Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Phan
Since I'm a senior and graduating soon and if you need someone to give a hand in programming I'll be willing to help out over the internet since I'm way up in PA. I already have the shirt and hat to be a part of the team.  |
We'll definitely call upon your godly LabVIEW skills someday in the future. A mentor and myself are planning on designing swerve drive with the CIM inside of the wheel over the summer to keep ourselves busy. Apparently programming is a complete monster for that, so perhaps I'll ask you sometime. ^^ I could probably have some freshmen do research on LabVIEW with swerve.. hmm.
As for getting people into programming, I was thinking of hosting little workshop sessions on summer weekends to educate people about the power of LabVIEW and how important it is for the robot to work. The only people who really know anything about it are myself and the person you were helping at CMP, Alex.
Oh, and I'm looking to completely redo the dashboard because IMO it sucks and I hate how half the screen is taken up by a camera that we probably will never use. When we went to a practice event a few weeks before CMP (without a practice robot, of course) at 180's place, I looked at their driver station and OHMYGOD JAVA SMARTDASHBOARD. It's so prettyyyyyy~
And Arduinos on the robot. Can't forget that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by who716
Fundraising -snip-
Robot build -snip-
Kids interest -snip-
Recruiting -snip-
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That's a fantastic recruiting idea. I wanted to have some kind of assembly at school (if we get the robot back in time) to show the bot off before the end of this school year, so kids have something to think about all summer, and perhaps learn over the summer with the rest of the team. If we can find some space to do it, it would be awesome to have everyone drive the robot and get into robotics.
We actually had that idea for fundraising, going to people's doors and all. However, the person we asked to be in charge of that apparently runs 5-6 clubs at school and doesn't care all that much, even though he keeps telling us he does. I'm trying to find someone else who wants to direct the fundraising along with some parents on the team, which we need to recruit more of. Where I live, everyone owns a small business locally and it's a perfect opportunity to recruit some sponsors.
I think our major issue during build season was the fact that we didn't have a lot of people helping. We had "mandatory" meetings at my house (where we built the robot) on Saturday, but I encouraged people to ask me if they can come over during the week to help. Needless to say, nobody really came over except my close friends, and we built a lot of the robot, along with two mentors. I really want to change that for next year.
There is an engineering class at my school and we brought the teacher along to CMP, and he loves it (we also paid for him, but school reimbursed us at the last minute). We're trying to convert a classroom-like space in his engineering class (not really engineering, he teaches MasterCAM but the students like to use 1/32" endmills to pocket out a 1" deep large area, so they don't learn much) to be clear of anything and find an unused milling machine and lathe for it.
My dad is willing to donate our old smallish milling machine that we used all build season since we just brought in an ACRA Mill from work and a local team coach mentor guy told us a school 30 minutes away may have a completely unused Bridgeport with CNC equipment on it. That leaves us a lathe to get, but it can't be all that difficult to find a lathe. Plus, we can use the mill as a lathe if we want! Powers of machining.
But yeah the school is red taping us to hell and it's annoying, and they don't really support robotics as much as they should. After I submit this, I will be typing up a proposal so I can have a meeting with the teacher, a mentor, and the school's administration about how beneficial actually supporting us will be.
Sorry for the long message. :c