Semester 1

8/25/16

Today, we worked in the JPL group to prepare for our presentation for tommorow. We decided to make out powerpoint with clipart to roughly translate our possible designs for the challenge.

8/26/16

Today, we presented our powerpoint to the class. I was the driver.

8/29/16

Today, we worked in our Wednesday Challenge groups on our spaghetti bridges.

8/30/16

Today was the 2nd to last day for us to work on the bridge. I made a piping bag to pipe out minute amounts of glue so that I would be able to better finish the bridge.

8/31/16

Today was the last day for us to work on the Wednesday Challenge. We managed (somehow) to finish the bridge, and it seemed to be pretty sturdy. I have some hope for this bridge's success.

9/1/16

Today, we had the bridge competition for the Wednesday Challenge. Our bridge was pretty much the same as the others--a triangular prism--but it was strangely a lot weaker than the other simiar-shaped bridges. The winning group was Conner's group, with a score of 13.

9/6/16

Today, we didn't have anything to do because the day was mainly focused on the newcomers' websites. I just worked on my website for the entire period.

9/7/16

Today, we got together in the JPL group to make a schedule for our future activities. Cole used Google Calendar to roughly mark out how much time we would take for various stages of our devices, from CAD and fabrication to decoration and testing.

9/8/16

Today, Dr. Neat told us about how he visited his daughter over the Labor day weekend in Panama. In the rainforest there, he saw a type of tree that was supported by its roots, and moved around to seek sunlight on an average of 1 foot per year. Also, Mr. Miller discussed with the class how our websites would be graded.

9/9/16

Today, Mr. Wilton came to visit us, and we discussed our progress on the JPL Invention Challenge. Along with Dr. Neato, we discussed our sketchups, our schedules, and our designs, and our schedule.

9/12/16

Today, we worked in the JPL groups on our devices. I agreed to make the stands for the funnels, the funnels themselves, and the receptacle for the water at home.

9/13/16

After about 5 hours of work re-cadding and hand cutting wood because my jigsaw blade mount was offset, I managed to make one of the funnel stands and the receptacle for the water. After we got into the JPL groups again, we startred working on our respective goals again.

9/14/16

Today, we had a Wednesday Challenge where we had to cut a piece of plywood as accurately as possible to 2 inches using any non-power tools in and around the shop. We made our first piece, which was within .005", and then we discussed what we could do better to ,ore accurately make the cut.

9/15/16

Today, we had a second try on the plywood, and our results were roughly the same. Afterwards, the JPL group got together to work on our respective devices. Sam cut the parts for a particleboard funnel, and Kevin and I duct-taped it together, and placed it onto the funnel stand that I had made on Monday.

9/16/16

Today, we presented to the class our current progress in the JPL Invention Challenge. We held a competition iof sorts to see what "device" could get the most water from the cup into the target receptacle in te shortest amount of timeas possible. I'm not sure about the time and trhe legality of my method, but I was able to transport the most amount of water to the target receptacle.

9/19/16

Today, Erin and I worked on the improved funnel. I cut the pieces out of cardboard, and then we waterproofed it with clear packing tape that was applied like roof tiles.

9/20/16

Today, we had a speaker from Skillify visit us. She talked to us about networking and communications. I signed up for Skillify.

9/21/16

Today, I worked on improving the funnel strand to better hold on to the funnel. Ian cut some wooden wedges out on the mini band saw while I was using some aluminum bars to make the funnel keep its shape. I screwed ithe wedges onto the stand, and screwed the funnel onto the wedges.

9/22/16

Today, Erin and I fininshed making the improved funnel, and we mounted it to the funnel base. Then, we figured out, using an unoficcial up, hou much 20 grams of water would be compared to the initial 250 grams of water. Also, after testing the funnel a couple of times, we observed that we only lost about 5 grams of water to the funnel--most of which was through the cardboard not being fully covered in tape, and absorbing the water as it flowed through the bottom of the funnel-- which is an easy fix.

