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For the upcoming SMART meeting (in just over a week!) your task is to build a
robot that can do Pumpkin Chuckin! Throw any LEGO element or elements as far as
possible, without doing any damage to our facilities! Your device must be built
entirely out of LEGO. If you want something more robotic, have it aim for a
target. The robot must be able to sense the target, and aim.
See you in a week!
--
David Schilling
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I want to thank everyone who participated in this year's SMART display at
BrickCon. It was absolutely amazing! We couldn't have done it without everyone's
help. Every element was crucial, and worked amazingly! Named "BallMageddon"
because either it was going to be a catastrophic failure, or a spectacular
exhibit that everyone who saw it would remember for a LONG time! I'm very
pleased to say it was the latter!
Here's who contributed:
Gus designed the display and an amazing 'wave' that carried the balls in front
of the display.
Kyle built the final lift that brought the balls into the display, as well as
the sorter that took the balls coming out of the display, and returned them to
their proper bins.
Andrew built the "rainbow stairs", one of the two most commented on parts of the
display, which took the balls coming out of the display and gave them their
initial lift to get them rolling towards their destination.
Sean built a wonderful ball escalator that took the balls from near ground-level
and got them all the way to the top of the bins where they got sorted by Kyle's
sorter.
Of course the wonderful and beautiful hoppers built by Dan were essential. I'm
not sure how many versions he built before creating one that wouldn't jam. Now
he understands the many ways that balls will form voids when you try to pull one
out of a pile. I'm not sure that he entirely believed us when he volunteered to
build the hoppers. Also worth mentioning here is Doug's interesting pattern to
stretch bricks to allow such large bins to be built with a limited supply of
parts. And equally important was Alex's contribution of building pushers to get
the balls onto the conveyors! Thanks to this vital improvement, we didn't have
to stir the balls constantly to make sure that we had the constant supply of
balls we needed!
I built the display generator, and want to thank Craig for the suggestion of
rejecting balls by default.
Craig built one of the other much-commented on part of the display: a wonderful
rotating loop that lifted balls. He took the advice that the public loves to see
interesting motion, and that the most interesting part of the display is the
motion the balls go through to get to the display, which only provided a
rationale to the balls movement.
Craig also built a wonderful arm that took the rejected balls and returned them
to be sorted. Unfortunately we couldn't get this working on Saturday, as there
were so many other problems that needed to be solved first, but Craig got the
arm working very quickly on Sunday, and it worked like a charm!
One part of the display that didn't officially make it into the display proper
was Mark's balancing, ball-carrying robots. Originally the intent was that these
robots would carry the reject balls from the display generator back to the
sorter (a role that was taken over by Craig's arm). But Mark wisely recommended
that with two extremely complex and error in-tolerant displays, it was better to
separate them and get them working independantly. At some later date we can
combine them. In any case, Mark DID get his balancing robot display working, and
it was equally interesting to watch! I look forward to seeing how this part of
the display evolves in the future.
With a display like BallMageddon, the balls need to be 100% reliable on their
path from the generator to the display board. One lost ball will shift the
entire display, and just two lost balls will result in an incomprehensible mess.
So I want to provide a final and very heartfelt THANK YOU! to Gus for all the
debugging in getting the display working reliably over the weekend. It started
off requiring constant human help to continue working. By early Sunday, though,
it would run for hundreds of balls without any error at all.
Thanks again, to everyone who participated, and all your wonderful devices! I've
thrown together two videos of our display. Please check them out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jeioJzvNe8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITt-zFTKFXI
--
David Schilling
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This Wednesday SMART is doing a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math)
outreach to help some of our younger members that have won a spot in Phase Two
of this years MoonBots competition. Public hours are from 5:30 to 7; we can
start setting up at 4:30. The location is the gym at Westminster Chapel, 13646
Northeast 24th Street in Bellevue.
If you have any ball lifting mechanisms, or any of the other parts to our
BrickCon display that you'd like to show, please bring them on Wednesday. If you
have any other robots you'd like to show, please bring these as well!
Looking forward to see you this Wednesday!
--
David Schilling
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Just a reminder about the SMART meeting this Saturday where we’ll start putting
together our new display, figure out all those interesting interactions that we
never would unless we try first, and hopefully get blown away by how cool this
is going to be! See you around 2pm in the Woodinville library!
--
David Schilling
In lugnet.org.us.smart, David Schilling wrote:
> In order to have enough time to work out the kinks in our contraption, at the
> last meeting we decided we'd get together again this month to test how things
> work make any necessary changes to the interfaces between units. So I've
> reserved the Woodinville library for July 23rd from 2pm til 4:30. Same place we
> met last month. This is a definitely a build and play meeting. Bring not only
> your devices you've made, but also extra LEGO so that you can make improvements,
> and perhaps even build extra devices while we're there.
>
> If you're just catching up now, read previous posts in this thread for details
> on the interfaces and what sort of devices we're building.
>
> Happy July 4th tomorrow, and see you in 3 weeks.
>
> --
> David Schilling
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In order to have enough time to work out the kinks in our contraption, at the
last meeting we decided we'd get together again this month to test how things
work make any necessary changes to the interfaces between units. So I've
reserved the Woodinville library for July 23rd from 2pm til 4:30. Same place we
met last month. This is a definitely a build and play meeting. Bring not only
your devices you've made, but also extra LEGO so that you can make improvements,
and perhaps even build extra devices while we're there.
