Today’s plan was to finish the CAD.
Roughly as we started, AG made one last attempt to convert me to oval spindexer. Anyway after looking at the robot a large circular spindexer fits. So that’s that.
RM got a crayola cad that is nice, pretty fast. And then some minor discussion and he got to work on mounting hopper etc. RS on spindexer.
Anyway the robot looks surprisingly simple in retrospect. Hopefully it’ll be fast to build.
Shooter was promised to be done at like 4. Not done yet. Theoretically it’ll be done at 8. Tomorrow. Let’s double that, that’s ilke Saturday morning. It better be done by then.
Anyway hopefully CAD will be done tomorrow? and shooter tomorrow?
what is this absurd deadline pushing, skull emoji. whenever this happens programming suffers. but it doesn’t look like I can stop it as captain.
probably, it’s my fault for not insisting on an easier design.
Mr. Hadzic came in today. Turret was brought up within 5 minutes :skull:.
Anyway he had the standard objections. and we had a standard reply. It looks like he is just going to accept it…
He does give some useful precautions. i.e. make sure stuff is servicable (wires!) (chain! we’re going to convert to belt for this reason).
Anyway shooter control is brought up. Obviously bang-bang is not the thing to do, he tells me to do a P loop (reasonable, that’s what I’d do anyway). We do it (I tune the PID in record time LMAO).
There are brownout issues that lead to robot disconnects. I just like ignored them earlier but well they are actually an issue. Anyway those occur and Mr. H and I take the rest of the time debugging it. no progress. rip.
it might actually be that electrical is cooked. I don’t think CET has the expertise to debug this either (maybe I’m better in this area actually, and I suck ngl). ……….
Something I wanted to talk about, earlier, that i never really got the chance to talk about. it’s quite hard to find people that, if you tell them to do something, they have the capability to do it and will execute it well.
Like let’s just say “find this wire” “find this camera” “wire this”. I tell like 90% of people to do it and I turn around and it never gets done, or even attempted for >1 minute. The remaining 10% is like 5 people.
Of those like 5 people if I tell them “make this prototype” perhaps like 2 or 3 will try. But there’s like only one person with the sense to lead it from begin to end and actually do it well.
Actually there is almost exactly one person. KL. (ok maybe more but not that much more; well maybe me? I think I can do it, I’m not as technically skilled as KL but I have sense at least.)
It is kinda sad that for all the education and engineering courses and whatnot that these people go through, most of them don’t have this ability. (and actually KL is not your A+ honors student. but we need more of him.)
And for people who can lead the team through the entire build season it takes quite a bit of motivation along with grit. As one of the (very) few people who are doing this (in my own feeling / opinion), it’s quite tiring too. I’m like running around making sure everything I need done is getting done. And more often than not, it’s not getting done and I need to help out and get it done. And I have to do it over the entire build season…
At least, hopefully at some point soonTM we will hit into the more-or-less regular cycle of fabrication and assembly. And there’ll be less to manage. And I can get to programming. Or at least it won’t be as hectic as trying to get 3 different prototypes done at once.
Sometimes I wish I hadn’t bothered to take on the responsiblities of team captain at all. It’s not like I have the position. It’d be so much simpler to just… only be programming captain. And sometimes I wish I was just a normal programmer back then, and I get a mechanism and just code it. Life was simple then. Life is not simple now.
And if I wanted life to be even simpler maybe I should have become a mechie. A certain RG has a lot of sense in this respect.
We better make it to lehigh, at least. or else i’d be rather tilted. all this work, we should at least make lehigh…..
it’s funny, actually. most likely I won’t be present on at least 2 days of competition too, and maybe I’ll miss lehigh for CPW if we make it. LMAO. If we make lehigh we better make worlds… ok I’m getting a bitt too unrealisitc here.
why am i even doing this?
why?
why? why am i trying to do this? it seems more and more doomed every day. but why do I persist?
p.s. looking for anyone who is good at design or programming to take a lead role. for design, looking for someone with good sense, cuz our team needs some of that. for programming, looking for someone who can do stuff. like there is stuff I need executed and it is not getting executed. not that any of 41 or (relevant portions of) walrus will be looking at this but whatever.
