Austin and I approached this Egg Drop Challenge with the view of breaking the system. What we set out to do was to get as many achievments as humanly possible since that will get us the best possible score on the assignment. Since the only achievments that we would be unable to get with this outlook were the survival achievments, which only ammounted to three, so we did not really care about those.

With these given parameters all we had to do was make it so that our design fit into an altoids can, and be less than twenty five grams. We were able to accomplish these objectives.

Egg Weight.

Our egg was weighed at 67 grams, this allowed us to get our design up to go to 82 grams to be able to keep it under 25 grams.

Our design ended up weighing 81.9 grams keeping us under all of the weight requirements.

For our project involving the Egg Drop we have decided to try and max out our achievement score. With that we will be doing all of the multimedia achievements, weight achievements, and size achievements.

Our new design of our project has us putting all of the marbles in the separate carts before we take them to their respective bins. With this design we will be able to move the marbles faster than we would have been able to before due to the fact that we are now able to move multiple marbles at the same time.

We believe that we will be able to transport the fifteen marbles in two minutes because we are able to move 8 marbles in one minute. It seems that 15 marbles in two minutes is not far from reality, and to make it even better we have not even finished the coding of our project so that is not even at maximum capacity. Once we actually get to maximum capacity, we should be able to move 10+ marbles in one minute. This will then make the objective of 15 marbles in two minutes very, very doable.

Marble Sorter Update

So our design has changed a little bit and we have changed it to include three carts onto our moving component. This is to allow the fact that we can sort all of the marbles into separate carts at the start, and then we can sort them into their respective bins. This will allow us to move our marbles much faster than before and it will also be a much more reliable set up than we had before.

The only drawback to this change in design is that we will be forced to program more than we had to before. However, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

In progress Marble Sorter

Our basic design for our sorting machine works as follows:

1: Our marbles start off on a ramp leading down into the cart; this ramp has a gate at the start of it to allow marbles to pass through freely when they can.


2: As the marble waits at the gate to be processed, it is put through a test to determine what sorting area it should go through


3: The first test it goes through is to determine the size of the marble. After the size is determined it goes through the appropriate sorting channel, the two channels are big marbles and small marbles.


4: If the marble is small then it drops down into a separate channel, goes down a small ramp, and ends up in the appropriate sorting bin. At that point the sorting of small marbles would be tested to see whether or not they are magnetic.


5: If the small marble is magnetic then it will be picked up and put in a separate bin, yet if it is not then it will be pushed into the bin, thus finishing both the wood and the chromium marbles and their sorting.


6: If the marble is a large marble then it is dropped down into the cart where it then will go through another test, this test involves passing light through the marble and by doing that we can determine what kind of material the marble is made from due to the reflectivity.


7: After that test is completed the cart goes to the appropriate bin based on its results from the test, and pushes the marble into the bin by means of a piston pushing the marble off the cart.



We believe we will be able to sort our fifteen marbles in two minutes due to the fact that we have broken down each marble type into their simplest form.



Here is our prototype so far, sorry for the clutter.

Flowchart

So our flowchart is used to find out if an object is heavier or lighter than fifty pounds. It then sorts the objects and puts them into bins depending on the weight.

RoboPro

Then we have the second, more advanced, robopro command.

First basic Robopro program

Final Creation

This is the follow up to my last post.

Here are our final creations, our machine and what controls it.

Robotic Maneuvering

What my group had to do to complete this project was to create a device that could move back and forth in a specific area and be able to transport materials along with it. The device must be controlled by a potentiometer.

We did this because we were put into a hypothetical situation of having to transport waste to and from a work site.

The who:

David: Was the one who designed all of our coding for our actual machine
Tom: Helped design and put together the hardware that David coded

Rafe and Henry did all of our drawings and took screenshots of the code.

I took all of our pictures and also helped with putting together the hardware

I believe we all made an equal contribution though it was obvious David had the toughtest job.

Here is a work in progress before we finished our final product above.

