Day 17: Presentations

Today we had to do our presentations on our robots we made. I was nervous all day. I got to school at 2:30pm to meet up with my partner to finalize our powerpoint. There were 8 groups; we were the 5th one. Somehow I managed to keep my cool for the most part during our presentation. On retrospect, I did forget to mention a few things, but I can't change that. It was essentially our last day of actual class. Tomorrow is just reorganizing and putting things away. Below is our Powerpoint

 I've put the footage at the end of these slides.

And this here is the video footage of our robot at the competition. I would like to remind you that the robot became stuck in a loop due to a small error in the programming.

Day 16: Pre-Presentation Presentation

Apparently, there are no more classes involving new material. Today the teacher discussed, in full detail, everything there is to know about presentations. Well, actually just the presentations that we are all going to have to do tomorrow. It would be easy except that it needs to be at least 10 minutes long. To the right is the Rubric. We spent the class brainstorming and creating our powerpoint presentations.

Saturday: Robot Competition

Today we were to have our competition. I showed up at 10:30am roughly, and my partner was already there. He had added to our code the previous night and was doing more troubleshooting before the competition started. It was a continuation of Thursday and Friday, what with the sensors all being on the fritz. When the competition time came, we had to keep our fingers crossed. Unfortunately, that wasn't good enough, and our bot just went in circles. We tried to do an emergency reprogramming, and managed to do so, but it still wasn't good enough. We couldn't get the properly colored can. On the other hand though, almost all of the other teams shared our fate, save for one, which by some miracle, actually did what it was supposed to. Here's what our bot did.

Day 15 & 1/2: Troubleshooting Sonar, Line Sensor, and Color Sensor

Today was more hurry up and wait. We were getting close to perfecting our bot when we discovered that the color sensor no longer registered efficiently at all. Its range was reduced  to less than an inch plus it had trouble recognizing the color red. Most of the day was spent trying to get it to work, but our efforts were wasted. The sonar was acting up as well, with the range also reduced. More interesting, my line sensor was acting up too. I checked the emitter and it seemed just as bright, yet the debugger showed that the sensor was getting poor values. We returned the next day with the intention of fixing these problems, and spent that day continuing the troubleshooting. We had to make compromises and were unsuccessful in restoring the sensors' former reliability.

Day 14: Continuing Adjustments with Sonar Programming

Today was what the title stated, more adjustments with the Sonar tracking the can. Also, we decided to just use the sonar to trigger when the hand should get the can. I'm apparently not very adept with the programming as it took me a great deal of time to write a very very simple code without errors. I was trying to program the bot to move forward until it sensed the can and then would then stop, grab it, move back, let go, and move back again. Trust me, it's supposed to be easy, but I kept getting errors for not having everything perfectly set. Anyways, once it was all finished, my partner incorporated it into his programming. This is the result below. It is somewhat successful, but still has some issues with scanning.

Day 13: Continuing Work on Sonar and a Completed Hand/ Switch

Today was mainly troubleshooting. We're getting close to having the bot track and locate the can, but there's still some issues. The main one is that the bot seems to pick up sonar reflections of objects that aren't there. The 2nd one is that the bot sometimes doesn't sense the can at all. My partner had to leave early, so that gave me time enough to get started on the hand to grab the colored cans with. I added a switch so that the bot would know to close the grabber when the can is in place. I just barely finished by the end of class, and hopefully the switch is sensitive that it won't just push the can along with it.

Day 12: Vex Bot Sensor Adjustments

Today was pretty slow. We worked on getting the sensors rigged to the Vex Bot, and to see if they were working properly. My partner managed to finish his color sensor too, so we hooked that up as well. Today was mostly troubleshooting, and nothing very notable happened except that somehow the programming I'd made had gotten all messed up. Nothing had changed in the code, but the bot wasn't operating properly. I wasn't able to figure out why.

Day 11: Line Sensor Integration and a Completed Color sensor

Today I tested and added on the line sensor to the Vex Bot while my partner finished working on his color sensor. Luckily I didn't solder anything incorrectly and the sensor worked just as it did on the breadboard. Eventually I had the sensor hooked up to the Bot albeit it was temporary. Professor Mason wrote a program for me to test the sensor while it was hooked to the Bot. The sensor worked great, and the different values can be used to tell the Bot when it has hit a line.

I tried to get the Sonar Sensor to work, but I had trouble and couldn't get the Bot to move, and I haven't figured out why yet. The Sonar Sensor emits sound waves which we cannot hear. The sounds bounce off of objects, and when those sounds return to the sensor, it caculates the distance based on how long it took for the sounds to return.


Sometime shortly after my failure with the Sonar, my partner returned with his finished Color Sensor. The Color Sensor works by emitting 3 different lights. When those lights hit a colored paper, floor, or wall, if the color and the light are the same, then the light will be absorbed by it while the other colors reflect back to the sensor. So the LED shines red, blue, and green, and there's a red paper in front of it, then the red will be absorbed while the two other colors are reflected back. Then the sensor will judge which color is in front of it. At least that's my understanding of it.

Day 10: Building a Line Sensor for Vex Bot

Today I was tasked with building a line sensor for the Vex bot my partner and I are working on. It was a simple task which somehow lasted the whole day. It works by having a emitter and a phototransistor. The emitter shines a infrared light which would reflect off of a surface to be picked up by the phototransistor. The voltages will be higher the less infrared light is detected, and from there, the microcontroller can be programmed to react depending on that value. I managed to test and assemble the Line Sensor with minutes to spare.

I have yet to test if I properly soldered everything correctly.