This post covers two meetings, 10/12 and 10/14. I was busy at work and did not have time to post updates for each meeting.
The team is now pretty much divided into the robot building group and the programming group, although we have several members going back and forth between the two groups to make sure the groups communicate well. I would still like everybody on the team to have at least some level of participation in both activities.
The robot group now started the actual building. They did some modification to the last year base to better fit their designs for particle collection and shooting. The also re-attached the drive motors to the base. The next goal is to actually build the collecting and shooting mechanisms, and to attach the electronic parts so that the programming team can start testing their code.
With the programming team we went over the code from last year and learned how to find and initialize hardware, and how to use the x-box controllers in the code. I planned to go over the basics of Android Studio, but unfortunately I forgot the power cable for my laptop at home, and as the battery on my ancient work laptop is completely dead, the laptop was completely useless. We ended up practicing coding at code.org instead. The code.org website is an excellent resource for learning basic coding principles, and I highly recommend all members (not just the coding group) of the team to create an account there and do the exercises. However, we will not have time to practice coding on code.org or using processing during team meeting from now on. The tournament is less than a month away, and we really need to devote all available team meeting time to things that students cannot do on their own at home. Please practice with processing and on code.org at home as often as possible, but come to the meeting prepared to work on the robot, whether you are building or coding!
I will see you all on Wednesday!