Happy Summer

And this concludes the year. Cheers, and a happy summer.

Ending Remarks - Arvin

This is it. The final days of this school year. My feelings towards this are...strange...definitely calmer than when I started. This has definitely quite a year for me. 

I can say for a fact is, that this class was the class among the chaos, pressures, and anxieties of all my courses was the one that I can really say that I legitimately enjoyed. I know that during some days doing the work, especially everything related with the robots (not so much Mastercam...ugh), practically made me stay sane. Although I could write on forever, unfortunately due to the sake of time I have to conclude this.

(I'll work on this later)

Ending Remarks - Ayla

Well, this is the end of a year that was interesting to say the least. I can't say that I know everyone in here (I know almost no one, actually), but people have all been super nice, and it's going to be a shame to leave this class hour.

The last two days of class we've had the box checks, and while it kind of felt like we were getting tried for a crime, it was an interesting and learning experience.

First, it's great to know that even though we were doing Tetrix and didn't really need to interact with anyone else, most of the other people still thought we're decent and a good enough group to have interacted with.

I personally learned some interesting things through the checks/trials. For one, teamwork is super important, even with a competitive spirit. Even though I sort of knew this, I still think that I managed to learn more about it in the last few days. While everyone else was going up and being tried, opinions were asked about them. While many complaints were put in, almost all of them were fair points, not out of spite or rudeness. And as many cons to the groups there were, there were also quite a few complements about them: what good people the team were, how helpful, etc. It's great that even though we've all been competing in tug-of-war for the last week or so that nice things can still be said.

To be completely honest, I still don't fully understand robots. Like, I get the general idea, but I don't see entirely how they work, or what each of the pieces do, or a lot of things that I probably should have learned but didn't this year. In the last few days, I started to realize the enormity to not understanding that, and it ended up being pretty for our grade.

At the end of it all, I learned that working in a team is important, and that if you can't work with people, it's not a good thing and basically you're going to end up screwed over in life. I personally dislike the diffusion of responsibility, because I've had a history of having to do everything in a project, and it's just really annoying. But this was pretty fun, and it was fair enough that no one ended up doing too much or too little.

To close off, I want to say that it was great working with Shaina, Arvin, and Philippe, and it was also great branching off to help other people with what they didn't understand or didn't necessarily know how to do.

PS: Shrek the Musical.

Our school put on the production of Shrek the Musical, and wow that was a really fun play. It was great to watch the play, because I knew a lot of the people in it. I totally love the "I Think I Got You Beat" scene, and it was totally fun to watch because of how funny they made it. The sets were so elaborate, and I love that drama is just so good at doing that! (Engineering connection) The towers on the side of the stage went up basically overnight, and I just think it's remarkable that they held people without breaking. I saw what they were made of: basic sheets of plywood, nails, beams, and paint. I think that the crew has done it so long it's second nature, but I still thought it was cool they were bale to make all the sets so fast.

Ending Remarks - Shaina

This year our group had a series of ups and downs. Varying from large arguments about getting graded, to minor discussions about the ratchet-ness of our robot. Although we didn't get to complete all of the challenges I'm still glad I got to meet and get to know each individual in my group. Also, everyone in the group learned a lot weather it be about teamwork, sharing or just listening to someone else's idea. All in all if I had to change anything about how our group worked I would only change the way the work was distributed. Since I attempted to build the robot myself only asking for help when I needed to do things for engineering club. Our group did poorly on the challenges. Also Ayla and I attended "Shrek the Musical", Which was a great play that integrated engineering into various parts such as the mechanics of the spotlight and also the platforms that could turn. 

Week 13: Accomplished This Week

Well, this was the last week of robotics. Wow. It's weird to think that we're not going to be with the exact group of people, doing robots, ever again.

We successfully went through all ten runs that we needed, which is fantastic, lemme say xD

We also lost Philippe this week to graduation, since he was a senior and is now gone.

Of the runs, we lost eight out of ten, because we're just that awesome.

Final prepping before going into a run.

Philippe, as he takes his final.

This is Michael. Shaina calls him Snowcone. He's a freshie, and he's helped us out on our robot, like, a whole lot.

Week 13: Goals

The bot is rebuilt! And it's being coded around now! Woo!

Now we're going to compete.

Week 12: Accomplished This Week

So we've given up the idea of the ball challenge (I think). Shaina has trashed our robot (figuratively speaking) and completely remade it (literally speaking). It's going to be a cinderblock.

Week 12: Goals

This week we've been struggling to stay on top of everything. The SolidWorks needs to get finished, and I don't even know what goes from there. There was some sort of struggle in the wiring, and so we had to rewired things. We'll work it all out, I'm sure.

