Agenda, 10/30/2008

Teamwork - start of the meeting:

• Mrs. McCurdy would like to take a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting to go over the revised schedules with the team using Danny's chart.
• Talk about what time management strategies they have employed so far as a team and as individuals, since this is something the judges will be looking for under the Roles and Responsibities section of the Teamwork/FLL Values rubric.
• Have a group brainstorm about the puppet stage.
• 1st 1/2: Michael and Danny (team mates are in project)
• 2nd 1/2: Trevor, Andrew and Alex*

Project - (1st 1/2 only, Mrs. Naughton leaves at 5:00):

• Joey, Paul, Nate and Andrew do a read through on the puppet show as their project work - to get our timing down.
• Web site work if time.

Robot:

• 1st 1/2: Alex, Patrick, Trevor
• 2nd 1/2: Michael, Nate, Paul, Joey and Danny*

*Joey/Danny & Alex can trade if they want.

Meeting Minutes, Sunday, 10/26/2008

I hope you have time to read this long post. The team has had a great week!

A big thanks to Mrs. McCurdy for being our Teamwork coach. Their primary focus is to concentrate on how they can work together better as a team, also working on other team goals needed for the tournament. Having 3 separate activities during the meeting: Project, Teamwork and Robots, allows the whole team to stay engaged without so much distraction - and it really worked great!

Teamwork:

• Xander revised the miscellaneous schedule (nothing scheduled for 10/30)
• Michael revised the project schedule (writing/editing is listed for 10/30)
• Danny revised the mission schedule. In the new schedule, all missions will be completed and jockeys selected by the end of the 11/2 meeting. Working backwards from the tournament date, he scheduled one practice tournament (12/4), two robot jockey practices meetings (11/23 and 11/30). and five meetings (11/6, 11/13, 11/16, and 11/20) to combine missions, and have the jockeys train with coach assistance. It's rational, but not reasonable, and I think Danny understands that. He said that what he personally had learned about time management through FLL was that schedules can be revised. Beats panic!

Project:

• The boys have been working on a web site to share their findings from the project. Once published, we'll add a link to this blog.
• Paul and Nate agreed to have Puppet prototypes by next Sunday's meeting.
• Scenery and Props need to wait until we have the Puppets settled, but we will need:
  3 scene changes and 1 window change (Pierre's and Alfred's apartments will be the same except for the scene out the window)Radio (to be built out of Legos by Joey)Ghost Laptop (to be built out of Legos by Trevor)Special effect noises: music for the radio station, sound effects for ghostly movement and the heat wave Fog Machine (for our cloud formation at the end)
• We will also need a puppet stage

Robot - Activity Saturday and Sunday:

Saturday was open table:

• Joey and Danny completed their mission! Great work. They tried a second robot and it had some trouble, but read on.
• Alex and his dad came over. Alex is the 3rd mission group in the "Mega" program, thus the robot location is not very predictable. He worked on locating his robot on the mat using sensors. He has a strategy and started programming it.
• Paul worked on prototyping a tank track to replace the ramp, but decided to abandon after some testing. It was a nice design.
• Michael, Andrew and Nate finished the day and made a lot of progress.
• ==> Andrew has made a huge discovery for the team. He had finished his mission but when he tried a 2nd robot, it did not behave the same. The first robot always drove left on a straight run, but the second one was even worse. He tried swapping wheels on one of the robots and found that it drove right! He deduced that the tires were different sizes and since then has found 2 matched sets for our robots that now enable them to drive straight. This is a very big deal, allowing us to have 2 robots that behave similarly enough to make them interchangeable among teams. They are much more predictable.
• ==> Michael and Nate made improvements to their mission and reliably deliver their cargo to the ice and have a good direction towards the ice drill. The bear is sometimes sleeping, but they've deferred that until after they accomplish the rest of their mission. They've got some good teamwork going.

