FIRST Robotics - Progress Report Three

Going from wood to metal.

We had our FIRST robot in reasonably complete form by the time of an open house for our hosts Machine Tool Camp.  It hopped over obstacles and fired a ball more or less on target.  But after a while the pounding it took started to be too much and efficiency declined.  You can only ask so much from wood, plastic pipe and duct tape.

So the team tore it down.  It was remarkable how fast this process went.  Almost two weeks to build it up.  20 minutes to reduce it to parts.  An observer noted that it was like watching hyenas going after a carcass!

Time to redo in metal.  Fire up the plasma cutter!

As our remade robot started to increasingly resemble a tank we got to wondering just how much of an issue we would have with radio (wifi actually) reception under all that metal.  I asked several mavens and got various answers.  So I told the software team to try running the controls with the electronics inside a metal pipe.  Some useful data was obtained.

I have always liked to have a bit of wood in my robots.  Old School I guess.  And I think it also buffers vibrations to some extent.  I told the kids to paint it whatever color they liked.  A nausea inducing yellow?  Well, OK.  Here several sets of hands are crowding in to ratchet down bolts on the back frame element of the robot.

We found that the standard "kit" that rookie teams get from FIRST, while great in other ways, is not so hot regards frame building.  It took way too much time to fashion the back part of the frame.  After a team discussion we opted to go a different direction for the rest of it.  We had already decided on using EMT conduit for the sweep arm.  Heck, lets just get a heavier gauge version of it and complete both sides of the frame with one pipe bend each.  We obviously have some trimming and support elements to add on the front half of the robot, but you can see the basic shape of things and I personally think it is rather elegant.

Note the ball set in what will be the launching pad for same, also the new and better protected crawler motor mount.

FIRST updates have been weekly but if we stay on track it might be possible to have more worth showing after our long Saturday session.  

At the end of the work day we load up our cart and roll our tool cart into what must be the finest storage area any FIRST team on earth can claim.....our own walk in safe!  The building we work in used to be a shoe factory and presumably this is where the payroll was kept.  

The actual robot is getting too big to easily move in and out, so it rides up to the second floor in a freight elevator.  What? You mean all high school robotics teams don't have their own freight elevator?

Vilification

Sometimes words just won't behave themselves.  I think I have something clever figured out about the origins of a particular word or phrase, then darn it all I have to go and find out that I was wrong.

Consider the words villain and vilify.  Now it would make sense for vilification to be the process by which you define somebody as a villain.  And being clever I had a whole rant worked out tracing the word back to villa, the Roman word for a small town or in certain senses for a country estate.

It is reasonable to assume that the owners of villas in the Roman era considered their laborers to be uncouth bumpkins.  And that was the meaning that carried through from Middle Latin villanus for farmhand, into Old French as vilain and across the channel to England where it reclaimed the extra l and became villain.

The sense of a villain being crooked or nefarious is a fairly modern development.  I assume that as we became a more urban culture it got easier to assign negative attributes to rural peasants.  Its not as if quality people really had to interact with them any more.....

But to vilify, that seems to be a different thing than saying nasty stuff about villains.  The meaning seems to fit, to vilify being to "lower in worth or value".  The sense of slandering and speaking evil of came along in the late 1500s.  But the root word here is not villa but vilis. a late Latin word meaning cheap or base.  The same word of course also giving us vile.

Or so various etymological sources I referenced claim.  But sometimes with spellings and meanings mutating back and forth I have to wonder if the scholars really know everything.

Chedworth Roman villa in the Cotwolds.  I hope to visit in the spring.

The Train to Ostia

You can't plan for every eventuality when you travel abroad, but I consider it an enjoyable obligation to prep for as many possibilities as I can manage.

I learn about the places I will visit.  I query Google earth for restaurants, bus stops and laundromats near our accommodations.  I try to pick up enough of the language to not be totally helpless.  And I talk with friends who have been to where I am going, with particular attention to any problems they have encountered.

Getting ready for Italy was a project.  Six months of on again off again listening to language tapes got me to where I mostly knew what was going on.  But you have to set your goals realistically.  And since I could not hope to attain fluency I concentrated on certain areas.  Buying stuff, asking for directions, please and thank you.

And with the little extra brain capacity I could spare I decided to address an issue that several friends had mentioned to me:  Problems on trains and buses.

