Sunday

Hello all

Today we started assembling electronics. We had more mentors than programmers, which is always nice. Jessa and Eric came first. We looked at the board and speed controllers and talked about methods of attaching them. I won't bore you with the details, but Jessa went to Ace and got us some screws and nylon washers. Drilling holes and other such nice stuff that made us feel like we were on build. We found the large box of screws we had been looking for. Caroline wrote/modified/added code for another limit switch, while Erin and Sherri assembled electronics. Or rather, Erin drilled holes and Sherri attempted to strip wire. She's learning. Slowly. ;)

We talked about autonomous. We possibly might use a GTS, we're not sure. Autonomous is very scary. No camera though. Camera is wayyy too hard with 2 weeks left. We went down to the cafeteria and looked at the Rack and took the arm and talked strategy. We didn't really come up with one, but it is going to be really hard to program this thing to do it in autonomous. And the driver (Does anyone know who is driving??) better be very very good to move the joystick jusssttt enough to drop the tube.

Also, sensors. What are we using? No camera. Maybe GTS, otherwise, how on EARTH do we get autonomous working? Potientometer, for the arm? So driver knows how far to move etc etc?

While looking through some stuff online, Jessa found a diagram of "suggested circuits" or something like that. Those funny looking plastic things? We may be required to use them. Do we know what they do/why we would need them? No. We looked online and couldn't find anything. We're really hoping Emily/SOMEBODY knows... These are odd looking black and red plastic things with some metal in them. Jessa, Judy, and Karlin all have no idea what they are. If I remember right, FIRST called them terminal blocks, I think. ????

And finally, Eric took the broken speed controllers home to see if anything can be done to the many we managed to short/break.

Oh, right. In order to get rid of dead weight, we might cut the end of our polycarb electronics board off, because the only thing on that end of it was the main switch, which can be easily moved. However, with our scary weird plastic puzzle pieces... Who knows?

That's all I can remember.