Off-Schedule Meeting Log - Spring Break

By Charlotte, Cooper, Karina, Bhanaviya, BenO, Abhi, Janavi, Jose, Aaron, and Arjun

Meeting Log March 08, 2019

Friday

• Widen Superman
Cooper and Ben O widened our Superman wheel from one omni wheel to two. This will improve our robots ability to turn and balance, as just one wheel would dig into the foam tiles due to a smaller surface area and make it more difficult for the robot to turn. Having two wheels increases this surface area, making driving easier.
• Bill of Materials
Karina and Bhanaviya started a bill of materials, which lists each part of our robot and where they are from. The purpose of this bill is to make it easier for the builders to build our second robot as they can easily access the source of each part. See the bill of materials at (E-131, Bill of Materials).
• Learning to blog
Cooper learned to use the blog, and because he worked on the journal on his old team, hopes to apply these skills extensively in the future.

Tuesday

• Reverse articulations
Abhi and Ben O worked on reverse articulations, which allows the robot to position itself in ways that makes mineral collection more efficient. See more on reverse articulations at (E-139, Reverse Articulations).
• Drive practice
Karina got in some driver practice, which is going to be increasingly important as we get closer to UIL and Worlds.

Wednesday

• New VEX motors
Jose and Aaron opened up and started testing new VEX 393 motors. We are considering these motors because they are technically counted as servos and could help our intake perform more efficiently. See more at (E-124, VEX 393 Motor Testing).
• Wiring
The freshmen got experience with soldering. They did some wire gender changes for our servo power injector.
• Email Diversity Director
Janavi drafted an email to the diversity director at Worlds to get information about bringing the MXP to Worlds. We would like to share our outreach pursuits to other teams at Worlds as an example of a Motivate team.

Thursday

• Elbow model
Justin worked on the elbow redesign, which we are modeling to combine many intricate parts on our current robot to one, more serviceable and sturdy part on the robot. We finished the model and began its print. See more at (E-136, New Elbow).
• Intake prototyping
As we are in the process of redesigning our intake to be more efficient for worlds, we are making many prototypes. Since we are planning to design the new robot where the elbow can flip in both ways for intaking, we need an intake that works when flipped both ways. Aaron prototyped an intake mechanism that rotates while keeping the sorter oriented correctly as proof of concept.
• Finalize and send email to Diversity Director at Worlds about MXP

Friday

• Work on robot model
• Balancing adjustments
With our new reverse articulations, Abhi and Ben O have been tuning the PID constants in our code to improve our robot's balance, as each articulation has its own center of gravity.
• Restock polycarbonate