Sunday:

• Alex, Michael, Andrew & Nate arrived 1/2 hour early, so Paul and Danny joined them. It was a very productive little pre-meeting with a lot of progress for a short time.
• ==> Andrew finished going through the wheels for matched sets. He was very systematic.
• ==> Paul modified his line follower, adding parameters for sensor, line side and power. He tested it and it works nicely. It's called ELF_1 for Extended Line Follower, Version 1.
• Patrick and Trevor made progress on the house mission, adding ELF_1, and got to the point of sensing the wall with the arm by sensing rotations, as suggested by Paul. They started, and Trevor finished Wednesday, a motor assist that now allows them to sense the wall without adding a touch sensor! Fantastic teamwork.
• Alex added ELF_1 to his program before time ran out.

Agenda, Thursday, 10/23/2008

Project is going very well. Time to pick parts for the puppet show and also decide how they're going to make the puppets.

Michael work with Mrs. Naughton on his cloud ide and how to work it in to the rest of the content.

Continue robot mission work.

Agenda, Sunday 10/4/2008

We are again going with a 2 hour Sunday meeting, some kids come late, some kids leave early.
This is to minimize the distractions of kids working on robot table.

3:00 - 3:45

• Alex, Paul (project)
• Michael, Nate, Patrick, Andrew, Trevor (robot)

3:45 Danny Start
4:15 Trevor Finish
4:15 - 5:00

• Patrick, Michael & Nate (project)
• Danny, Andrew, Paul & Alex (robot)

not present at meeting: - Joey

Minutes, 9/18/2008

Work for next meeting:
- Everyone write their bio text.
- Project research on the new topic of temperature extremes.
- Mr. Emge order tires for robots.

Project:
Patrick presented results of his research. The problems he found and why:
1) heat and cold waves, because they're the most deadly
2) floods - because they're the most costly
The team had a good discussion and then voted 6 to 3 to pick the problem of heat and cold extremes.
Joey, Alex and Danny worked with Mrs. Naughton to come up with questions for an expert.

Robot:
- Andrew tested the new tires and found they behaved identically to the old ones in a straight line test.
- Paul tested the line follower and it didn't work with the new sensor location.
- Trevor entered sensor data and built a new jig.
- Various other work done on missions.

Misc:
- Paul volunteered to take photos for the Bios.

Meeting Minutes, 9/14/2008

Project:
Michael and Nate led a vote on the project topic. Droughts and floods were chosen and then extreme weather. The challenge project was re-read and the team realized that it's not the climate, or future climate, but rather problems due to current climate. So, extreme weather is the cause, but are drought and floods the main problems? Mrs. Naughton suggested that they do research to answer the following questions before the next meeting so that they can make informed decisions. The link below may help, but they should also explore other resources.
http://www.sws.uiuc.edu/atmos/statecli/General/Illinois-climate-narrative.pdf
1. What is the climate of IL/our area?
2. What are some of the problems we face due to our climate?

Robot Missions:
Please see the 2008 Mission Tracker in the links to the right. Each team member was able to pick their first or second choice of which of the 4 mission groups to work on based on their decision last meeting to assign 4, 2, 2 & 1 persons each. The coaches each took a team to mentor. The 1st group nominated Andrew to be the team lead.

Robot Design:
Paul, Patrick, Michael, Andrew, Danny and Nate worked on the robot design. The rest of the team was content to work on their missions and let this sub-team make the design decisions. Below are the details, but they decided to use the new design.

• New arm is better but they will stiffen by triangulation.
• Light sensor needs to be tested and Paul volunteered. The issue is line following, straight and 90-degree turns. They think straight lines are OK and but sharp turns may be a problem. If no sharp turns are needed, then this is OK but Paul will work out the performance.
• They think the small wheels will be OK if they use a ramp to get into the research area. Paul had a prototype ramp with magnetic Lego's. Looked cool but needs some work. Paul will also continue work on a ramp.
• Final issue was repeatability of straight lines with the small wheels. Andrew volunteered to test this.

Miscellaneous:

• Still need display mission printouts
• Need to display project challenge for reference.
• Need soft copy of Alex's schedule for the web site.
• Mission tracker is updated with assignments and coach mentors

Agenda, 9/14/2008

Project:
Finish selecting topic and start research on it (1 week behind)

Robot:
Discuss robot design and how we finalize
Pick mission assignments and start working on them (1 week behind)


Misc:
Finish posting missions
Continue sensor characterization, get into Nate's spreadsheet
How to organize software: MyBlocks analysis (Alex), other ideas: Michael, Andrew, Paul