9/23/16

Today, Mr. Wilton visited the class, and we presented to the class again about our progress in the JPL Invention Challenge. Erin and I presented our improved funnel, and our findins about the amount of water that we were allowed to spill. Afterwards, Dr. Neato talked to us about allocating error, and trying to minimize it as much as possible. When I got home, I played Overwatch until 12:30 AM, which ended up being about 7.5 hours. I managed to get all the way up to level 23, which is almost where Keilah, who has played more than 10x the time that I have, is currently at.

9/26/16

On Sunday, I spent 2 hours making a wooden boomerang out of some 1/4" 5 layer birch plywood. I made it to look like the Gale Boomerang from the Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess (Use your imagination; the reference picture is a non-working cosplay prop, and I haven't gotten around to finishing and painting yet). Today, we went over grades with Dr. Neato in the classroom. Since I can't log into my Filezilla account from my laptop, and haven't been able to use a class laptop to get into Filezilla and update my website, I currently have a 6.5. :(

9/27/16

Today, I spent the day in the shop looking for fabrication to do because The funnel was basically as completed as it could be given that we were just waiting on special materials such as Lexan and hydrophobic paint.

9/28/16

Today, I looked around for more fabrication to do since I was done. I ended up helping Keilah work on his sketchup for the garbage truck device because he ragequit while working on it. Near the end of the period, Kurt told me that the funnel needed to be improved a bit by way of adding an extension on the bottom of the funnel to prevent the water from spilling out at an undesirable angle, but since I basically took over Kewilah's Sketchup, he decided to work on that problem, since he had pointed out the same problem to me a week or two ago.

9/29/16

Today, I worked in the shop doing Sketchup for Keilah. I fixed a part of his Sketchup model that had been misaligned, and then added some pulleys and belts for the drive system.

9/30/16

Today, during lunch, we ahd a guest speaker from Cooler Master. He talked to us about how Cooler Master had gotten into the robotics community, and gave us a brand new setup for cad, including new computers, headsets, mice, keyboards, and a whole bunch of other shiny stuff. During the period, we presented or progress on the JPL Invention Challenge to Mr. Wilton, along with the rest of the class, and we just barely wrapped things up at the end of the period. Kevin finished the CAD for the Kevin arm device, so I can start fabrication on Monday.

10/3/16

Today, while waiting for Kevin to turn the CAD model of the Kevin arm into 2D blueprints, I, along with a couple of other people, looked through the wood bin to look for 2 by 4s. Unfortunately, there was less than 6 feet of 2 by 4 in the bin, so we will either have to buy new 2 by 4s or dismantle some of the field equipment from last year's FRC competition.

10/4/16

Today, Kevin printed out the CAD for the Kevin arm, but because there still wasn't enough 2 by 4s, I switched to Keilah's device for the time being. I worked with Keilah to finish the CAD for the trash truck device. Afterwards, I cut down a 2 by 6 to make a bit more material to work with.

10/5/16

Today, I finished a color coded Sketchup model for Keilah's trash truck device, which was for recording the amount of what kinds of materials that would be needed to build the device. I also spent an hour yesterday on a part of the CAD that was completely and totally unneeded, so it was deleted.

10/6/16

Today, I worked on ripping the 2 by 4s to 3.5 inches by 1.5 inches in order to square the ends and make them consistent in size. I also managed to get in a couple of cuts as well.

10/10/16

Today, I continued to work on the device. I cut out all but 2 of the major pieces of the device, so I should be able to finish cutting everything out tomorrow.

10/11/16

Today, I finished making all of the major pieces of the device. All I have left to do is to cut out a couple of crossbraces. Also, I helped Keilah start working on the baseplate for the device.

10/12/16

Today, during lunch, we had 2 guest speakers from Synopsis, which is an optics company.

10/13/16

Today, I worked on the device some more.

10/14/16

Today, I worked on the device some more.

10/17/16

Today, I worked on the device some more.

10/18/16

Today, I worked on the device some more.

10/19/16

Today, we had the PSAT. It was a very long and arduous process, during which I got a solid hour of sleep because I kept on finishing really early. Since we were basically on a minimum day schedule, I didn't get much work done during the period.

10/20/16

Today, we had our annual disaster drill. Since we were basically going to be sitting out in the sun for an hour and not do anything, I took my laptop with me and got a bunch of editing done. Afterwards, during period 5, I worked more on the device.

