As most people know by now, Team 1540 won the title of champion at the Oregon Regional (along with our partners, teams 368 and 1280), and now the Flaming Chickens are headed to Atlanta!

At the lunch meeting yesterday, the team voted almost unanimously to start improving Nemo so that we'll have a sporting chance at the Atlanta global competition. Most of us are heading down South in April, and it is a gross understatement to say that we're all excited.

Of particular interest to me is the fact that the website is now eligible to win in Atlanta as well. I'm not sure how good of a chance we really have, but we're going to make some improvements and see if we can turn our humble homepage into champion material. If all else fails, there's always luck, right? :)

In closing, thanks again to Team 368 & Team 1820 for helping bring our alliance to victory here in Oregon. Thanks to Eric, Trevor, Brad, and Kevin for being stellar robot operators, thanks to Dale and all our mentors for helping us through this exciting journey, and thanks, of course, to FIRST for making all of this possible. See you in Georgia!

After many long hours in the lab during the past week, we crated up the robot today and Dale took it to the S.E.S. warehouse around 3:30 this-afternoon. After three days of Nemo's weight following a yo-yo diet, it stabilized today at 119.60 pounds, 0.40 pounds under the weight limit, a much nicer margin than last year, when we were 0.10-0.00 pounds under the limit.

On the software side of things, Kevin's help last night and this-morning was especially commendable. With his help we tested all of Nemo's systems for functionality and tuned the arm motor speed for the new roller glides. Before we shipped off the robot, Kevin also had the opportunity to test [and practice] more of his remote controls for the "hybrid" mode. All in all, though I've highlighted the events from my most recent memory, the software this year has come together quite nicely.

The robot is now in its crate in a cold warehouse somewhere waiting for the Pacific Northwest Regional to start on the 28th of February and the bright lights of the competition.

Thanks for all of your hard work!

Around 5 this-evening, Max encountered a problem with the arm motor - namely that the motor didn't respond to software input, as it had been 5 minutes earlier. Max hadn't changed anything and "Dashboard" claimed that the arm motor was receiving power so we began trouble shooting hardware. The speed controller did indeed receive a valid PWM signal and the diagnostic LED was lit, letting us know that the breaker had not tripped and the SC was receiving power. After we did some more poking around, feeling the motor to make sure it had not overheated (it hadn't - stone cold),etc.., Trevor bumped one of the wires to the arm motor and evoked a large shower of blue sparks. We immediately turned off the main power to the robot and concentrated on the wires entering the motor, and the motor itself. The wires on the outside of the motor seemed fine, they were soldered fairly neatly and heat-shrink-ed so that they were definitely not contacting the case - (eliminating the possibility that they had been arcing on the case). Trevor grabbed a flashlight and began peering through the [small] openings in the case of the motor itself and indeed we discovered the issue. At the bottom opening in the case there were two loose pieces rattling around inside the case which Trevor fished out with a tiny screwdriver and one of the tiny pairs of pliers. He immediately began laughing and held out the two pieces in the palm of his hand for Brad, Max and I to inspect. I began laughing as well - one of the motor's brushes and a small piece of copper had become separated from their rightful place in the motor and were floating around in the shell. Given that a motor which has broken internally and lost a brush is never going to work again, we carefully dissected it in order to perform an autopsy in hopes of finding the cause of 'premature death'. Trevor took some pictures which I think he’ll send out shortly, perhaps along with some more commentary on the exact cause of failure but I’ll briefly explain what we think happened.

It appears that while soldering the wires to the tabs on the motor, one of the plastic pieces inside the motor got just hot enough to deform slightly. The brush (and copper spring) were screwed into this piece via a very small screw which was thus loosened slightly and allowed the brush some freedom of movement. At some point during the operation of the arm we think the brush shifted off-center and caught on one of the gaps in the commutator. This catch caused the carbon brush to fall out of it’s copper spring, leaving the copper spring as the remaining brush. At this point it was only a matter of time before the copper wore down due to friction and sparking, and it then broke in half a short while later, leaving the arm unable to move.

