Engineering Notebook

Logs

2023-10-11

Alex

I spent most of the day working on the website with Nathan >_< <-- Added by James. I added things like table of contents, resources, and updated the styling of much of the website.

Nathan

I spent most of the day working on the website with Alex. I added things like underlines, borders, margins, and most of the styling of the website.

Amitoj

I made some design decisions like keeping the base light so itd be easier to lift. After a bit, I decided on what it was going to be like and i started making the frame of the base.

James

I made a super cool animated logo and enter page that we should definitely add onto the site! I worked on our drivetrain.

2023-10-13

Alex

I spent most of the day working on the website with Nathan. I added a teams properties section.

Nathan

I spent most of the day working on the website with Alex. I attempted to add a css element called grid, but we realized that it would be too much work and scrapped it.

Amitoj

I underestimated how bulky the motors and battery are so I had to redo the side frame and the layout.

James

I spent part of today convincing Nathan and Alex to put the logo I made as an enter screen to our website. It didn't work.

2023-10-16

Alex

As per James' request, I added an intro screen. I also helped Nathan with robot design ideas.

Nathan

I stole Alex's tablet and started drawing a bunch of ideas for the intake system, launch system, etc.

Amitoj

rear wheel drive = drifting woohoo!!!

James

My logo finally got added to the website. I worked on our shooting system.

2023-10-18

Alex

I remp4ed the intro screen.

Nathan

I continued drawing ideas on the stolen tablet I obtained from Alex's backpack.

Amitoj

Did some more adjustment stuff and tightened up the screws.

James

I started making our elevate program.

2023-10-24

Alex

I was sick but I decided to work on the website anyways. I migrated the website to robots.thearchons.xyz which runs on my own server. I also wrote a script to automatically update the website from the git repository.

Nathan

Alex was sick so I worked on the website all by myself. (Nathan is literally lying - Alex) Initial Engineering Notebook is due today!!!!

Amitoj

I started working on bringing all the separate parts together.

James

I helped a lot with the website :3 I also secured our robot more.

2023-10-25

Alex

insert log here

Nathan

We worked on the robot launch system, orginally going for an arm design, but then we realized that a baseball pitcher machine type launcher would be more effective. [Insert image 1, 2 here]

Amitoj

stuff continued

James

More work on our elevate, fixed it and makes it consistent and safe.

2023-10-27

Alex

I was sick. sowwy

Nathan

Alex was sick so I worked on the website all by myself.

Amitoj

Felt like a garbage fire so did some work and then fell asleep.

James

I helped a lot with the website :3

2023-11-03

Alex

I worked on the launching system with Amitoj, but the system is not strong enough. We will prioritize making the launching system stronger.

Nathan

This week was full of me just building a bunch of our ideas, including a launch system, a funnel, and figuring out how to attack things properly.

Amitoj

I worked on the launching system with Alex and tested out a bunch of kfroi's other ideas.

James

Made our shooting system a bit more consistent. I might need to make a whole new one unfortunately. All changes I added to website in the past week were promptly remp4ed without notice *sigh*

2023-11-08

Alex

We fixed the launching system, using a gear ratio to increase the speed of the launcher. We also changed to blue motors, which has a higher rpm. The gears can be seen under the wheels.

Nathan

I continued to improve the funnel, going from a literal tunnel to this cool thing.

Amitoj

What day is it?

James

Began creating our new scoring system. Going to be an elevator.

2023-11-14

Alex

I made last minute changes to the robot during lunch, including improving the loading system by adding a ramp for the ball to roll on instead of relying on luck to load balls.

Amitoj

Added some last minute with Alex at lunch. I got some pieces and made a system and he refined everything we had.

James

Making our robot secure and efficient, one nut and bolt at a time

2023-11-22

Alex

I redid the wiring to make the robot look nicer and to make it easier to work on the robot. I also redid the port configuration because the old one did not make sense. Below is a diagram with the ports.

Nathan

I worked on some of the code with Alex, and we realized that some of the code wasn't going to work.

Amitoj

Did some fine tuning stuff like making sure all the screws were tight and worked with Alex on cleaning up the wiring

2023-11-29

Nathan

We did some work off camera.

2023-12-05

Nathan

We fixed the code. Here is what it looks like now!

Amitoj

Just helped the guys out with testing the autonomous, nothing too hard or annoying

2023-12-06

Nathan

Competition day! We did pretty well, but we had some issues with the robot. We had to fix the robot a few times, but we managed to get it working again. We got Champion, but our autoloader balls failed once. We fixed the centerline cross during the tournament though. We also failed inspection, because the bar we used to release the balls was too long, and our claw was too tall.

Amitoj

Our elevate system broke off the rest of the robot so we had to fix that. We tried to reattach it in different ways but realized there were other parts of the robot in the way, so we had to take a decent bit apart to reattach the parts we wanted to

2023-12-12

Alex

Competition at Enver is tomorrow!. We made our robot pass inspection, but our autonomous doesn't fully work now because of that. I fixed some of it with Nathan, but it only sometimes works. Below is a video of us testing autonomous.

2023-12-13

Alex

We participated in the competition at Enver Creek! We ended up doing pretty well, getting into semifinals. However, here are some issues we had:

One of our drive wheels came loose
Our autonomous often failed
Our shooting system was not accurate enough to be useful
For the first half, our elevate system was too short. We fixed this during the competition.

