Class #11

End of the line!!! Last chance to finish up our bot projects....at the beginning of the class on Tuesday, we felt that we just had to tie together the loose ends, however, there were a lot more loose ends than we had thought. We ended up being in the shop until about 7:00pm when we left with plans a summing it up in the morning......again, a little more left then we thought! We are currently still troubleshooting some of the code problems with the bot and adding the last finishing touches to the controller for the various aspects on the bot. I will not be in attendance for tomorrow's class therefore I will be submitting by portion of the presentation via a video clip. Since I was chief architect, my portion will consists of a brief overview of the physical structure of the bot. That's all for me, off to Yellowknife I go to begin my teaching career, thanks to all who helped me along the way!!!

Class #10

Time is getting short! We addressed the fact in our company meeting at the beginning of today's class that after this class there is only one more class in which to build the bot since the last class is dedicated to presentation of the robots. With that being said we moved right into production by nailing down a layout for the components on the main deck of the bot so that the fabrication team (myself and Bryan) could really get to work finishing the body construction so that we can get our components mounted and begin the calibration. We began by constructing our upper deck (basically a housing) for the bot which we designed in an 'L' shape with the recessed portion as the location of the robotic arm on the lower deck. To attach this upper deck we used a series of stand-offs to create posts which we situated in the most load bearing points of the structure. We also drilled some holes in the lower deck which will be used to run wires from beneath the bot up to their corresponding phidget controllers. The last element of the construction that we worked on during this class was were the front and rear bumpers which was brought to a halt when the blade on the portable band saw snapped off. After speaking with Frank, I felt that since I was the one using the saw, I took it on myself to get the blade repaired or get a replacement before next class, hopefully everything works out ok!

Class #9

Back at the grind! We continued with the construction of our bot today, focusing predominantly on the layout of the entire chassis, as well as how the components will all fit into our design. One of the most time consuming tasks of today's class was drilling holes in our main deck to allow the deck itself to sit flush against the aluminium chassis, I had to toy around a lot with the size and positioning of the hole to ensure a snug fit. Once those adjustments were made, Renee, our project manager soldered the wire leads onto our DC motors which will be driving the four wheels of the bot and we then mounted the motors to the frame and attached the wheels to the motors.....we now have a rolling chassis. What was even better was that during all of the fabrication that took place today, Mike, our programmer, had coded the wireless PCB components and DC motor controller which allowed us to lay some components on top of the deck and with a DC adapted we were able to give the bot its first test drive....SUCCESS!! The main troubleshooting issue we had to address at the end of the class was that we discovered that our wheels were mounted backwards, and therefore tended to fall off, however we fixed all the wheels and the bot is now much sturdier. 

Class #8

When today's class started we had a quick plan of attack from Frank and then we got to work with a team meeting and then moved onto design and fabrication of our bot's chassis, while Mike got down to business on our programming and interface. By the end of the class we had our chassis pretty much completely constructed as well as our robotic arm. The experience of building the chassis was great because I got the chance to use some tools such as a drill press and electronic hack saw in order to prepare the angle aluminum and flat bar for the chassis. It was a point of pride when all of the preparations made to the aluminum fit together perfectly on the first try. Looking forward to next class when we will be able to get some components mounted on the bot, and get ready to start testing. So far so good!

Class #7

Today's class began with an introduction to our new instructor Mr. Frank Shapleigh, after we made our way through the introduction process we immediately started into our project introduction. Once our task was presented to the group we were notified of our groups and had our first group meetings, during which we delegated the jobs of our team and tried to conceptualize how the project was going to go. We came up with one rough drawing of how the bot might look, however it is still quite up in the air. The last thing that we did today was got a start on constructing the robotic arm component of the bot, and as a team we had a clinic with Frank in regards to some general construction tips and techniques, we were also presented with a bunch of our materials for the build.

Class #6

Half Way Home!!! By the end of this class we will have completed half of this course. Therefore today was our last class with Corey as our instructor, even though we just met him! The first half of the class was dedicated to completing a CEQ for the course and Corey, follwed by test # 2, which much like the first I left feeling pretty confident which is always a good thing. Once the test was finished we moved on to some housekeeping in a sense that there were a few activities that Corey wanted us to have completed before the end of the class, therefore we focused on these instead of following the regularly scheduled activities. These involved using the rotating base and servo motor controller in order to use the robot gripper arm, as well as the webcam. After getting everything constructed, we managed to get everything working, except for the final task which was to control these components using the mini joystick as an input device. We got a short start but ran out of time so I guess we will have to figure it out next week, so that it can hopefully be integrated into our final project. And that brings us to the half way mark, looking forward to next week when we will meet our new, and final instructor of the tech program! Until then......

Class #5

Here we are again, beginning of week 3, almost half way through the course already! Seems crazy! Today's class began differently than we have been used to thus far in that we all started a new activity at the same time. We all got new kits to use in order to build a small robot which was quite exciting. We had built a simpler version of this bot in one class before however today's bot had a web cam and wireless capabilities so that it could drive around the floor!! Once the bot was constructed and coded we had to hardwire it in order to test and make sure it was set up properly and troubleshoot any problems, this way we would not drain the battery pack. Once everything was a go we connected  to the wireless IP address designated to our particular bot and attempted a wireless run however, there were issues with the battery pack and we were limited to the length of the adapter cord which we connected later.
Once we were finished with our bot activity we returned to our activities which we had started on last class.