10/21/16

Today, we presented our work so far on out device to Mr. Wilton. We didn't have much to show for the past week, and just showed the pieces that we had been working on.

10/24/16

Today, we were in the classroom for the first part of the period to talk about our grades. For some reason, my notebook grade is still at no acess, so I will talk to Mr. Miller later about it.

10/25/16

Today, I worked on making some mortises in the smaller upright to fit in some plywood corner braces. With the majority of the material hogged out with a drill bit, I can just come in with a chisel tommorow to finish it up. Also, Keilah started cutting out the plywood corner supports that would go in the mortices.

10/26/16

Today, I cut out some slots for the adjustable part of the tensioning system for the device. Since my really rough work of drilling 2 holes and using the jigsaw to cut the rest of the slot out was, well, rough, I got Keilah to mill out the second one using a 1/2 inch router bit on the mill. Also, while bending down to pick something off of the ground, I ripped my pants st the critch line. :(

10/27/16

Today, something happened, but unfortunately, I don't remember what happened.

10/28/16

Today, something happened, but unfortunately, I don't remember what happened.

10/31/16

Today, my team had a talk with Mr. Miller about what we need to get done in order to get our device done. Also, today was the official opening for my dad's restaurant, En Joy Poke.

11/1/16

Today, something happened, but unfortunately, I don't remember. All I know is that I worked on the device some more with Keilah, Connor, and Erin.

11/2/16

Today, while trying to chase someone down to get them to go to Senior Nacho for me, I accidentally pounted my phone across the concreete in front of the room. I got 2 more cracks and a bunch of scratches across the screen.

11/3/16

Today, I stayed behind after school to finish the cart that would hold the cup. While working, I had an idea that was inspired by me taping a pencil to the aluminum ring to keep it prefectly horizontal. As a result, the cart is basically completely done, and we are good to go for when we present our progress to Mr. Wilton and the rest of the class tommorow.

11/4/16

Today, we presented our progress on our devices to Mr. Wilton and the rest of the class.

11/7/16

Today, we worked more on the device. After reinforcing the key joints of the frame with some screws, I fitted in the rest of the steel rods to complete the frame. Also, while drilling out some more stuff, I found that the W bit was the perfect size for the steel rodsd that we were using, which is wierd because when we used the Z bit, which was a couple hundreths of a millimetre thicher than the W but, the resulting hole was way too tight for the steel rod.

11/8/16

Today, I brought the rope like I had promised to. Unfortunately, my bog hank of paracord was gone because I had to use it to tie up the cardboard boxes that the air conditioners at my house were stored in. However, I brought what paracord was left over, and also broughty about 40 feet of nylon cord that was rated at around 75 pounds. Combined with the paracord that I found in the cordage bin in the classroom, This was enough to make all 3 loops for the drive and support trains, as well as the tensioner.

11/9/16

Yesterday was the Presidential election, so I stayed up until 3 in the morning monitoring the progress of the election. Unfortunately, Trump win the election with 288 electoral votes. Furthermore, he won in the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the popular vote. It was kind of heartbreaking to see Trump slowly pull way from Hillary, and when I got to school, there was a lot of hubub concerning the election. Alsoi, during period 4, my friend reminded us that since Trump was the president, he would be the one signing our highschool diplomas. Today, we worked more on getting the device ready. I found 4 metal pulleys with integtrated bearings on a table, so I switched out the outer 4 wheels of the cart for them. Afterwards, we worked on getting the central drive rope ready. However, while testing, we melted the rope because the motor mounted drum that was supposed to move the rope did not havve enough grip on the rope, and just uselessly spun against it and generated heat. Afterwards, we switched out the nylon rope for some 18 AWG wire, and that seemed to be working fine. In addition, in order to lower the amount of friction between the rope and the steel shafts, I repurposed the old wooden wheels from the cart, and turned them into pulley shaped bushings, and that worked just fine.

11/10/16

Today, I wasn't here because I went with the AFJROTC corps to go and shoot rockets on a dry lakebed. It was really fun, and I had some Hometown Buffet afterwards.