It is fairly easy to get pick pocketed on public transportation in Italy.  And more disturbingly, men sometimes behave in a very lewd manner to women they perceive as being tourists.  Or maybe all women, I guess it depends on what bus you are on. Maybe to men as well, that would really depend on "what bus you are on".

So I asked a Brit friend for advice.  Prim and proper as she is, my expectations were limited.  But she had lived in Rome and worked at their Embassy, so I figured she would have a few handy phrases.

Boy, did she ever.

This is a polite blog, so I won't unleash my entire arsenal, but for example:

"S______, non male. Quelle e mia moglio"  

I am saying here that this behaviour is not OK and that this is my wife.  The omitted word reminds me that I am due for a colonoscopy next year.

"F_____, andare a giocare con gli uomini."

The omitted word here is ironically an acronym we use for Federal Income tax with holdings.  The rest of the phrase expresses surprise that the individual is even interested in women.

Well, you get the idea.  I actually felt reasonably well prepared.  And as such I assumed that I would never have to deploy these linguistic weapons.

Oh, but on one occasion I was wondering if I might have to.....

We took the train out to visit Ostia on the outskirts of Rome.  Fares are ridiculously cheap in Italy and as physical conditions go the cars are OK.  And crowded, with a combination of locals and folks going further out the line to the beaches at Lido.

A guy sat down next to us.  He looked to be about 50 and I got a sort of East European vibe off of him.  Also some other odd vibes.  He was diligently doing something with his phone and seemed to be surreptitiously angling it to take pictures.  Well, I took a quick look with my peripheral vision and sure enough, he had just taken a picture of an Asian tourist gal across the aisle from us.

I could not tell if the picture was focused on her or on her suitcase but it struck me as creepy. And as he scrolled back and forth on his pictures I could see another similar image...a young couple standing together in a different and more crowded car, again with suitcases.

This guy was also sending and receiving lots of texts and doing some sort of Italian language version of Words with Friends.

I had by now decided that he was either a pervert with an Asian gal luggage fetish, and I must assume such people exist, or perhaps the ringleader of a band of pickpockets.

About half way through the trip he inexplicably got up and moved across the aisle, to the spot just vacated by the Asian tourist.  Now his eyes roved here and there.  And met mine.

I only intended to convey the message: "Don't go taking pictures of mia moglio, dude". But just maybe a few stray telepathic vibes from my auxiliary Italian vocabulary carried over.

When we got off at Ostia we were not set upon by Artful Dodgers, and a quick survey of our belongings - all well secured by the by - showed them to be present and accounted for.

Speaking with some locals afterwards they agreed that it was all rather peculiar.  One theory put forward was that because the trains are indeed often targeted by thieves and such, perhaps this was a plain clothes police officer.  Given the renowned efficiency of the Italian police force getting immediately spotted by a casual observer and spending most of your time goofing around with a phone would be about par for the course.  The Japanese luggage fetish was presumably just a hobby.

FIRST Robotics - Progress Report Two.

Evolution of a robot.

Two projects growing together.  On one side we have the software and electronics groups working on the competition level setup.  For test purposes the board is still set up with some simple motors.   Note the pneumatic cylinder and compressor on board.

Elsewhere the mechanical team has the competition frame, motors and gearboxes together.  The challenge this year includes crossing multiple obstacles.  One of the harder ones is a 4.5 inch solid bar. Our solution is a separate elevated "crawler wheel" up front that walks the front of the robot up the wall a couple of inches...then gun the motors and fly over Dukes of Hazzard style!

As a solution it is elegant in its extreme, almost dumb simplicity.  Of course much refinement needs to be done and the mounting for the wheel (or wheels?) will all be solid metal soon.

By the way there are no "secret weapons" in FIRST.  Teams are pretty much open about what they are working on and we in fact had a couple of adult coaches from established teams helping us out at times.

Alas, when we tried to put the mechanical and electronic elements together the usual thing happened...the software froze up again.  Frustratingly this cost us an entire build session.  A robot with non functional software is in effect, a giant paper weight.

Eventually of course the software decided to behave, and we put the frame and the real electronics together.  Next step was adding a second crawler wheel, which enhances climbing abilities nicely.

 

It occurred to us that the crawlers might also pick up the ball and deposit it on board.  After various tests it turns out to be true but only with a sweep arm that pushes the ball onto the wheels.

Next step is a pneumatic kicker to fire the ball into a goal.  Initial tests are promising.  One week and 5 days into the build season.  So far......I think OK?

