weekend scrimages

--written on a piece of paper Sunday, January 18 2009 at liberty high school during the scrimmages by Penelope Biggs--

to-do
--> mount main arm motor*
-need smaller C-channel or hacksaw
-->put various arms back on the robot
-->put compass back?
-->rewire/connect everything
-->Test

*could have it on the main frame, but that leaves the motor's tabs vulnerable.
found a piece slightly longer than the front bumper + length needed to mount motor
PROBLEM: bumper piece like: n, piece needed to be like: C
if we rotated both pieces, then the bumper would be slightly higher, but otherwise the same. then we could use longer C-channel
PROBLEM: the C-channel is tool long (it messes with the battery)
cut (really hard) or move the battery
PROBLEM: will color sensor get in the way?
no.
PROBLEM: "otherwise the same" means the actual bumper ends may be slightly farther apart
PROBLEM: can you mount touch sensors sideways?
answer: the problem with that is that it leaves the touch sensor vulnerable. Solution: mount it so the open end of the C-channel points inward.
we ended up going with the above design
the problem with the bumper spacing was solved after some experimentation, but one of the touch sensors was striped. we replaced it.
i don't like the bumper because it is normal on one side and thin on the other. i don't think it is big enough all the way though.


DONE
--> tightened & put back arm wheals
--> Tightened arm post
--> put another screw on and tightened big gear on arm

--everything else that happened is below--
Saturday, Jan17-09
Attendance: Ian McBride, Kevin Burns, Penelope Biggs, Tucker Brennen
the first problem was to solve the clicking problem with the first and second arms.
the top one is what happens when you put all the torque one one side of a C-channel with minimal support. to fix this we set up the gears like the ones on the second arm. this way the torque was spread out on both sides of the C-channel. the problem with this was we weren't sure were to put the motor for the main arm. (we fixed this on Sunday, see above)

the second arm also clicks. this was because the motor was not supported very well and was moving apart from the big gear. our (temporary) solution was to put a zip-tie in between the motor gear and the big gear so the they would be held together and not skip.

the Left motor stopped moving. we replaced it with a motor that worked, but drifted to the left. this will make our autonomous code useless until we can replace that motor.

when testing our robot we noticed that the back bumpers prevented the robot from going up the ramp. we took them off.

Sunday, Jan18-09
Attendance: Ian McBride, Penelope Biggs, Kevin Burns
it seemed that every time we got something working something else will fail. after we got the first arm motor mounted and working, the servos failed. the tailgate would slowly twitch back up to '0'. the bucket twitched as well. the reason for this was that the negative wire fell out.

when that was fixed, the second arm failed again. the reason was the zip tie holding it together stretched under the stress, slipping off the gear. they came up with a solution, but that would require drilling though some pieces, something we could not do at liberty high school. we were at a stand-still.