Today we began working on building a prototype of our fish feeder. Our plan is to build a small raft out of PVC pipes and pool noodles that will hold a hopper with fish food. A waterwheel powered by the water current in the shad tank will turn a PVC pipe axle, which powers a conveyor belt that dispenses the food into the water. Here are some pictures of us designing it:
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Today we visited the fish hatchery again, this time to focus on the problem we had chosen to tackle - the feeder for the shad pool. We met with Kerstin Cody again, who showed us the shad and explained the problem more clearly. She demonstrated how she and the other workers have to go to the pool every now and then to sprinkle fish food using a spoon onto the surface of the water so that it won't sink. We also asked her some questions about the dimensions of the pool and how often the shad need to be fed.
Afterwards, we returned to the Magas home to brainstorm some solutions. One simple solution would be to add a ramp to the existing fish feeder to allow the food to drop from a lower height. However, this wouldn't make too much of a project for us. We also came up with the idea of using a floating platform with a conveyor belt or a set of screens that would dispense the food directly onto the surface of the water. We'll develop these ideas more in the following meetings. Today we visited the North Attleboro Fish Hatchery along with our sister team, the Hippogriffs. Kerstin Cody, a fish biologist and technician, gave us a tour of the hatchery and explained what the hatchery does to raise fish and release them into the wild. She also mentioned several problems that the hatchery had:
Today we continued brainstorming ideas for Project. Here's our list as of now:
Problems with or facing animals:
Human problems that animals could solve:
We also started making a list of potential field trip locations:
Today we began brainstorming possible topics and animals that we can do for our project. Our ideas so far:
Today we held a kickoff meeting for the new challenge, Animal Allies! The challenge was released yesterday and we're very excited to start the new season. First, we watched the FLL release videos and set up the board. We then decided on team roles
before brainstorming some preliminary strategies for Robot Game. So far, we have 3 ideas that need a proof-of-concept: something to drop off the Shark Tank while the robot completes Service Dog, a manure catapult, and a wall climber for the biomimicry wall. After today's productive meeting, we can't wait to see what we can accomplish this season! We can't believe it: there's only one week until regional competition!
We're frantically trying to get everything done, and so far we've succeeded. Both our programs and our script only need a few more improvements before they're ready for competition. For our final week, we need to PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE! Let's go, Crocobots! 4 weeks until competition!
Today was a quite productive meeting covering all 3 parts of FLL: Core Values, Project, and Robot Game. Since we had a smaller number of people today, both teams participated in a human knot Core Values exercise together. It was very fun and sometimes painful, especially when Mr. Desrosiers suggested all of us but Furneaux close our eyes and Furneaux was the only one directing everyone to free themselves of the knot. The exercise showed that we need to work on our communication skills, which we can improve on over the next four weeks. For Robot Game, Joel rebuilt the Compost machine that hadn't been working properly. Jackson and Dennis worked on the Demolition retrieval program and succeeded near the end of the meeting. Dylan continued to improve the design of his attachment to dump bars into the Sorter, which was too heavy and didn't have enough support. Joel also worked with Furneaux to develop a viable attachment for Truck. We also went through the rubrics for robot judging and found that we still need work on keeping our programs consistent, as well as documenting our design process. Moriah revised our strategy and calculated the maximum points we could score is 587, which is quite good. Overall, we still have most of our programs to finish. The toughest challenges to figure out will be Truck and Sorter, but we still have time! For Project, we held a brief meeting discussing our solution to turn polypropylene (plastic resin #5) into 3D printer filament. We decided to develop an industrial-scale product that would be able to take PP from MRFs, clean, dry, and shred it, and extrude it into filament for use. We still need to contact the experts at WM and at the UMass Lowell Plastics Department to figure out the details, but it's coming along great! Keep up the good work, Crocobots! Today we met at the Magases' house again. For Crocobots, it was just the three of us: Jackson, Dylan, and Moriah. We mainly worked on building some equipment for us to be able to remotely activate the Compost mission model and/or bring the compost puck back to Safety. Our two ideas: a cart powered by gravity and a glorified extendable accordion stick! Pictures are down below. The cart was an idea we came up with last week, which Jackson had some time to tinker with, while the stick is actually a little toy that we built over the summer and saw as something we could use to complete missions without leaving Safety, as it reaches almost all the way across the board when extended but still fits in Base in its compact form.. It's also the official Crocobot weapon (you can extend it and retract it quickly and poke someone with it). Both still have some problems that we still need to work out. The cart's weight lever is restricted by the height of Base (12 inches), which means that in its current form it doesn't go as far as we need it to. For the stick, it is not very accurate (we ended up punching the plastic bag and turtle multiple times while testing it) and we still need to figure out how to attach it to the robot. Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun building and testing these two crazy contraptions in the hopes that at least one, if not both, will work out for us.
Welcome back to the new season of FIRST LEGO League, Trash Trek! Today was the official release of the challenge and all the necessary documents. We met at Mrs. Magas's home to watch the YouTube introduction videos, build the mission models, and start to plan out our strategies going forward. After 3 hours of diligent(ish) work, all the models were completed and some cool ideas for exploiting loopholes were suggested. Our homework: to read through the entire Challenge packet and create a basic Robot Game strategy for next week's meeting. Great job everyone for starting the season strong!
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AuthorWe are the Big Red Lightning Crocobots. This is our OFFICIAL blog! Archives
December 2016
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