Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Program

I've pretty much wrote my hole program already, but I am having so small problems getting the robot to take off by the end of this class and next prep I plan to have everything completed and I plan to try and run the course earlier.

Monday, April 27, 2009

obstacle coure challange

This is going to be our last challenge every class we are going to write a blog about how we are going to complete this challenge.
The sensor that we are going to have to use in this challenge are as follows
1. Sound sensor
2. Ultrasonic sensor
3. Touch sensor.
The way we are going to start is by having the Robot start from behind the line clap to get it started (sound sensor) then its going to stop in a box for 6 seconds(light sensor), take off bump into the wall then it's going to back up and turn right (touch sensor)then it going to stop before it gets to the next wall/desk (ultrasonic sensor) turn right and go forward stop for the obstacle that gets in the way move around it and head to the finish line

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

chapter 4 reading sensors

Our homework was to read chapter 4 and yes it was a long one.
In this chapter we go into a little more detail about some of the sensors then in the last blog.
First we talk about the NXT the is was another NXT first before the one that we are using now
The difference from the old one and the new one is that the old one had 3 port instead of 4, the wiring was different to the connectors were bigger.
Then we talk about the touch sensor when we did some of the other challenges this sensor might have help out a bit but we didn’t know much about so we were not able to use it unfortunately. The was that the touch sensor works is the same way that it’s called touch sensor , when you right your program you can program the touch to stop when it is press or tell it to go in another direction whatever you want it to do. The 3 states of this sensor are pressed released and bumped. There are ways to program it for races when it detects another robot it can be pressed and it will speed up if you are in a bumper car race. The main problem that you can face with this robot is work in a room with a lot of obstacles the robot will start to do things you don’t want it to do. With this sensor you don’t have to calculate a threshold
Next we talk about the light sensor the way the light sensor works is that it detects different types of light for example if the sensor see’s white and black you can program the robot to move a certain motor so then the robot will go left right and so on. But before you can do anything you might want to calculate the threshold. When you have the light sensor on the back of the robot and the robot going backwards you will notice that your line tracking will be more accurate.
Then we have the ultrasonic sensor I liked this sensor the best I think it would have work really will during the circuit race. The way that this sensor works is that it can decent how far an object is and it can do the right action rather it’s stop or get back on course.
We also talked about having multiple sensors connected to the same port (multiplexing). It like using a splitter in away.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Chapter 9 and 10: Feedback and Wait for it!

Our homework of the long weekend was to read and blog about chapter 9 and 10.
The two previous classes we were working with the sound sensors, recording the vales that came up on the NXT from the sound sensor, of the different beeps that we heard. After we completed the tasks we had to graph our results in a Google doc the Google docs aren’t bad the only thing is that the internet is so slow here it slows us down sometimes when using them.
Chapter 9 was about configuring sensors, some of the sensors that were talked about were the NXT touch, RIS Touch, NXT sound, NXT light, RIS light.
The first sensors are going to detect the change in a condition. The types of conditions very it can change form light sound and more. Second sensors blocks are only able to do one condition at a time
The sound sensor is a sensor that detects sound, the light sensor is a sensor that detects light, the ultrasonic sensor can detect how far something is, and the rotation sensor is the number of rotation that is in the program.
The next chapter we talked about the wait block how to program it and all. There is also the time wait block the wait blocks are one of the most important things in the program that you will use, I also learned this the hard way when we did the last challenge I forgot to use a wait block and it messed my robot up when trying to run the program it didn’t do what I wanted one wheal would go then the other they both had to go at the same time though. You are going to use this blocks for the values of the robot its distance and everything.