Posts Tagged Electronics

Week 1

Jan 17

Posted by Ben in Build Season

It’s been a busy, busy week here at 449. We’ve been meeting every day of the last week (except, ironically, Thursday, so that everyone could study for exams). Lots of ideas have been tested and, fortunately for me, only a few ideas survived testing, so we didn’t have to do any down-selecting (I hate telling people they can’t continue their projects).

In terms of drive, it looks like bumps aren’t nearly as difficult as we first thought. A simple 4wd kitbot easily clears the bumps. We’re also looking into mecanum drive so we can line up for goals… assuming mecanum actually behaves itself better than it has in the past (where strafing was rather jerky).

We had some success with a surgical tubing powered kicker, which we’re working on automating (we can’t exactly put Doyung or me in the robot to pull back!)  After lots and lots of testing with different tensions and striking angles and many other parameters which I really don’t want to list out, we could easily clear two bumps.  Check it out:

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New Additions to Website

Aug 4

Posted by Scott in Website Development

We’ve been trying to get quality content up on the website, emphasizing resources for robotics and programming. I put together version 1 of an article system, which can split a long page into multiple sections based on header tags, and automatically generate a table of contents. We’ve written a few new articles, but we’ve mostly just been trying to get old content online. The current article list can be viewed here. Most recently, I put up Eric’s Subversion Crash Course.

We’ve also been working on a new index page, which would look somewhat better, have more content, and be more inviting overall.

Finally, we should have breadcrumb navigation soon.

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Running wires through the ceiling

Jun 15

Posted by Eric in Electronics

A few days ago, I worked with some of the newer members of our team to run a pair of 16 guage wires about 50 feet through the school’s ceiling.

This cable needed to cross two walls, one of which had never been unprofessionally penetrated before. Like usual, we taped the wires to the end of a fiberglass pole (the bendy kind used for road markers) and tried to poke it through peacefully with the bundles of ethernet cables. The pipes they passed through were gummed tightly, and eventually we gave up. We ended up pushing it through the oversized hole for a ventilation duct (though not oversized enough to make it easy for us.)

When we got into the back room, myself and others completely covered in bits of tile and ceiling dust, we tugged on the end of the cable. It fed through nicely for about three feet before being pulled taut. We were left with the two wire ends dangling 8 feet in the air. So much for the ten feet of slack I had been sure to allocate.  Fortunately, This new predicament forced us to place the stereo unit on an elevated platform, saving valuable floor space in our tiny backroom.

We then assembled an audio patch cable to connect the backroom server, quentin, to the stereo. I brought in an old cable with salvagable Radio Shack jacks on it, and we hacked it apart. After some soldering difficulties that destroyed the plastic hoods for both connectors and some greuling tests of the cable (“ohming-out” if you will), the cable passed QC and was installed.

“Okay, playing, turn up the volume slowly!”

And voila, music from the other room.

For ten seconds, then it cuts out.

“Dang, my Java program crashed. I’ll work on that later.”

While Stephen continues to work on that, I will have fun using mplayer wirelessly via SSH from my pocket-sized tablet.

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