Autonomous Menu "complete" ... late October meetings

Only a few weeks until we compete for the first time ever.  We've spent almost all of our time lately on minor mechanical tweaks, a little bit of driver practice and really hammering away at our autonomous routines.  There are four of them - one to score in the isolation zone, another to score in the interaction zone, a third to scatter the stack, and a fourth just to sit still.  Special thanks to the KTOR crew for showing us a template we could use for routine selection using jumpers. 

After reading the vex forums (www.vexforum.com) we decided that using the jumper method would be best suited for our rookie endeavor.  While the routines aren't perfect, they all are highly functional, pretty much just using "wait" statements and paying close attention to starting battery voltage.  If time allows we may try to add some simple switches/sensors so we're less dependent upon voltage and wait time, but we feel pretty good about what we have as is. Here are a few photos of the mechanical setup that supports our routine selection:

Autonomy ... and settling into roles ... Oct 12 Meeting

Flurry of activity at our one-hour meeting today:
1. Bryan & Jonas concentrated on autonomous programming today, got one routine done, got a huge chunk of another one in the bag and tested as well.  Running an autonomous routine for the very first time and seeing it succeed was the highlight of the day for everyone for sure! Shout our to the KTOR crew for helping us with programming templates for EasyC.  That little help is going a long way, thanks! Bryan also brought a draft of our scouting form for review to the meeting.
2. Ben & Justin concentrated on a short mechanical tune up, then developed the start of a checklist for between match check ups to help ensure full functionality in all matches.  They then supported our driver practice.
3. Casey & Mitchell mounted, secured and labeled out pwm/jumper autonomous selector hardware and then spent the bulk of the time on interaction zone driver practice.  They are getting there!

We're certainly really coming together as a fully functioning team at the right time.  With a handful of meetings still to go before our Nov event, the anticipation is surely growing.

See you next week,
Kressly

Tuning Up/Getting Ready/Event Planning_ Sept 28 & Oct 6 meetings

One hour weekly meetings are flying by, but are productive. To those who have sent all the positive feedback, thanks!  As promised, but a little late, robot specs:
Drivetrain - 5 motor eight omni wheel drive.  4 motors driving 4 of six forward facing wheels with tank style control and one motor driving two middle sideways wheels controlled by joystick buttons.
Arm - 4 motor surgical tubing lift assist arm with a 60:12 (5:1) single-stage high strength gear reduction.  Y cables allow two channels to power all four motors.  Enough torque, rather quick, and shared load across motors with the surgical tubing help make it easy to operate smoothly.  Hard stops prevent arm from extending CoG to robot tipping point.
Accumulator - 3 object capacity, 2 motor powered tank tread covered with VEX foam intake.  Foam held in place by adhesive backing and woven #32 rubber bands.  Polycarbonate "sandwiches" objects securely and allows for flexible hold on different sized objects.  "Soft stop" keeps objects from falling out the accumulator top.

Accomplishments during these two meetings:
We've gotten in a little driver practice - mostly in the isolation zone, decided as a team to specialize jobs at the Nov event, divided up jobs, started developing a scouting information sheet, talked over tournament structure, and have an autonomous programming template built from a sample that will allow us to program our four desired autonomous programs.  The team is handling things in a very upbeat and professional manner and we're excited to watch things come into place.

Our goal between now and the Nov 19th event is simple - be as prepared as humanly possible in order to maximize the chances of success.