be used to shoot balls.


The other piston can tip the whole bucket and pour balls into the bottom hoop.

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

2980 is breathing a sigh of relief right now...We finally coerced our ball harvester into working. Our robot can now shoot, pour, and load balls. Now we can focus on programming and testing. So...we are about a week behind. Thank goodness for the practice bot!

We shot video which we will upload tomorrow.

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

And here it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyyTHg_Rk8E

We tried to weight the robot tonight...couldn't get an accurate weight, but we are pretty sure we are over by a lot...Time to break out the saw...

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

Wow, looks like it turned out really nice. Congrats man, can't wait to see how it all comes together...

Only wish our team was motivated to work that hard...

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

Was that at full power?

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

@ dallagd...yeah. :-( We have no idea how teams are getting the crazy long distance shots they are posting. We'll play around with it more after we finish our diet today.

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

So today was both good and bad...We managed to break the box...which is good because it wasn't during the competition and we can fix it...though I feel really bad for the kid who did the breaking. He was "playing" with the robot and snapped a bracket off of the bottom of the box...he also broke one of the welds on the side in the process...Again, better now than later.

We also finished a good portion of our robot reveal video! Can't post it till tuesday...not like you haven't already sean everything our robot has to offer, more just the video is a bit involved and the team hasn't sean it all put together yet. It was really fun to film though.


Not sure if we are calling this the front or the back...This is the business end though, where the shooter is.


This is the back of the robot where the ball collector is.

Current weight is 118.5...which by my count is a little close for comfort. Also, we are going to have to rely on others to help us get up on the bridge. We sacrificed this in order to be able to go over the bump safely. (We know...the bridge is worth a lot of points...) We'll see how this gamble works out for us. If we can loose a few more pounds, and can get the weight of the bridge slapper down, we might add it back.


Here is a screen shot from our reveal video...Yeah...thats a pirate...we went all out this year.

Edoga

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

Wow! Looks great!
Only one thing wrong..... a distinctive lack of decorative stickers.

you guys are only using one air storage tank? do you think that'll be enough to keep it going?
The cylinder you guys are using looks huge... doesn't it practically empty the whole air system of pressure just moving in one direction? let alone returning?

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

The robot will spend tomorrow in the art room. Though given how close we are to being over weight I am not sure much will change. As for the storage tank, once the sensors and camera are mounted we will see how much weight we have left...I'm thinking not a lot. we can shoot, and if we dump once, then we'll have to spend time gathering balls in order to shoot or dump again. we are hoping we can build up pressure fast enough so that it won't be a problem.

also, I'm really glad to see that someone out there is reading this. thank you for all the feedback.

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

Aww, I'm sure I'm not the only one reading this... As a matter o' fact, me and a couple other team members had a conversation regarding your bot today.
They keep up on your progress, they just don't reply.

I do think you might have problems with your pneumatics though... Just looking at the storage tank compared to that cylinder, it appears as though it would run out of air before it was even fully extended. But the only way to really tell is testing... TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST!!!

which is what my team will be doing for 22-25 hours this weekend... :)

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

Good to hear we aren't shouting into an empty cave.

We sort of have been, lost a bit more weight today although the bot is getting ugly from all the hacking. Last year we managed to get a pretty good estimate of weight from the CAD model...This year we switched to Autodesk, and while I'm sure it is still possible, we couldn't figure out how to do it...Hence all the hacking.

The box is fixed though I am hoping to stop by TAP plastics tomorrow to get some really thin polycarb for us to use as seam tape during Monday's final build session

We are going to add things in the following order until we hit our maximum weight.

1) Camera ( I know...this one is majorly important.
2) Ultra Sonic Sensor...Definitely can get this one in.
3) Bridge Lowering Device.
4) Extra Storage tank. (though if we can't add a bridge lowering device then we'll probably add this anyway.

Currently we can extend the dumper all the way, and we can get a few shots (3 or 4) before the compressor kicks in and things slow down. Remember storage pressure is 120 while working pressure is only 60.

We are thinking in the future of switching to sheet metal for our frame, and one of those super light big storage tanks.

We also wanted to pass the robot off to the art department for decorating...

Finally we should have our practice bot done in the next week or so. It will be functionally the same, but the drive train won't have the dropped mechanum wheels.

This weekend we are going to a practice field...Saturday and Sunday.

Monday we will be doing the following.

Putting Numbers on our bumpers
Sewing a red Bumper Cover
trying to design a super light weight bridge lowering device
cleaning things up (trying to get rid of the ugly)
BOM!!!!! (we sort of suck at this, and we want to do it right this time.)
TIPS and TAILS
Practice Field Debrief(what worked, what needs to be changed)
Build Season in Review Session
Planning for the Robot reveal ceremony, which concludes with putting the robot in the bag for our bag and tag event. (3:00 PM Oak Harbor High School)

Good Luck to all.

Edoga

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

heh, sounds like you guys still have alot to do...
We're still panicking our way through trying to build something to manipulate balls.

Those super light storage tanks you speak of, are they the plastic ones that were introduced this year?

I applaud you for having put in the effort to make a practice bot, we have the manpower to do more, but the majority of the team is rookies, and many of them are not inspired to work, or have such low self esteem that they don't believe they can be good at anything. Any suggestions getting them to work as well as your team appears to?

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

Thanks for thinking our team works any better than yours. we have a lot of rookies this year also. A lot of them just won't get it until they see it. We have rookies that will miss a week of build season, then show up and wonder why noone gives them a job. On the same note, we have one rookie that cut out half of our frame, and has been working with our welder to fit all the pieces together.

The thing is, and I tell this to my core of students who get it...You just keep plugging away. Do what you can during the off season to show people how everything works, and if you can take someone under your wing and show them what you are doing, or how to do it...but most importanly, just keep going.

OK...Now for two problems that we are having.

We have a second dead jaguar, No light...no flashing. We are giving it 12 volts, but nothing...The problem is that we now have three working jaguars on a robot that needs four.

the second problem is that we cant seam to figure out how to use victors. We are trying to use two victors to power our shooter. We set them up using arcade drive. we have X fed a constant 0, We wanted to use the throttle, axis 3 on the joystick to control the shooter, but we have never worked with victors before, Does the PWM reauire a powered input? (useing a jumper on the sidecar?

I'll post a screan shot of our code tomorrow.

EDoga

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

We are having problems that I can't explain, and can't seam to fix.

1) Our shooter: Mechanically it works, but I can't seam to get code working to control it.

2) Only one of our pistons is working. We have 3 set up in code, only 2 are currently on the robot. (we lost one to weight issues.

Here is the code we are trying. I'm suddenly thinking someone locked the cRio so that no new code could be uploaded. GRRRRRRR!

Begin.vi


and
Teleop.vi


All of the dip switches on the cRio are currenly set to on, including safe mode. The thing that gets me is that all of our changes should have done something, and they haven't.

Edoga

Re: FIRST Team 2980's 2012 Open Source Robot
 

So...figures out what was wrong. We weren't building the program before we redeployed it. Now everything works, except for one dead jaguar. So...at todays practice session we can practice with our shooter.

Tomorrow will be tips and tails.

Note to self...if you carry the robot into your living room by yourself for some late night trouble shooting then you best be ready to carry it back out to the truck in the morning...and you may have to explain some collateral damage to the wife later on.