Yesterday Brad, Rohisha, Caroline, Kalifa and I finished making the bumpers for Nemo and Dory. I cut the styrofoam lengths and the metal corner guards. Then a couple of us would lay down the styrofoam with a wood plank on top, we'd fold the cloth up over the plank, and a third person (usually Brad) would come in and staple the cloth down into the wood. Afterwards, metal lengths cover the corners of the wood planks, and you get a bumper.

Today I took apart one last bumper from two years ago, switched the order of the motor-mounts, and swept. Not very exciting, but until the Design team finishes reducing the weight of Dory, we can't know what parts to make for Nemo yet.

Well, I think I have finally finished our 2008 version of the code base. It wasn't as hard as I had feared: the new Kevin Watson code will compile for the old RC boards, so we won't be restricted to our only 2008 board once we switch over to the new code.

Our code allows us to separate out editing into files for mecanum functions, scripting queues, and arm code, without risking conflict between members. I am very excited with the way it has been coming along, and once all our coding should be incredibly slick. For example, were hoping that we will simply be able to tell the robot to initiate a script to drop the front pistons, wait a second, then drop the back pistons.

On Saturday I made a lot more progress on the overall robot. Design work is largely done, at this point I'm working on finishing the prototype robot. I see that our website managers have moved the lab diary out of public view until teams get farther along, so I'll go ahead and say more about where we are. I've figured out the cylinders we need for the wrist and grip actions, Sam and I made nearly final parts for both the wrist and grip actions, and we're to the point of needing Dale to order more cylinders from Bimba. On friday we recieved the last order of cylinders from Bimba, a whopping 26 identical cylinders, each with a 3/4 inch bore and 10 inch stroke.

Because FIRST requires that we use cylinders from a specific list they give us, we have to butt two 10 inch cylinders together for a 20 inch stroke. I originally thought we would mount these with the "tail" ends together and the piston rods sticking out, but today I've been thinking about it more, and I think it will be stronger to mount them with the piston rods together and the tails out. If we connect them tail to tail, the cylinder bodies will move relative to both the lift platform and the robot, whereas if we mount them with the piston rods together, the top cylinder body does not move relative to the platform, and the bottom cylinder body does not move relative to the robot.

I understand that what I'm saying about mounting the cylinders probably doesn't make very much sense so I'll attempt to explain. The best analogy I've come up with so far is this; Say we have 8 halves of rubber bouncy balls (4 bouncy balls cut in half). First we put the bouncy ball halves back together in a normal fashion, forming a sphere. If we put our four re-constructed bouncy balls on a table, and place a hard-cover book on top, the book will be easy to move, because the balls will roll around underneath. This is like mounting the cylinders tail to tail, the wide flat joint between the halves of the ball is quite stiff (like the tail to tail joint on the cylinders), while the contact points on the table and book are not (like the attachment at the rod end. Now say we take our halves back apart and put them together with the flat sides out, and the round sides together. This is hard to set up, and might require taping 4 halves to the book so that they don't roll off the ones on the table before you put the book on. Once this is all set up, each pair will look somewhat like an hourglass, with the wide flat areas in contact with the table and the book, and a small area where the half-spheres contact each-other. This setup will be significantly stiffer, the book will not move easily. This is like mounting the piston rods together, and the tails apart, while the joint between the piston rod ends is relatively weak in torsion or torque, it is fairly strong in sheer strength at the joint. The cylinder bodies can be much more stiffly mounted to the robot frame or the lift platform than the rod ends, like the large flat sides of the half-spheres in contact with the book and table rather than the spherical sides. — If this still doesn't make sense, you're on our team, and you want to understand it better, ask me.

Slow going yesterday. We had handed off one robot's frame to Design to experiment on on Thursday, and yesterday we finished the bottom of the second robot.

This second robot is increasingly frustrating. Apparently, the driller's zero had broken, and once that had been fixed a piece of 80/20 still hadn't been cut properly. I made another 32 in. piece and drilled it, and Rohisha had to re-drill the hole in another 32 in. piece.