If you're just catching up now, read previous posts in this thread for details
on the interfaces and what sort of devices we're building.
Happy July 4th tomorrow, and see you in 3 weeks.
--
David Schilling
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We had a great meeting last Saturday! There were a lot of good ideas and
suggestions made, and everyone seems really excited about our new display. To
summarize the interface between modules, the inputs are 6 inches high, and at
the meeting we decided the output should be at least 12 inches high. Talking
with Gus after the meeting, I think that a 9 inch high output will probably be
good enough, so anything between 9 and 12 would be good. Ball rate should
minimally be one ball every ten seconds, with twice that being a good goal. And
faster is better, but much more important is reliability. Your devices should be
able to run for eight hours or so without requiring (much) maintenance, and
without loosing balls or switching their order (unless you accurately unswitch
them later).
There was a request for another meeting on July 23rd. I will book a room for
that date, and send a confirmation email soon. At the meeting we will put
together what has been built so far to iron out difficulties, and inspire each
other! Remember, the more modules, the more interesting this will be!
By the way, Dan, who volunteered to build the ball hoppers, could you email me.
Since our two units interface directly with each other much more tightly than
the other units probably will, I'd like to discuss what we need from each other.
Remove the spam bot from my email address. Thanks!
--
David Schilling
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Due to the amount of interest expressed at the last meeting, we'll be having a
SMART meeting this month: on June 18th, at the Woodinville Library from 2 to
5pm. They only have a single meeting room, to the left in the lobby.
The purpose of the meeting is to prepare for the SMART display at BrickFest.
What we will need most are lots and lots of "DUPLO ball elevators". This is a
variation, a 'giant' version of the great ball contraption. Requirements are
that you accept a single DUPLO ball, starting near table level (we'll get the
exact height to you very soon) and be able to lift the ball, and drop it off at
a higher elevation. Any elevation gain is good as long as it's at least 3
inches, but the higher the better.
While only single balls are required to be lifted, there is a throughput
requirement which we have yet to formalize, but it will almost certainly require
you to lift balls in less than 10 seconds. An even more important requirement is
*reliability*! Balls cannot be dropped or lost for our display to work out the
way we want it to.
So start building a ball elevator today! You can use whatever mechanism you
like, stationary or mobile robots, or just mechanical devices (no NXT required).
You can lift a single ball then go back to get the next one, or you can have a
'chain' of ball lifting mechanisms where each ball gets lifted as it comes in.
You can have something like an escalator, or something like a back-hoe. But if
you build something that 'throws' balls, don't forget it needs to be 100%
reliable, and able to work for many hours without falling apart! (You'll have to
convince us that a ball thrower will work that reliably to be included in the
display. Not that you aren't welcome to build one anyway, just for fun!)
Looking forward to seeing you (and many interesting ball elevators) in two
weeks!
--
David Schilling
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Mark Kenworthy has created a new google group for SMART with the goal to ease
communications within our group. The name of the group is smart_robotics.
To keep the group clean and away from the despicable acts of spammers, the
group is closed. Please email Mark to be added to the group. Mark's email is
mark at (or as they say in Sweden A with an elephant trunk) kenworthymachine dot
(in Sweden point) com.
If you are interested in regular communications within the group please send
Mark an email. This will be the place where we talk about upcoming meetings,
past meetings, and preparations for events such
Gus
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The next SMART Meeting is this Saturday May 21.
Challenge for the meeting is to build a robot that resembles some type of
creature, real or pretend.
We will also do an mini-class/group programming with NXC. Bring a robot and a
laptop and we will see if we can't get some basic NXC programs working on it.
The best way to get NXC (assuming you have a PC) is to install BricxCC. You
can find it here:
http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/
The meeting is at 2pm at DigiPen in Redmond.
See you then.
Gus
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Just a quick reminder about the next SMART meeting in about two weeks...
--
David Schilling
In lugnet.org.us.smart, David Schilling wrote:
> We had a great meeting a week an a half ago, and saw a lot of really cool
> drawing robots!
>
> The next SMART meeting will be April 30th, at 2pm. The mini-challenge we voted
> on was to do "chimney climbing". Build a robot that can climb up the inside of a
> pipe, or box, or between two walls, etc. For those who want a tougher challenge,
> start at the top, go to the bottom, drop off a load, then climb back up again.
> The motivation for this is Santa Claus, dropping off a present. So I guess
> you'll need to do it without being noticed as well! Perhaps picking up some
> cookies (or batteries?) and milk before climbing back up?
>
> As usual, modify the challenge to suit your skills. If you want to climb UP and
> drop of a package, then climb back down again, that would be even more
> difficult. Perhaps starting your robot outside of the chimney first. If you want
> a simpler version, perhaps just do a controlled climb down a pipe. The
> motivation for this might be a chimney sweep.
>
> For this mini-challenge, there is no 'standard' for the chimney. So you'll need
> to bring your own pipe, box, chimney, or whatever. Please don't bring anything
> too heavy or too long. We don't want to damage the facilities, or cause the very
> nice people who let us use them to no longer like us. If you need some
> guidelines, don't bring a pipe longer than 5 feet, or anything weighing more
> than, say 20 pounds. Mostly just use common sense. Thanks!
>
> --
> David Schilling
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