We'll be working on fixing these issues for the next competition in January.

2023-12-15

Alex

Today, Nathan, James, and I remp4ed the shooting system, because we decided to use an elevator system rather than a shooting one. This is because at the competition we noticed the robots that performed well were the ones who lifted the balls into the goal rather than shooting it, because shooting systems were not accurate enough. We also redid some of the wheels, and they should not fall off anymore. Thirdly, we discussed how to build the scoring system, which they partially built.

Nathan

Throughout this week, I have been literally working on the bot nonstop, trying to get the forklift idea we have on the bot and also repositioning the elevate so that it would work out.

Amitoj

I got some extra sleep.

James

I worked with Nathan the whole time.

2023-12-18

Alex

I helped James and Kfroi with the robot. We added the elevate system back onto the bot, but this time in the middle. Also, we decided to use an arm to lift balls into the goal rather than shooting them. This will require us to travel back and forth between the human feeder and goal, but it should be much more accurate.

Nathan

I helped James and Alex with the robot. We added the elevate system back onto the bot, but this time in the middle. Also, we decided to use an arm to lift balls into the goal rather than shooting them. This will require us to travel back and forth between the human feeder and goal, but it should be much more accurate.

Amitoj

Went off topic and then went on topic and worked on the website

James

I helped Alex and Kfroi with the robot. We added the elevate system back onto the bot, but this time in the middle. Also, we decided to use an arm to lift balls into the goal rather than shooting them. This will require us to travel back and forth between the human feeder and goal, but it should be much more accurate.

2023-12-20

Alex

I worked more on our new scoring system, and programmed a bit as well. Since a lot of motors got mp4ed around and replaced, here is the new port diagram:

Nathan

I helped secure the robot and disassemble the old scoring system.

James

I worked on the scoring system with Alex, along with securing it and testing the robot. Here is a picture of me with the progress we have.

Amitoj

I did stuff on the robot and didnt play clash royale at all

2023-12-22

Alex

The forklift part does not work properly, because it is too heavy to lift. I tried different things like mp4ing the arm back and reducing the weight of the front, but it still isn't strong enough. After I come back from winter break I will consider using gears.

James

I'm going to spend winter break brainstorming what the plan should be after winter break.

2024-01-09

Alex

I helped with the gears.

Nathan

Fresh out of winter break, working on fixing the new scoring system using gear ratios

James

I secured the arm so it doesn't bend, and I fixed the gears from slipping off of each other.

2024-01-10

Alex

The forklift works now! We used a gear ratio to increase the strength. Another change we made is remp4e half of the front wall, because the arm could not be lowered enough. I also found that the robot would often flip during testing, so I added a small bar to make it much harder to flip the robot. Here is a video of the robot scoring:

James

I helped Alex perfect our scoring system, we're very excited for the competition!!!

2024-01-11

Alex

We completed the in-class competition, and got first place! Working together with team 2 during the eliminations was very effective, and we might alliance with them again next competition. However, we will still need to improve our autonomous so it releases the balls.

James

Hopefully we can do that well in the actual competition... I guess we'll see!

2024-01-12

Alex

We worked on the autonomous. The release isn't perfect, but it is much better than before. I hope we do well during the competition.

James

I prepared our robot for the competition and made sure nothing would malfunction.

2024-01-16

Alex

We finished completed the competition, and got to ~~semifinals~~ finals!1!1!!!11!11 Here is a definitely 100% real screenshot of the competition, where we absolutely destroyed everyone and definitely did not lose in semifinals /s. We triple elevated and so won by a full 500 points. It was the easiest competition ever.

James

I carried at the competition definitely

Nathan

Our quadruple elevate was insane!!!! I don't even know how that happened! Anyways our defensive strategy failed because the refs suck!!! We need to Enver Creek teacher as the ref.

Closing Remarks

James

Conclusion: Wow, what a journey that has been! Even though I've taken this class before, I always manage to learn more and more as I progress on my robotics journey. It has been a wonder having you as a robotics teacher, and I'm looking forward to Engineering with you next semester! Thank you for always looking out for us and getting us booked for competitions, you gave us a wonderful robotics experience.

Nathan

Conclusion: In the end, it's not about the destination, it's about the ~~funny things things you did~~ friends you made along the way. I feel like although we never won a competition other than all of the in class ones, I had tons of fun making robots work. We learned from our mistakes and solved problems as a team just like how were typing this conclusion as a team. Amitoj is not watching reels, Alex is not playing super meatboy, and James is not on his phone looking for questionable things. If we had a chance at redemption we would definitely clean up the robot a little bit and tried to make a double elevate bar.

Alex

Conclusion: In the end, it's not about the fact that we didn't win a single tournament. Its about the ~~janky things we built~~ friends you made along the way. Generally, I found this course to be fun and rewarding, because I had never built a robot before, and now I can use my code to make a robot do things. I also learned about engineering things, because I had not done much of it previously. I learned more about stuff like gear ratios and axles.

Amitoj

In the end, it doesn't matter that we didn't win a single tournament. Its about the friends we made along the way. I had fun building a robot and testing with my friends, and learned a bunch more stuff about things like weight distribution and gear ratioing while working this year. I learned how to slave away at the same one screw that just would not become unstuck at all whatsoever without getting bored.