11/14/16

Today, Keilah drove me to OSH to pick up some paracord to replace the wire that we had temporarily set up as our drive cable. Also, Connor turned down our spare large wooden pulkley, and mounted it onto the drive motor to make the entire system work better.

11/15/16

Today, we worked on getting the entire drive system working on the device. We added a fifth large puilley to the bottom front of the device, which seemed to help a significant amount with the whole drive system. However, the drive motor still shuts itself off from time to time because it is getting stuck.

11/16/16

Today, we continued to work on the drive system of the device. We added a sixth and final large pulley to the top middle of the device, which allowed the cart to make it over the edge and dump the contents of the cup onto the floor. Although it isn't completely perfect, it'll do, as the cup is going to be poured out into the funnel system that I made.

11/17/16

Today was the last day before the pseudo competition in the classroom on Friday. We were still not able to get the device completely working, but I was able to get it to start off properly by shortening the back end of the cart to the point that when the pencil on the cart was touching the ground, the metal retaining band and the cup were parallel to the ground. Furthermore, we were having the ever present problem that the wheels would either jump off of the track, or get bound on whatever we would use to keep it on the track.

11/18/16

Today was the day of the pseudo competition in the classroom. I had the great idea hot glueing straws onto the wheels instead of using just the wheels to both keep the cart on the track while minimising the amount of binding. However, I didn't take into account the face that the pullwys on the stabilizer ropes would not turn due to the fact that they were way too tensioned. Unforunately, while we were making our last minute adjustments to the device, the electronics failed somewhere, and the device was basically crippled. As a result, when the pseudo competition started, we had to back out immediately, and the other 3 teams were chosen to go to the JPL semifinals.

11/19/16 JPL COMPETITION SEMIFINALS

Today was the day of the JPL competition. Unfortunately, I misread the time to get to school, so I got to school at 6:30 AM, which was about 2 hours earlier than I was supposed to come, and was stuck in ~45 degree temperatures for over an hour and a half. However, when we actually got to the competition, it was great. Connor's grandma made egg salad sandwiches, which I didn't eat to save room for the food truck that would show up, and hybrid chocolate chip cookie brownies, which were delicious as hell. During the competition, Hunter and Jacob's vaccum powered device was unable to pick anything up, and Cole and Sam's device spilled too much water, which meant that both groups were disqualified. Kevin, and Kurt's group, however, was able to get onto the board with a decent, but less than average, score. That being said, Hunter and Kevin's respective groups won prizes, which I was also able to get because I technically was on every group except Cole and Sam's group. I also had some really delicious fries from the food cart turned food tent. The fries were really thick cut, making them more like potato wedges, and they were seasoned excenllently as well. During the designated lunch break, since there were no tires, we used the extra bungee and duct tape that we brought to make a giant slingshot, which we used to fling crushed cans and small pebbles. Afterwards, I used the extra rope that I had packed, along with a tangerine that Hunter happened to have, to make a meteor hammer, which was pretty fun to swing around. All in all, although I was still kind of sad about the fact that my team's device broke down, it was a very fun day overall.

11/28/16

Today, we made powerpoints to discuss our experiences with JPL. Our group was the group that was in at JPL, which. Our last slide was just a bunch of memes of myself.

11/29/16

Today, we presented our powerpoints to the class. Our presentation was ready, but our group never actuaslly presented, which was probablly for the better.

11/30/16

Today, we had a Wednesday Challenge in which I was 1 of the judges along with Kevin and Sam. The goal of the Wednesday challenge was to CAD and fabricate as tall a structure as possible out of pretzel sticks, marshmallows, and graham crackers. As soon as I learned what the challenge was, I thought about Dr. Neato's structure in the center of the room, a geodesic dome, and the Eiffel Tower. Also, we figured out the limits of Microsoft Excel, which was surprisingly not as high a number as I thought it would be. The y value ends at around 1.4 million, and the x value ends at a paltry 16,384.

12/1/16

Today was the day of the Wednesday Challenge. As a judge, I gave the groups their cads and materials, and then measured their completed constructs. From what I saw, a lot of the structures were horrible inaccurate, which was due in part due to the fact that some of the cads were the wrong dimension or just flat out not possible to build.