Tree Shaped Tombstones - Strange Birds

Even on road trips sometimes you have to hurry a bit.  On a swing down to Prairie du Chien to look for old brewery caves I found myself in and out of cell phone communication with somebody who wanted me to be working on the other side of the state at 8am the next morning. Sigh.

But I pulled up out of the signal blocking river valley and came upon a very lonely looking cemetery. When you come across a site like this - on a road you may not travel again - it behooves you to stop and look around.

There was only one "tree shaped tombstone" but what an odd one....

It is a fairly early one, from before the era when these became more standardized.  Note the three tiered square base on which a rather, well, stumpy stump sits.  The day was getting on a bit, this usually gives you great light from one side and crap from the other direction.  This view at least shows nice detail and that great yellow "tombstone lichen" that adds to the visual appeal of these markers.

We have one bird up on top.  As is often the case the head has fallen off.  But the bird has other issues stylistically, note the crudely slapped on wings?  And the blunted tip of the wing seems to be intentional rather than to damage and weathering.  Down below we find a second bird.  Sorry about the lighting on this one.

Here the ridiculously long neck is probably intentional as the bird wraps around from one face of the monument to another.  These were supposed to be doves but honestly this looks like a duck to me. And who knows, maybe that was the intent.  It is about 50% bigger than the up top bird.

And it is not just the bird that wraps around, the inscription does so as well.  Peculiar, I can't say I have ever seen that done.

Iowa 2015 - A few Tree Shaped Tombstones

Winter is here in earnest so it is the "off season" for road trips.  But looking through my pictures I did come across a couple of odd Tree Shaped Tombstones from our Iowa baseball journey back in August.

I was actually a little disappointed that there were not more examples to be seen down there.  In general I find these monuments in rural areas, perhaps with more of them in areas where fraternal lodges were more prevalent.  Iowa should be prime hunting ground.  I will with difficulty not joke to excess about how folks in that square, flat state may not actually know what trees look like!

But lets have a look at a couple of odd ones.

I must admit that my usual visual scan of the cemetery in Postville Iowa did not detect this one at first. The shape is weird for one thing.  It almost looks like an ear of corn.  Note the stone pattern of the base.  This is seen on earlier monuments, mostly from the 1870s.  The main body of the monument clearly has bark pattern and cut off branches.  But it oddly is semi rectangular instead of round.  I think this carver was just not familiar with the style. Or maybe he was just not very good.

The name and date are illegible.  This soft white stone does not hold up well to the elements.

On the other hand....

Check out this beauty from Cedar Rapids.  The top view shows the dimensions of the Novak family plot with the subsidiary tombstones front and center.  I did not get a shot of them but I assume the back markers are just that, markers for the back of the plot.  You would have to be in Bad Graces indeed to be buried facing away from the rest of your tribe!

A closer view.  These Tree-Cabin hybrids are rare and when you find them they are always top quality work.  This makes three we have found in Iowa, so this sub type at least seems to be more common down there than elsewhere.

FIRST Robotics - Progress Report One

The long awaited "Big Reveal" for the 2016 FIRST robotics challenge was last Saturday.  Here is the video:

Wow.  Even by the high standards of the FIRST program this is a lot for a bunch of high school students to pull off in six short weeks.

But our rookie team is digging in and working on it.

We work in a really great space provided by a local business.  They roll this industrial robot out with a forklift to serve as our "Welcome" sign!

Our first session had a lot of unpacking and inventory to handle.  A couple of sessions later we were still identifying random important things left in the bottom of boxes...

Although it goes well we have naturally had some setbacks.  Having our electronics all roughed in and ready to test we discovered that our software needed to be updated.  Hey, where is that memory stick?  At the bottom of a box of course.  I like the hand gesturing here...."well, it should be ready....soon".

We split the team up onto various table tops.  Mechanical work at the far tables, wiring  to the left. The software guys hide in the back of the room.

Heck, I believe in letting the kids learn the hard way.  Any mistakes that don't involve smoke or hemoglobin are good.  The mechanical group got pretty far into setting up the drive frame before discovering that they had omitted a crucial gear deep in the mechanism.  Good learning.

First year teams are advised to go easy.  Just get something up and running.  Don't mess with much programming.  Don't bother with pneumatics.  I beg to differ.  We tossed out the provided pneumatic components and told one of the team to have at it.  Frankly it looks quite workable to me.  Mountain Dew powered technical learning.  The best kind.