Barbie Jeep Robotics - Part Three

I've spent many years now, an entire generation if you must know, exploring the crazy frontiers of robotics education.  How complicated a project can you take on with how low a budget and with how crazy a batch of middle school students?

This year I think I have finally located the outer limits.  

Modifying Barbie Jeeps is actually a complicated task.  The wiring needs to be done properly (kids are not good at crimping and soldering), and if you do any mechanical alterations you will be working in cramped quarters and with lots of constraints.

It can be done with a small, motivated group who are willing and able to work together.  With a larger batch of, shall we say, Free Spirits.....the amount of actual teaching as opposed to crowd control has started to tip.

The section working on Ninja Jeep has nevertheless made progress.  I don't always have time to line up good pictures so I missed the shot where a half dozen kids gave a "thumbs up" the first time the Jeep powered up and ran.  But here's what I did capture.

A reasonable coherent control box.  

The kids are big into flashy lights.  The front police style light and the rear strobe lights work great.  The rear wheel motors are wired into the control system. We have three sessions left to remove the front wheels and convert to 4 wheel drive.  If that effort fails we just put some kind of roller skate under the front and go with what we've learned.  A few actual good decisions were somehow made on the design and layout of this beast.  And we have a buzzer/horn that we'll add next week.

The other class section has the advantage of fewer excitable members, and has two students that I've worked with on advanced projects in the past.  They also have fewer build sessions.  I figure it will be a wash.  So lets get underway with Princess Jeep....

Or not.  We dug out the innards of the other Jeep and found...problems.  The wire gauge was not big enough to handle 24 volts without heating up.  And one of the gearboxes had stripped gears.  Efforts to get access to this resulted in glitter everywhere, frustration and no success.

So we'll abandon the Evil Princess Jeep and have both classes work on the Ninja.  They are at this point mostly interested in bling and a functional water cannon so we'll try to oblige....

Forgotten Brewery Caves - St. Cloud Minnesota

As a starting point for this one here is a picture:

It is from a 1949 newspaper article that is referenced in THIS more recent bit by a local media outlet up there, WJON.

In said article it offers several theories including brewery cave, sewer line and storage for river boats. The latter is implausible.  Warehouses were built from cheap and abundant wood and the river boat era in St. Cloud was quite brief.  Sewer line makes a little sense but the fact that this is on or near the site of an early brewery is telling. And who would make an 18 foot wide, 15 foot tall sewer main and not have an abundance of side passages and maps that show same?

On my first pass through this story I was prepared to "call" this as a probable brewery cave.  What you can see in this picture certainly looks like one.  And St. Cloud had several breweries in this general neighborhood.  But with my coffee cup in hand on a Saturday morning I took a closer look at early maps.  And began to have doubts.

It is difficult to even tell where this picture was taken.  The article references 5th Avenue North between 1st and 2nd Streets.  This is approximately the location of the City Water Department in the 1880s.  The Cathedral High School gymnasium mentioned is actually at the intersection of 4th St. and 6th Avenues North.

This is roughly the location of a creek that ran through this part of town in the 19th century, probably the location mentioned in the article as being the site of a storm drain construction in 1899.   

All three breweries were along the creek.  Here's two of them:

The one on the right is the Enderle Brewery referenced - I think incorrectly - in the article.  The third brewery was just a bit further downstream, closer to the river and really not far at all from the current location of the Cathedral gym.

This section of the map copy was a bit fuzzy, sorry.  But notice that as the creek runs past the Balder and Weber City Brewery it goes underground.  The notation is COV'D RAVINE.

I've decided that the tunnel uncovered in 1949 was probably a section of this covered ravine, either the part already enclosed in this 1884 map or presumably an extension of the tunnel in 1899.  Perhaps the City Water works was the ultimate destination? 

The fabulous St. Peter sandstone from which classic brewery caves are usually fashioned is not common this far north.  I read an explanation somewhere that the Mississippi River has been eroding a deep valley for geological eons.  The point at which the leading edge of the erosion is has of course moved.  In the puny span of time that is our history it has sat right at St. Anthony Falls in downtown Minneapolis. Downstream....steep cliffs of St. Peter sandstone.  Great for brewery caves.  Upstream, flat boring landscape.  Brewers often had to make do with lesser structures and/or above ground ice houses.

That having been said, there is a mention in Land of Amber Waters, that the earliest brewery in town - Kramer and Seberger - had brewery caves on the riverbank between 3rd and 4th street (probably South, it was not located near the other breweries).  As always, don't let the fascination of exploring lead to anything foolish.......

FIRST Robotics Begins - Fall of 2018

In theory FIRST robotics springs to life each year in early January, runs frantically through the six week build season, takes a few deep breaths between Bag 'n Tag day and competition, then goes dormant again.

In practice teams who hope to do well work year round.  As a coach I feel a bit inadequate when I hear about teams gathering for elaborate off season work sessions, building complex practice projects, etc.

