A rainy Saturday. Watched some soccer and F1 racing. Worked out on the treadmill. Ash and I hung out at home on the couch with the chihuahuas.
Student Charm
The Robotics Club is getting ready for their event in May, in which we will be competing the the MATE ROV Competition. The students are hard at work building the ROV, and we are very excited to watch them compete. They have been operating on their own for most of the time trying to create the ROV, and its fun to watch them work on all the different problems they have to solve. I took this quick snapshot the other day after they finished having a meeting in our classroom to go over next steps for the ROV. My favorite bullet point is second from the bottom.
SumoBots
Our sophomore students have begun their SumoBot project. This project teaches students how to design and build their own custom autonomous robots. The goal is to have two robots compete in a circular ring and try to push the other one out the ring. The robots can only be turned on, they are not actively controlled by their creators. The function of the robots must be coded and allow the robots to work fully autonomously. For my end, I added some design tutorials for students to create their own 3D printed casters and wheels for the robots. The caster is a simple holder for a ball bearing, while the wheel is a rim to hold a thick rubber tube. A few photos below of the CAD and actual objects.
Pi Radio March Update
A quick update on the Pi Radio, since it has been a few weeks when it was last mentioned. It works, however, still waiting on the code to get it to function when power is applied, rather than having to SSH into the Pi and manually start the code. My co-teacher is helping with this, so once he is able to make it work, we should be able to package everything up and finalize everything. For now, here are some photos of the volume and tuning knobs wired to the Pi.
LED Acrylic Light Box
Wanted to showcase a few projects that are happening in the shop right now. The first is from one of our sophomores, Shubh P ’24, who took the design on on his LED Light Box to another level. Shubh has put a lot of attention to detail in his project from CAD to circuitry. He introduced several types of circuitry components to the design, which include potentiometers as dials, 7 segment display, and pushbutton switches. In addition, he utilized different sized wood in his CAD model to create patterns within the framework of the structure of the box. It really turned out well. Unfortunately, when taking photos of it today, there was a minor glitch in the coding, so he is going to fix the issue and I will post some more photos below.
In addition to the light box, Prince A ’23 is working on updating an older project from a previous student, a bluetooth speaker. The circuitry for the project is being modernized, as is the speaker box. Below you can see some test fitting of speakers in cardboard.
And lastly, Clark B ’23 and Daniel R ’22 are working on getting our traffic light fully functioning. Clark has been making circuit boards on our Bantam Tools mill and writing code to make the light work in unison with the school’s bell system. You can see his array of relays below in blue. Daniel has designed a connector to fit the traffic light on an old tv stand. We decided to print the connector out of a carbon fiber filament for strength, and after some trial and error, we are pretty happy with the final result. You can see it below in black.
