Today we decided to tackle the controls discussion again. I started by drawing a diagram of the flow the driver takes through out the match. Then I added on additional options for the operator being in control of which position to shoot from. From there the team could pretty clearly see why not having the operator set a shooting mode speeds things up and increases reliability. Forgive the crude drawings below we had a few students skip art class I guess. On thing that intrigued me was how I had to keep reinforcing that I don’t really care how their code works/the specific details required to bind the controls to the correct buttons. During the meeting I was 100% focused as a drive coach, and didn’t care about any specific problems unless it we were asking something impossible from programming.

Assembly took a few steps back from assembly hell today, one of the students took the initiative to flip the mounting plates that were put on the climber backwards yesterday. So assembly of the climber could continue right when the meeting started. We managed to get one of the climber sides finished. Even with two 7 pound springs it has barely enough force to extend. The down side of running an extension on dreams, and 3D printed slides.

The intake was mostly assembled at like three different times today. Then un-assembled while the students fix one issue after another. Towards the end of the night it was looking pretty well put together, but we did figure out one of the plates is in upside down. Oh well easy fix. The electronics panel started to get some parts put on it today! We made decent progress on assembly. The CDS looks like it has 3 outstanding parts needing to be manufactured, all shafts(big surprise).

The robot is starting to look more and more like a robot, which means we’ll end up picking a name soon. Hopefully I don’t hate the name that’s chosen. There is a very small chance the robot might move its first steps on Saturday. A better chance of it happening on Monday which is a bonus meeting because of Presidents day. I actually have it off this year which is great, now all we need is some way to convince students to come and work on their day off… Hmmm.