Team Pwnage Website!

This year I was fortunate enough to be a part of the website subteam of Team Pwnage (FRC team 2949). Our mission this year has been to design a website that exceeds all of the expectations and meets the criteria for the Website Award, presented to a team at each FRC regional.

Anyone is welcome to check it out by clicking Here.

The website is a work in progress but we’re very happy with what’s there so far. New content will be added frequently to keep people informed about what the team is doing and also to provide info about the team.

If you want to comment on the site or let me know about any issues, just send us an email using the link on the Contact page.

Post Build-Season Update..

Well.. the FRC build season is over and now I have a little more time for writing. I’m really excited to see how well the robot does in Chicago and St. Louis! I can’t believe how much I’ve learned in the last few weeks and I’m psyched to play around with the VEX bot again in all this “spare” time.

The main thing I want to take a look at is the pneumatics kit. After my electronics mentor showed me how they work in FRC I couldn’t believe how easily they could be hooked up and configured to do basic things. Also, I realized how much power that we could still utilize on the VEX bot that hadn’t been so glaringly obvious before FRC.

In the life of an engineer.. Entry: 5

This break has been amazing and frustrating at the same time. I got pink eye and because of that I haven’t been sleeping that well, but, on the bright side, I’ve spent about 20 to 30 hours programming and tweaking our APEX robot so I’ve enjoyed myself.

Another thing I’ve been doing is designing a website with one of my friends for the FRC team. It is coming along quite well and we hope to have that up and running before the build season starts (Just 7 more days!!). I will let you know when that is online so you can check it out.

Kiwidrive code..

Here is the function for anyone interested. It controls the motor powers for the motors so that you can just point in a direction with your joystick and it will go that direction without rotating. The program uses trig to make the motors spin at the correct speed. Enjoy!

#include "Main.h"
void MotorPowers ( void )
{
// Assign values to trig globals (doubles)
cos30 = Cos ( 30 , 0 ) ;
// Calculate power for motor 1
Motor1 = (-1 * cos30 * JOYX) + (-1 * cos30 * JOYY) - ROT ; // calculates for both the x and y values
// Calculate power for motor 2
Motor2 = (-1 * cos30 * JOYX) + (cos30 * JOYY) - ROT ;
// Calculate power for motor 3
Motor3 = -(JOYX - ROT) ;
// Motor 1 Limits
if ( Motor1 >= 127 )
{
Motor1 = 127 ;
}
if ( Motor1 <= -127 )
{
Motor1 = -127 ;
}
// Motor 2 Limits
if ( Motor2 >= 127 )
{
Motor2 = 127 ;
}
if ( Motor2 <= -127 )
{
Motor2 = -127 ;
}
// Motor 3 Limits
if ( Motor3 >= 127 )
{
Motor3 = 127 ;
}
if ( Motor3 <= -127 )
{
Motor3 = -127 ;
}
}

The APEX robot..

So.. I decided that since a majority of what I’m posting here is about robotics, I might as well introduce you to my team’s robot. Here it is!

Robot Photo

Image 1

This robot was entirely student designed and built. We started thinking about ideas in late April when the Vex Competition was released in Dallas, during the Worlds competition. Some of the ideas from that first night ended up being implemented and others weren’t.

The robot uses all Vex parts so that it is able to compete in the Vex competitions. It uses nine motors and a total of seven sensors to operate.

The triangular drivetrain (or the base with wheels connected) uses omni-directional wheels that allow them to be positioned at 60 degree angles, relative to each other. This is called a kiwi or kilo drive and is very useful because it enables the robot to move in any direction without the need to rotate first. Another key advantage is that you can drive in a given direction and rotate at the same time.

In Round Up, the goal of the game is to score tubes (similar to ring-toss tubes) on the goal posts around the field. This robot accomplishes this with a large claw (shown in image 2) that picks up the tubes and placed them on the goal posts. The advantage of this design is that, at the beginning of the match, all of the tubes are in stacks of four so they are easily picked up in bulk. The claw is also good at removing the tubes from the goals if the other team scores. The disadvantage is that it becomes slightly less effective if the tubes are scattered on the ground instead of neatly stacked.

We have only attended one regional competition this year but we are also hosting our own in February. This robot won the Amaze award at our first competition and we are hoping to do even better at the next one.

Image 2

Winter break is here!

And that means that I have extra time for my website and robotics! (among other things) There are a couple main things I’ve done so far this week: update the website theme, fix one of the functions that controls the APEX robot, swap out the APEX microprocessor, rewire the robot (because of the new processor), and some organizing/cleaning.

I hope that all of your Christmases were filled with joy as well!

In the life of an engineer.. Entry: 4

Sunday, 9-19-10. Written after attending the FTC brainstorming meeting at the middle school, quite a fascinating symposium.

We had the Tetrics brainstorming session today. There were quite a few interesting ideas tossed around about strategy and game priorities (like what the most efficient way to score points in the game is, giving the obstacles and time limit for the match.) We also talked and discussed some different definitions of words like “goal” since the meaning of that word in this game could make a huge difference in the way the game gets scored and possibly how we would choose to play a match.

In the life of an engineer.. Entry: 3

Saturday, 9-18-10. Aaron, Tony and I were talking about a new idea for an attachment to lift stacks of rings efficiently. (Competition: Vex Round Up)

Aaron and I decided to get together today and try prototyping some newly proposed ideas for our team’s robot this year. None of the ideas are set in stone, we are only taking a close look at them, but I am excited because they look promising so far.

After some running around (we couldn’t find the key to the warehouse and we needed parts for the prototype) we still hadn’t done any work on the prototypes and it was already nearly time for me to head home for the evening so we called the project off for a few days and decided to work on it later. I can’t wait :)

In the life of an engineer.. Entry: 2+ a short linux comment

Another day in the shop today!

We had a nice turnout to help clean up now that the season for frc is pretty much over. So, random parts got disassembled and sorted out, inventoried and stored in bins for the next build season. There was some talk of possibly doing some off season activities but we’ll have to wait and see how that unfolds.

Finally got around to it..

Yeah, that’s right.. I finally got around to installing the newest version of Ubuntu on my PC. Everything works like a charm and I’m super excited about it. I’m still pretty new to Linux so I don’t have much to say except that I really like the GUI and I am having issues getting the email client to connect to my web server.. Oh well, it is going to take some getting used to.

In the life of an engineer.. Entry: 1

Well, the team and I are back from IRI. Since our kicker broke at the competition we decided to go ahead and remake the part that broke and also make some modifications to the kicker to prevent it from breaking again.

Our mentor gave us a lesson on metal and the difference between hardness/toughness. Hard being resistant to bending or reshaping and toughness being resistance to breaking or snapping while under stress or shock.

One of the things we did to the kicker was removing more metal from the kicker’s foot piece. I got a chance to use the CNC mill for the first time along with some of the other guys. The first step we took was to plan out the pattern that we wanted to mill out. We drew the design on graph paper and made sure it all worked out before we started milling the part. After that we just went to town. I must say that I was very impressed with the ability to make accurate measurements and cuts that the machine provided.