pic: SPAM's 2006 robot

[EricS-Team180]

1. How does it load? Off the ground only or can humans load?
-> not loaded from ground

2. How well does your camera work? At 179's scrimmage we kept loosing track on the target and finding their bright green shirts. We have almost completely ditched the camera since.
--> we'll be dinking with the camera 'till the last match at Nationals All our auto code has manual back-up. Frankly, our experience in the gym has been that if you're within 15ft, you have hopes of locking on.

3. Speaking of the scrimmage, what happened to prevent you guys from coming? Did you get it fixed?
--> wanted to get there to give our drivers training, but just had too many little (and big) things to get working

4. How many balls can you hold? Looks like less than 10 or so...
--> capacity is 10...in theory

5. Have you guys been pulling all-nighters recently? No one looks happy in the picture and judging by the lighting it looks rather late.
--> just a typical 6th week Sunday afternoon in the SPAM pit Note frowns on mentor faces We reserve the all-nighter for tonight <HA!>

6. killerofkiller says that the balls have a kick... have you checked the speed to be within limits?
--> built a speed gate with two photo-detectors (borrrowed 179's). Rich Soviero (teacher from Jensen Beach) rigged a square wave frequency generator and bread board counter. We measured in the 10-11 m/sec range. We now have a LabView version working. Maybe we can haul the rig along to UCF.

7. Can we see a video?
--> wish I could see a video!


Mike: Josh is the "evil genius programmer" this year. I've worked with him on controllers (like PID and bang-bang controls), but he has wrested control (pun intended) of the laptop from me! ...as he should! That makes me feel like I'm doing my job. It gave me the chance to bring some other students along, who have little or no exposure to programming (in c) and controls (in general). Austin headed up a crew to use labview to build a speed gate.


what's that Phil Collins song??? ....one more night...just one more night