February 2nd, 2010: Day #25- Workday

February 2. Day 25.
Calvin’s Corner, SPECIAL EDITION!!!!! Deepa’s Dark side. <- Name by Calvin

Hi Guys, this is Deepa, Calvin’s replacement for today. Calvin is away for FBLA, so I was given the honor of documenting our team’s progress today. So basically each team is steadily making progress on what they were working on. Some of the build team worked on the ‘telescopy’ thing( it’s called that because it extends like a telescope), which was made on Saturday (Day 21).This part of build team is looking for a hand-wench that will hook up to a motor from the kit-of-parts that FIRST gives us. They are trying to figure out the size they need. The wench is the part of the ‘telescopy thing’ that will hang off the tower, just for all of you to know. Another section of build team worked on disassembling the old robot (his name was Gabel).  And finally the Jeff part of the build team worked on the DeWalt system which is a system to modify for Fisher Price (yes the toy company) and the pulley for the kicking mechanism. This is going to start by drawing the mechanism on Inventor. Programming on the other hand is testing autonomous mode and fixing /reconfiguring the joystick. After finally getting autonomous mode to work, they haven’t figured out how to make it stop, in my opinion that is kind of ironic. Jared (of Programming) has been pushing to work on the robot all day. He has been working on Java. Ashwyn has been considering a switch to Java. The programmers have been using LabVIEW for autonomous mode, so they’re not going to be too happy about that... I think. Ashwyn has been quite busy today. First he worked with the programmers, and then decided to retype an example for Calvin’s Corner. Yesterday he finished but then someone (cough cough….Jared) turned off his computer without saving. To tell the truth that was really funny… J Ritter has been working on the axel supports. Yesterday I was actually working with him on this. Today Ritter drilled holes through the supports and put them on the actual robot so that tomorrow we can weld them there. Sheila has been ordering (yay!!!). She bought spirit wear such as fringe, bandanas, and face paint. She also bought the pit fabric (“window sheer black” in case you’re wondering). Speaking of the pit, Alec has been designing it. From what he described, the pit is going to be 12 cubes of PVC pipe, they are going to be connected to form out pit (each wall is 4 cubes). We are also going to have cable crisscrossed in each of those cubes. David worked on the website (like usual!!) So other than getting the website award-ready, David has been working on a favicon for our website. What’s a favicon you say? When you open up a website, there’s usually a little icon right next to the title of the website and the very very top of the webpage.  We have one now!!! Unfortunately it doesn’t work on Internet Explorer but if you open it up in Google Chrome, or even Safari, you’ll see it. Last but not least, PR. PR was basically Jenny, I had to replace Calvin and Sumathi who weren ’t here, and so she interviewed Jeff about what the robot looks like, she also edited the website text and worked on the Executive Summary. So that’s pretty much it. Don’t forget to read the blog tomorrow because it’s welding day, GET EXCITED!!!

Pictures of the day: