Hello again, everyone! We’re halfway through another week of the build season, and this time we’ve been able to march through without any scheduling interruptions (fingers crossed that it stays that way). As usual, we have a lot we’d like to show off, so let’s get right to it!
First and foremost, the Build Team has been abuzz with activity, and we’ve finally got some real results to show for it. The chassis is fully functional, and although it isn’t going to be winning any competitions without the attachments, we should be able to get it moving by the end of the week. Speaking of attachments, there’s a lot to report there as well: the prototype climbing rig has passed inspection with such flying colors that we’re moving to directly convert the prototype into the actual arm. This is going to allow us to save time and materials on setting up the aluminum shaft for the arm and should require minimal adjustments to be ready for attachment to the robot. As for the Cargo Cannon, we’ve put together the Lexan glass frame for the cannon barrel, and expect to have the neo brushless motors ready for the firing mechanism ready in the near future.
Speaking of the neo brushless motors, the Programming Team threw their whole weight behind completely cleaning up the code, and having finished that (of course, we’ll be lucky if it stays that way for more than fifteen seconds), have nearly finished adapting the code to work with a Sparkmax motor controller. This required us to switch from PWM to CAN connections, as well as some other coding hoops that my associates who actually know how to program assure me were fairly trivial, and soon after we had a fully functioning control system for the motors!
On the business end, we’ve finally managed to get the Instagram up and running again, so make sure to follow frc5902 on Instagram if you haven’t already! (or don’t, if you’d really rather not; the blog has just as much info anyway) Aside from that, it’s mostly been awards and budgeting; we’ve finished our submission for the Woodie Flower’s Award, and are pretty well positioned to get the Dean’s list one done before the end of the week as well. With Chairman’s on the horizon, though, we should have more interesting updates to give on the filming of the video submission.
And that’s just about everything! We’ve been having a solid week thus far, and if we can keep up this pace we’ll stay well poised to be successful in competition. So until next time, thank you, and stay tuned!