Meanwhile, while I was making the replacement, Rohisha and Caroline had to check the corner supports they'd put in on Thursday. Apparently, they'd used some screws of the wrong length that Eric had caught on the square we'd handed him. Good thing we checked: All the screws needed replacement.

Getting the frame put together went absurdly slow, I think because of two reasons: It was friday, and design admitted that until they'd settled on specifics from fiddling around on a test frame, we wouldn't have anything else to do.

After our long day of brainstorming on saturday, the design team definitely had our work cut out for us. Strategy and functionality of the final robot for our team is decided communally, so the main functions of the robot are largely dictated during the afternoon following kickoff. We have an enormous meeting of student members, mentors, and some previous team members (who were on break from college) and throw around ideas. After the discussions are over, the design team (namely, the fabrication managers and I) have a list of functions to build into the robot, and we get to work figuring out how we will accomplish them.

The design team is under significant pressure from all other departments to finish their work and deliver specifications and numbers to other departments so that they can begin work. Control systems has been particularly pushy this year, perhaps as a result of last year when they could not build the control board until the third week of the season.

On sunday we were able to decide the general 'look' of the robot, and what large systems would go where. This year we will again build the majority of our components into a pancake near the floor to keep the center of gravity of the robot as low as possible.

Every day this week I have spent about 3 hours after school in the lab working on prototypes, mock-ups and deciding what size hardware to order and how different linkages and drives will work. Our mentors are busying themselves working on a mock overpass, giving advice when asked, and sitting on their hands so that they remain in compliance with our 'hands - off' rules. Our mentors are not allowed to touch the robot (or it's parts) except to help move it, and are not allowed to touch the software laptops except to move the scroll bar while reading code. This rule ensures that the robot and code are entirely products of student work, a source of pride for team members.

Tomorrow I hope to work on prototypes for some other systems we have not finished yet, and on saturday we hope to be where we were last year - driving a chassis around the lab.

This year the first week feels like we're way behind schedule even though we're ahead of where we were last year (mechanisms and manipulators didn't start until mid-week-2) it feels like we're going a lot slower. For me I think this illusion is partly due to the fact that this is my 2nd year and I know what to expect, where-as last year was my first year and everything felt like time was flying by. Another difference this year is that our team grew enormously compared to last year, we have more people working on fabrication, to the point where we don't really have enough for them all to do. The combination of these two factors have made this week feel like I've gotten nothing done, but in fact we're well ahead of where we were last year, - I hope we keep it that way.

Couldn't stay long today. The two sets of pieces for the start of the frames for our robots were finished tues., so we (I, Kalifa, Caroline, and Rohisha) started screwing them together today.

Made the bottom square for one robot with no problems. All 4 32 in. pieces and the two 27 in. pieces were cut and drilled properly and fit together well. We forgot to put on the sealant the first time we screwed it together, though, so we had to take the two end pieces out and do it again. Didn't take long the second time. We left the interior supports without sealant, and screwed loosely for now, because design isn't sure of their final location yet.

Showed the size of the frame to control systems; wanted more information than design gave us grunts yet. Specifically, neither we nor design have any idea how much space they'll have for the control board. Design said it might be ready by tomorrow.

The second robot we had a problem. Someone hadn't aligned one of the interior 32 in. pieces properly when they'd drilled it. I started making another 32 in. piece and finished sawing and sanding it before I was called away. I hope whoever finished it (I handed the task to Kalifa, but who knows) and drilled the holes got them lined up properly this time.

Many students from both 'capture the bunny' teams showed up at the lab today to get some last minute work done on their robots before the competition on thursday. Both teams appear to be excited, and are making some final tweaks to both their software and hardware so that they can use tuesday and wednesday for practice. At different points during the afternoon, both teams' robots lay in pieces on the floor while team members changed battery mounts, added devices, changed pneumatic configurations, and made sure their robots would fit within the size limits.

Our department managers scurried around the lab assisting the 'capture the bunny' teams, measuring robots for compliance with the size limits, and helping troubleshoot pesky problems. Our Team Captain continued working on our shipping crate for the competition robot and claims he will be finished by Wednesday evening.