12/2/16

Today, we went over the results of the Wednesday Challenge, and then we talked with Dr. Neat, Mr. Miller, and Mr. Wilton about the JPL Invention Challenge. We discussed what we would do again, what we didn't like, and how amny hours we worked on the entirety of the Challenge.

12/5/16

Today, the Wednesday Challenge Final was formally announced to the class. The goal oof the Wednesday Challenge was to beat the score of the Kevin arm , which was 18.3 seconds, in doing the JPL Invention Challenge. For the people wwho were not in the JPL groups, the scale of the challenge was halved, which meant that the cup wouyld only be 1 meter away from the receptacle, but for people like me, who worked on a device, the distacnce remained the same, and we were given the choice to ocontinue working on our devices to get them functioning. As sa result, we started working on repairing our device. However, by the end of the period, we came to the conclusion that it would not be worth it to continue working on our device, so we decided to pull out of the competition.

12/6/16

As we dropped out of the Wednesday Challenge Final yesterday, our group started cleaning up the carpeted ares (the field) that we ahd been working on during the past couple of months. Somehow, we got most of everything picked up, and after emptying the chamber and washing the filter, we sstarted to vaccum up the carpet.

12/7/16

Today, we finished cleaning up our area of the shop, and then I worked on getting my website up to date. Also, today was the first robotics meeting in anticipation for the FRC tournament, the rules of which will be released in less than a month.

12/8/16

Today, we continued from where we left off yesterday, and cleaned up the shop. For the most part, I swept the floor and helped Erin organise the wood pile. Keilah was cleaning the bandsaw, and the tray where the metal shavings and runoff coolant fluid poured into was absolutely filthy.

12/9/16

Today, Dr. Neato wasn't here, so some of us worked on updating our websites. Also, my Saitek X55 Rhino that I won off of an Ebay auction on Monday arrived during this period, so I was really excited.

12/12/16

Today, I helped with the finishing touches on the shop cleanup. Mainly, I helped Keilah finish cleaning the metal bandsaw, and then I used the air compressor to blow out some of the dust and trash that was under the ranps that we used 2 years ago in the JPL Invention Challenge and last year in the Wednesday Challenge with the cardboard cars.

12/13/16

Today, we started the class by going over website grades with Mr. Miller. As I wasn't able to update my website last week because I still can't get Filezila to work on my laptop, I'm pretty sure that I have a "D" for the semester in Robotics D:<

12/14/16

Today, the hard drive on my laptop broke, so my laptop was effectively killed until I could replace the hard drive. I don't really have any sort of experience with this kind of thing, so I guess that it will be a good learning experience for me. After looking up a couple of things, I found out that I would need a USB with at least 3 GB of space, which I don't have, to boot up and install Windows 10 on another hard drive. As a result, I got a USB from Dr. Neato, and when I got home, I used the USB that I got from Boeing to run DBAN, which is a program for wiping hard drives, in order to start wiping a 500 GB HDD that came from my old laptop. Since the wipe will take upwards of 8 hours, I will leave the laptop running overnight to finish wiping the HDD and prepare it for installing a fresh edition of WIndows 10.

12/15/16

When I woke up, I checked up on my laptop, and I saw that the hard drive wipe had completed. I used another laptop in order to get the Windows 10 installer on Dr. Neato's USB, and then used that in conjunction with the spare HDD in order to get my laptop working again. To be honest, this might have been a good thing, as my laptop was getting pretty clutered up with obsolete files and applications. Well, as long as I have Sketchup, Microsoft Office, and the Battle Net client, I am pretty much content. In addition, after poring over the specs and prices of various SSDs on Amazon and other places online, I came to the conclusion that it would be in my best interests to get a 128 or 256 GB SSD for my OS and a couple of frequently used applications such as Overwatch and Chrome. In addition to drastically decreasing my boot time, the SSD should be better for my laptop overall, as they are less susceptible to beig amaged by physical impacts. This way, my laptop will be safer from being disabled by another carelessly thrown mouse.

12/19/16

Today was the day of the Engineering final, but since our group had opted out, were kind of left to our own devices. I brought my Saitek x55 to play some War Thunder, but it was disallowed, and we just stayed in the former cad cave for the entire 2 hours after disassembling our device.