MY BAND!!!!!!

About a month ago I was invited to play for a band: IRP (Instrument Rated Pilots). At first we were just going to play in the Battle of the Bands, but all of a sudden there were three events we were practicing for. Acousticafe: a campus event where various bands from on campus play while people watch and eat and talk. Chapel in Dallas: I don't know much about this, except that we're going to lead Monday morning worship for a private highschool in Dallas, and that LeTourneau is paying for room and board for us (we're going to spend Sunday night there because Dallas is two hours away). Battle of the Bands: the main event, and the one we will be practicing for the most.

Anyway, last night we played at Acousticafe, and I got a friend to get some pictures. He decided to also take some videos, which was pretty cool. The sound quality is terrible, but it makes the whole place a lot more real when you see a movie.

The first one is of our first song, "Enough", which we raced though because we were a little nervous. The second video is of my favorite song of the ones we played last night. Actually, it's more like they were recording themselves goofing off and then they happened to point the camera towards us near the end.... but oh well. Atleast you can hear a little part of the song, even though the sound quality is teeeeeerrible. Once we get the songs practiced to perfection, we're going to record them, then I'll put them on here so you can hear what they actually sound like. Enjoy the videos, I certainly enjoyed playing.

DartBot 2020

Here's our second LEGOs project. The objective was to make a robot that could receive x and y coordinates which corresponded to a target, and then shoot the target with a dart.

Part of the assignment for this project was to make an AIM (Action Item Matrix) before building or anything like that. AIM is basically a fancy name for a to-do list. Well, after spending hours deciding what had to be done, who was to do it, and by when it was to be done, we decided it really wasn't worth it. If we were designing something more complex, say a space station, the perhaps an AIM would be useful. But for just building a little LEGO robot, it's really not necessary, but is in fact hindersome.

Anyway, I was given the task of building the robot. So I did, but it had to be almost completely rebuilt by Eric because my design didn't work properly. Eric's did though, because he's pretty much a genius.

But enough talking, and onto the videos. The first one is of us testing it, and the second one is of the actual demonstration in class. For the demonstration, we had to make three shots. For each shot, the target was in a different location. The instructor gave us the coordinates for the position of the target for each shot, we didn't have to figure it out for ourselves. We transmitted coordinates to the robot using the beeps from the little thing with the blinking lights, which you will see if you watch the video. The robot would then use the coordinates to calculate how far it had to move right or left, and at what angle to launch the dart. The first two targets were just straight ahead, so it didn't have to move at all, just aim. The third target has off to the side, so it had to move. The class average was to hit one of the targets... we hit all three. :D

The test run.
The class demonstration.

CATABOT 2020: The Future of Medieval Warfare

One of the classes I'm taking this semester is Fundamentals of Engineering Design. It's a pretty cool class. Most of what we do is build robots with the LEGO NXT kits and present them to the class.

Our first NXT assignment was to build a robot that would demonstrate the capabilities of the NXT and impress the instructor and the class. After some discussion, my teammates (two guys from my dorm, Eric McLaughlin and Elijah Lofgren) and I decided to build a catapult that would shoot one of three targets.

We would set up three targets: one directly in front of it, one 90 degrees to it's left, and one 90 degrees to it's right. Using the MLT (machine language trainer) or Computer Detective, we would tell the NXT which target to shoot. We would press a certain button on the MLT and it would blink a sequence of lights. The NXT would know which target to aim for by counting the number of blinks. It would then move into range and shoot.

Building and programming the robot took less time than we thought it would... but working out the bugs took quite a while. We worked a total of 27 hours on this project, that's including preparing and practicing the presentation. The day before the presentation, we stayed up until about 2:00 in the morning practicing our presentation in the room we would present it in the next day. It payed off though, our presentation was about as smooth as it could've been. Here's a recording of one of our practice runs. I know, I need to look up more.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8139264485517879470

And here's some pictures.

Here's a cool shot of the MLT and the NXT's light sensor, which we used for counting the number of blinks.

Here's the NXT launching the ball. It launched the ball into boxes, as opposed to simply hitting a target.

Not the most compact robot... but it worked flawlessly... almost.

I just now realized how it kinda looks like a bunch of junk on tank tracks...

The useless but still very awesome floating gear. (i.e. it's only held up by the chain and really serves no purpose.)

42

The answer to this blog is 42, just in case you were wondering.

(If this makes absolutely no sense, well, to bad for you. Go read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and become culturalized.)