During today's build, I mostly worked on the Intake which included assembling the intake, wiring the Intake, and testing the intake. Since I lead the intake group, I also had to write part of our robotics build blog for our own team.
Robotics Build Day 29 (2/19/20)
Programming
Practice Bot Tuning
We tuned the turret and hood, refactored the superstructure state machine to separate aiming and shooting states. We also explored different speeds to run the serializer at. Next steps include tuning a hood map to determine best hood angle based on distance from the goal and controlling the serializer via velocity control.
Intake Code
We tested the intake code and it works as expected, but we may still need to adjust the motor speed so that it doesn't stall the motors or pop the ball over the serializer.
WOF Code
We tried mounting the color sensor directly to the MXP port on the roborio (instead of the I2C port) and got proper color readings. However, when we tried to connect the sensor to the roborio via the I2C multiplexer, we received 0 on every output. We eliminated the possibility of a bad port or incorrect code and plan to test if there might be an issue in the wiring.
Manufacturing
Today, we made parts for the climber on the lathe, and mfgd climber parts, and parts for Team 5924.
Assembly
Comp Shooter/Turret Assembly
We weren't able to make any progress on assembling the comp shooter and turret, because we didn't have the anodized parts yet. We did change the location of the hall effect board and magnet, in order to give the feeder more room.
WOF Assembly
We built a Wheel of Fortune mechanism for the practice robot. We confirmed that the pneumatic piston would extend the mechanism to the correct height while allowing the robot to shoot. While assembling the mechanism, we realized that we needed to order a smaller tensioning cord and shorter belts. When these parts arrive, we plan on testing whether the assembly will snap when colliding with the wheel.
Intake Assembly
Today, we fixed our intake (which included screwing in the correct flange screws and shorter shoulder bolts) and placed it on the practice bot. We attached the intake using the correct 5/16-24 screws. We also drilled out holes to mount the two pistons on the practice bot.
Feeder Modifications Assembly
We increased the ratio from 4:9 to 1:1 for both rollers. We saw that this increased speed resulted in less collisions between balls before the rollers. We want to increase this ratio further, as we haven’t run into any stalling issues so far. We also added a yoke between the two feeder shafts to center the ball in the turret before it reaches the shooter. This increased shooter accuracy.
Prototyping
Wire Intake
After fixing up our intake, we attached it to practice bot, which included drilling out holes to attach the pneumatic cylinders. We wired the power wires to the PDP and attached the can through the roboRio. We noticed that if we run our intake at full speed, the balls would pop over our serializer, but if the intake was too slow, the balls would stall the Falcon. The programmers are still testing to find the proper speed, but one solution may be to add a sheet of polycarbonate at the top to stop the balls from going above the robot.