drag race blog

The other day we had our drag race, this was the challenge that I have been looking forwarded to since the start of the class.But the other had preparing for this challenge was not a walk in the park preparing for this task was very stressful, manly because i spent most of my weekend preparing for it. I started by trying to build a gear train but that was to much work and it was not working, so in the long run I went without the gear train, but geared my robot for speed I used a 40tooth gear on the motor and a 8 tooth gear on the wheel. I decided to use a 3rd motor on my robot so that I could have some more horsepower on in. I Did make some other small changes to my robot that was mainly adding beams and longer axles
On challenge day everything was ready to go when we did our runs to make it far we all put sound sensors on our robot so they would take off at the same time. We also used a speaker that was in the class room and played some metallica for the start. The robots were to fast to get an accurate time with did kinda suck so it turned out that I came in second. The gear ratio that I used as stated before with the gears I used. The ratio was 40/8=5.

google doc

http://spreadsheets.google.com/a/iskl.edu.my/ccc?key=pD-IgeS0SdGFwiUB_ImOFTA

chapter 2 blog

Chapter 2 pretty much starts by giving us the layout of gears. What are they? Well we all know what gears are.
The next thing we talk about in this chapter is teeth counting to the number of teeth on the gears. Also if you have to different gear it does matter if you were you but the gears like if you but the bigger gear on the motor and the smaller gear on the wheel axle the robot will move faster but on the other hand if you but put it on the opposite way the robot will move slower, the reason that the robot will move faster it the gears are installed the first way is because it’s able to turn the wheel more times.
We also talked about gear train and gear ratios. Gear train gives you a lot of power, mainly because you trade the same velocity as you do torque. Gear ratios are important because everything needs to fit in right you can’t have any gear slippage because then you can mess you’re gears up and the Axel or anything else up on the robot.
There was also the clutch gear which is used to help prevent damage on the robot when it started to exceed the limits. The clutch gear also automatically disengages the motor of the toque become to high.

chapter 2 blog

circuit race

Today we had our circuit race witch was pretty sweet.
In order to complete this task we had to use the techniques that we learned in the previous tasks that we have completed in class, the previous tasks that we had were wheels and distance and measured turns.
Getting ready for this challenge was fun and tricky at the same time. The hard part was getting the turns and making sure the robot didn’t run into any of the obstacles that were in the classroom that were in the way sometimes like the work benches that we couldn’t move.
I used move blocks to complete this challenge the reasons that I used the move blocks was because they are easier to program when using move blocks you only to use one block for both motors if you wish, and when you only need one motor to run you select that motor.
Another thing that I noticed and was a problem was on the day of the race, I think the floor was dirtier then on Friday because my robot had more friction and the front wheel was dragging when making the turns. The reason that I used the wheels that I used was because I also wanted to go for speed at the same time.

moving and making turns

The 2 previous labs that I did in class were called Right face and measured turns.
Right face was teaching us how to make our robots turn mainly. The next lab we did was called measured turn it was about making precise turns and we had to attach a pen to the end of the robot to draw a circle.
chapter 4 was talking about the difference between motor blocks and move blocks.
What is the difference between motor blocks and move blocks?
the difference is that motor blocks only move one motor one the robot, and the move block moves one motor only.
When would one type of block be more advantageous than the other
You are better using the motor blocks sometimes because when you want to have point turn in your program it makes it easier to do.

Hello World, My Name Is

Our home work over the weekend was to read chapter 3. In Chapter 3 you learn about using the display block in the programming software that we using when programming our robots. When using in the display block you will use the configuration panel for many functions like what is going to be projected on the LCD and how long you want it to be displayed. There is also a drawing tool that can be used the drawing tool can be use to draw anything from circles to lines which can also be place on the LCD screen on the NXT. The data hub was talked about to the data hub lets you draw data wires from one block to another it can carry numbers or text, makes life easier to.