JVN Challenge: Record your Season!

[lynca]

The DiscoBots are all about video logs. We have always kept a weekly media log ( http://2010.discobots.org/node/16 ). We will take the JVN challenge and move up to daily twitter updates this year.

http://twitter.com/discobots

[JesseK]

I'm in, though there will probably be some rants and ravings about my grad class sprinkled in as well. I wound up pulling a A- in the hardest math class I've ever taken, yet this coming math class (non-linear programming) is [scary math]^2.

[SavtaKenneth]

I'll bring this up in my team. Worst case scenario I'll document the season and upload it afterwards.

[JesseK]

I'm not trying to 'plug' this here, but I just thought I'd throw a new 'method' to 'document' a season. I really like reading blogs. However, I hate writing blogs about as much as I hate suffering through terrible movies my girlfriend loves. Evernote is a note-taking, picture-saving, webpage caching, stick-note-everywhere web service that is free for most of the things I need it for. It's been incredibly useful for grad school. I've also used it with my phone to make TODO lists, jot down names of people I interact with that I may need to remember later, etc. What makes it really nice is the fact that the same notes I make on my phone can appear the browser plugin on my work computer and full application on my home computer.

In the mean time, I've shared the 2011 robotics folder on my evernote account:
http://www.evernote.com/pub/aticris/robotics2011

And the general folder, since there's already some stuff populated in it (used it as reference material for drive train workshops I taught):
http://www.evernote.com/pub/aticris/roboticsgeneral

[mplanchard]

An easy way to keep track of what you are creating from a model point of view is to add a "Comment" Comments help you to remember why you did what you did in the engineering design process and as you share models and assemblies, it prevents mistakes.

Right-click on the FeatureManager icon in SolidWorks
Select Comment
Enter your comment and save your note.

Marie

[JVN]

Originally Posted by mplanchard

An easy way to keep track of what you are creating from a model point of view is to add a "Comment" Comments help you to remember why you did what you did in the engineering design process and as you share models and assemblies, it prevents mistakes.

Right-click on the FeatureManager icon in SolidWorks
Select Comment
Enter your comment and save your note.

Marie

Good advice Marie! Another Solidworks feature I had no idea existed... Maybe I should get some formal training one of these days!

-John

[JVN]

I'm glad to see so much interest in this. I'll reiterate that I'm much less excited about the day-to-day feeds as I am the final compiled papers.

I know we're all going to be busy during the 6-weeks, who has time to follow a bunch of twitter feeds with the proper amount of attention?

-John

[MrForbes]

I did it the past two years for our (Typewriter Repairmen) NURC robot

http://www.selectric.org/nurc10/index.html

but that's a kind of slow motion build...we had months and months to work on it.

I'll have to see if I'd be able to keep up with a post a day on the FRC build. Plus we have a new build place, new teachers, new mentors, and mostly new students...should be an interesting year for the NERDS

[Tom Ore]

I uploaded a design poster we used at the regionals and championship. It's not as detailed as a design blog but you can get some of the thought process from it. For example, our kicking mechanism could only kick with one force so we varied the shot distance with software - the poster tells how we did it.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2422

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Tom Ore

I uploaded a design poster we used at the regionals and championship. It's not as detailed as a design blog but you can get some of the thought process from it. For example, our kicking mechanism could only kick with one force so we varied the shot distance with software - the poster tells how we did it.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2422

I LOVE when teams do handouts like these and this one from 1114 - a really interesting look into the design process and the "why" behind robot features. Keep it up!

These kind of promotional materials are great for everyone - judges learn more about your robot, other teams get a look into your design process, and you get a chance to reflect on the decisions you made and what benefits they had for your robot.

[coalhot]

I'm in...

Just now how to remember this with the 999 other things I have to do...

--Philip

[DonRotolo]

I'm with him ^^.

I will do my best, but keeping myself sane comes first.

(Who is this Johnny 5-9 guy anyway?)

[BrendanRadabaug]

i try to take pictures of the build process robot wise and then post them all to facebook. this year was kind of tough, we worked at Lockheed and they did not like the idea of me taking photos with my iphone in the building and posting them. thus no public record of this years build unless we were off property. we try to get the students to blog, some have, most dont have the time when they are face first in to the robot.

[BigJ]

On page 15/55 of Jim's journal and really liking it. I like the glimpses of the control systems development.

If I am still with my team next year I am going to attempt to do a control systems side-of-things season journal, which with our team usually lasts long after build season