But the resources, time, money, human, are finite and you have to work with what you have.

We did a few sponsor visits last spring, then tossed together a Parade Bot, but by and large we are just now firing up long dormant circuits for our 2018/19 campaign.

One sub team is working with a local sponsor to design and fab "ultimate pit equipment".  Sure, there's no competitive advantage to lookin' good at tournaments, but neither does it hurt......

Assorted team members have helped with middle school robotics classes last spring and on an ongoing basis this fall/winter.  One brave soul has even signed up to help me with an upcoming FIRST Lego League tournament where I will publicly demonstrate my ignorance by serving as MC!

And we have at last started weekly meetings.

We are for the next few weeks confined to the downstairs work area.  Our main workshop one floor up has been taken over by "The Spirit of Christmas".  This is a great bunch of Santa's Helpers.  And they do superb work providing gifts to kids who might not get any.  So I won't grumble or "Bah Humbug" but we do have to work around them.

This work space is actually where the team got its start four years ago.  Lots of memories came back.  But I had forgotten how hard it was to take decent photos in a stark white area with fluorescent light and lots of natural illumination coming in through the windows.  This is the only half decent picture I took, and I only captured 8 or 9 of the roughly 20 kids who turned up on a Sunday afternoon to start thinking about robots.

You certainly are, ya stinker....

Just a kid who was having fun rolling a brown bean bag chair around.  His spontaneous quote:

"I am a Dung Beetle".

My Pal Bear

On the far side of the alley lives a gigantic dog named Bear.  He is a good dog.  He just wants what dogs want.  Well, most of what dogs want, he was wearing the Cone of Shame recently after a little trip to the Vet.

He wants people to come by, to scratch his ears, to tell him that he is a good dog, and when possible, to throw something for him.

I try to oblige.

Barbie Jeep Robotics - Part Two

Oh, another picture of the Robotics Engineer Barbies.  Just because...

Our second "Barbie Jeep" is a bigger unit.  This seems to be a Toyota/Disney cross promotional item.  

The geometry of the front wheels here is going to make conversion to four wheel drive prohibitively difficult.  Have a look at the undercarriage of this beast:

It might be possible to put a linear actuator on the front steering unit to turn the wheels.  As always the speed of the mechanisms is an issue.  We hope to have a Grand Prix race through the hallways of the Middle School and crashing into too many walls is not appreciated.  I do have a 12 volt actuator from a satellite dish that might be fast enough if overvolted to 24v.  Or I have on occasion just put caster wheels under the front, raising the front wheels a half inch off the ground and making them entirely decorative.

They seem pretty concerned about post market modifications.  

I like this control device but it has to go.  I have not examined it in detail but suspect it toggles the power between 6 and 12 volts.  The glitter details are nice.

I like a challenge.  Would it be possible to get this baby up to 30 miles per hour?  I'm thinking no.  I don't have electronics that can go over 24 volts.  

  
Stay tuned for regular updates after the Thanksgiving break.  We'll designate this unit as the Barbie Princess Jeep.

Barbie Jeep Robotics - Part One

With our silly Machines Behaving Badly combat robot event behind us I have a new opportunity.  The schedule is different this year, I get the kids for another month.  What a marvelous opportunity to do something even sillier.

I have secured a couple of those battery powered kiddie cars that are generically called "Barbie Jeeps".  Barbie by the way is totes into Robotics these days, recently her maker Mattel came out with this version"

Robotics Engineer Barbies!

Over the next month I will put out regular updates on our conversion of the "Jeeps" to remote control and the addition of assorted electronic and mechanical enhancements. But lets take things at a reasonable pace.  I'll introduce one of the Jeeps today, with projections on its conversion, and save the other for the next post.

With the seat taken off, this is a "Ninja" Power Wheels unit.  I think it has great promise.

"CYCLE SOUNDS" OK, we keep those.  12 volts...hmmm...I know for a fact that these can handle 24 volts without difficulty.

I've modified a few "Jeeps" in my day.  The difficult part is always the front wheels. As usual, these are unpowered and attached to a steering system.  If you are using tank steering on the rear wheels to turn the machine this is a problem.  One solution is to just lock the steering in place.  But then it turns poorly.  Another solution is to lock the steering AND add two more motor/gearbox combos, one for each front wheel.  This gives you four wheel drive.  I think we have enough clearance to do this here.

Here's the back wheels.  Fixed axle but each wheel is hubbed to a gearbox such that it rotates independently.  Nice little gearboxes too....when this machine has finished its mission these will be recycled back into weapon motors for three pound combat robots in the 2019 Machines Behaving Badly Event!

In future postings I'll refer to this one as Ninja Barbie Jeep.

Irrelevant but interesting side note.  I needed a place to store these Jeeps for a couple of months.  My son has a nice shed and let me park them there.  Unfortunately the shed has a bit of a "varmint" problem.  So oddly this Jeep came back to me smelling of skunk and with a bullet hole in the right front bumper.....