The conclusion:

Describe why it is important to have branches in programs.

It is important to have switches in the program so that you can account for different changes in the scenario.

Describe an everyday application of a normally closed switch that has not been given as an example.

A main use for open switches in everyday life is for alarms. The magnets cause theswitches to go off in multiple ways to provide for the greatest security possible.

Describe an everyday application of a normally open switch that has not been given as an example.

A great example of this is a doorbell, when you press the switch, the bell rings.

FisherTechnik switches

5. unchecked; 0; not present
6. checked; 1; present

7. It reversed the condition

9. 37; 5,000

11. 1321

12. 1267

14. Possible to switch the wires into other inputs

15. When the Reed switch is in contact with the contact, the value is open

16. It is normally closed

18. The light shining on it = closed photoresistor

20. Reversing the programming

21. Leaving it normally will allow it to be utilized

Partner with Austin Von Pohle

One hobby in my life that I devote a decent amount of time to is video games, and more importantly fighting games. I have been around them ever since I was in kindergarten when my dad would take me to the arcades and we would play Street Fighter together, he always won. And as my life has progressed this hobby has gotten more and more socially accepted and it has gotten to the point where it is accepted in the mainstream media.

Street Fighter, as a competitive "sport", has been on the rise ever since the early 2000's, when the B series of tournaments started. From that point on it has been getting bigger and bigger, and with the release of SF4 in 2008 its exposure blew up. It was featured as the main event in the Evolution tournament series and drew viewers from all over the world with its stream live on the internet.

Street Fighter isn't the only thing that has taken off though in the world of fighting games, yet it is the one that has most benefited from the internet. Other games made themselves big through word of mouth, the Vs series of games.

Since its huge exposure SF has gotten many blogs from different people in the communities; top players, arcade owners, even people who work at Capcom. Players keep updates that tell you what events they are participating in. Arcade owners tell you when they are getting new editions of the games or what events they are holding. Then people in Capcom talk about changes be

Units

Distance m
Time s
Mass kg
Area m^2
Velocity m/s
Density kg/m^3
Gravity m/s^2
Force kgm/s^2
Energy kgm^2/s^2
Power kgm^2/s^3

Surviving at sea

My list ended up being:

1: A 25 Liter container of water

2: A case of Army Rations

3: 2 Boxes of chocolate bars

4: A shaving mirror

5:15 ft of nylon rope

6: 20 square feet of Opaque plastic sheeting

7: A fishing kit

8: A sextant

9: A floating seat Cushion

10: One bottle of 160 per cent proof rum

11: A 10 liter can of oil/petrol mixture

12: A small transistor radio

13: A quantity of Mosquito netting

14: Maps of the Pacific Ocean

15: A can of shark repellent

Wimbeldon

So in our Engineering class we did team building excercises recently as a way to become better problem solvers and to learn how to work in a group. We will be doing these team building excercises often now and we started off with a tennis ball challenge on Tuesday.

What we had to do was allow everyone to touch the tennis ball in the shortest amount of time, whichever team won a best two out of three was declared the winner. We were given a few minutes to prepare and it was obvious that each team quickly went to work determining what was the easiest and fastest way to complete this challenge.

Both teams though soon realized that they were using the same idea because it was the fastest. The idea was to drop the ball off of someone's hands and hold everyone's hand beneath it in a cylinder formation. As the ball would hit their hands they would move them out of the way allowing the ball to continue moving downward and touching everybody's hands.

After each team had a few test runs they were getting their times to near the same amount. I am sure there was difference but it was basically negligbile for the environment we were in.

I personally enjoyed the challenge the way it was, however it could use some harsher parameters. For example; everyone must touch the ball twice, the ball must be in the air, you have to be a certain distance apart, you can't use the same design twice.

Those are just some ways to make the challenge more interesting instead of it devolving into the same thing each round. It was like a Marvel match, I mean after everyone discovered the best team in the game, MSS, it was all you saw. Of course there was some variation but it was harder to win with them so most people didn't even go for the challenge.