Week 11: Accomplished This Week

So I don't know what's going on with the ball. I really don't. Like, I want to say it's getting done, but I'm not sure. I think that the coding is still being worked on, and so Shaina's handling it. Possibly.

Week 11: Goals

In which I wasn't here that day. I guess we're just getting the robot together into one piece and getting the robot ready to do the ball challenge.

Then we'll get the bot ready to do tug of war. That'll be fun, I hope, considering how un-fun this ball challenge has been.

That's all for now.

Week 10: Accomplished This Week

Well this week wasn't very productive, considering...being ousted from the room for three days. So here are some pics of us doing work. I'm not sure what's going on next, but...we'll see!

Week 10: Goals

Okay. We were once again ousted from the tech room for FCAT (because clearly they don't want us to get anything done).
Right now we're working on the endofactor. We're still doing this because we haven't been in here to build it. Soon, though. Very soon. 

Shuffling around to get us parts.

Coding!

Double-checking how the endofactor connects.

Week 9: Accomplished This Week

Can we really call this a week, though?
Okay, hello again. Since yesterday...not very much has occurred. I'm not really positive why there are two posts this week, but hey, why not.
Arvin continues to work on the SolidWorks. I continue this blog (gotta go back and make sure everything's good), and Shaina and Philippe are connecting the endofactor.
Cheers and happy weekend.

Week 9: Goals

And so began the week of crazy.

Monday and Wednesday we were all relocated to Miss Beyland's classroom where we played games, because really, what else would we have done?

Tuesday was EOC, so nothing got done.

We get to do this again next week, too. Yay us ._.

In other news, the endofactor for the ball is finished, and it's bright yellow! It's being mounted onto the robot as I type right now. We still need to practice with it and code it and such, but progress! Next we apparently get to play tug-o-war. Ouch.

Solidworks Vex Arm

Week 8: Accomplished This Week

Woo! Easter is coming this weekend.

We're basically finished with the SolidWorks for the tetrahedron challenge, however we're running into a problem with the Vex pieces. We'll figure that out.

Shaina is still working on making an endofactor for the ball, and it looks pretty darn cool, if I say so myself. Seems pretty practical, too.

Week 8: Goals

Hello! We are now in our eighth week of working on this robot. Wow, does time...move strangely.

So, we're working on the SolidWorks for the arm and such still. For some reason the bot never got stuck onto the origin of the piece, so it likes to move around all the time. Really annoying, that's what that is. Still, it'll get done. Arvin is working on it right now and I help him out whenever necessary.

Shaina is making an endofactor (hope that's spelled right) for the bouncy ball challenge, and I don't know exactly what to with that since she's just repeatedly saying "Don't worry about it" when we ask her what's going on/what she's doing/anything, really.

See you on Friday :)

Philippe and Camacho doing...not really sure, actually.

Here's our robot with the claw-thing removed from the tetrahedron.

And here is Arvin, working on our SolidWorks.

Week 7: Accomplished This Week

Hello! Well, today there's a substitute so this is just a quick blog update.

This week we finally, FINALLY did the tetrahedron challenge and disassembled the robot so we can build the piece for the bouncy ball challenge.

SolidWorks is...going. I don't think it's going particularly well (all of us but Philippe have worked on it, make of that what you will...though he has sat with us while we worked), since a lot of the structure was backwards from the original model based on what our bot looked like. It's almost all good now, though.

Week 7: Goals

Hi guys.

This week we'll be trying to get the tetrahedron challenge completed and go into overdrive with the bouncy-blue-ball challenge (don't actually have a name for that one, sorry). Our robot is still getting its arm completed and it has to be programmed!

Here're pics of Shaina, Arvin, and Philippe working on the arm.

And this is our tetrahedron, made by myself.

Week 6: Accomplished This Week

So. We've been working hard on our arm this week. It is mostly built and really all we have left is programming it. Yay! 

Our tetrahedron is not being cooperative; hint: don't make it purely out of hot glue. It really just does not work well.

SolidWorks Arm

Week 6: Goals

We're scrambling this week to get the arm done. Three days only??? We'll be swamped and struggling to get it done, if it's managed. If we get it to work though, that'll be fantastic. Arvin will be doing the SolidWorks arm, as the rest of us get the thing built!

Week 5: Accomplished This Week

Well, we had quite a busy week, especially for a midget week :D

We finally went through the Gauntlet!! It went about as well as you'd think, and after a bit of crashing into chairs, the bot finally made it.

As well, we had our box scrutinized and graded. Thankfully, we didn't have to go in front of the class because Tetrix, but we still got a 100% xD

Happy Spring Break.