The second tournament is almost here
Now that I am looking at the blog, I see that I have not posted anything for over a month! I have been busy both at work and with the team. Here are some updates:
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After the first tournament, we have been working on the shooter. We designed a new gear system that is supposed to speed up the shooter wheel rotation more than 9 times. We were not sure the little motor will be able to handle the load, but our tests on Wednesday went really well. The wheel now spins blazingly fast! We also use some duct tape to increase friction inside the shooter tube, and the result is that the particles actually shoot out from the tube! Before Saturday, we want to increase the friction even more.
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We employed the opposite strategy on the aiming mechanism, gearing it down, so it moves slower and with more power. We did not test it yet, but we hope to get much more control over the aiming.
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We still need to improve the claw that loads particles into the shooter. It is not completely reliable, and it does not push the particles far enough when we try to shoot upwards.
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Our programmers rewrote the code, using functions to reduce repetitions, and thoroughly checking for
nullpointers. We should now have much more robust program, I hope this will eliminate most of the crashes we experienced during the first tournament when our battery power was low.
Today we need to test everything, and a do a lot of practicing so the drives are comfortable with the controls tomorrow.
I am looking forward to see you tomorrow in Kettering!