I'm slipping on keep everyone up to date on FIRST in the News, even when it is with our own team. Yes, Team 904 was interviewed a couple weeks ago and the resulting show was aired at least 4 times on local TV.
If you saw the show, post a comment and let me know what you think. If you haven't seen it, you can see it here:
http://www.marandatv.com/2008/11/22/where-you-live-november-22-2008/
- then you can come back and leave a comment. :)
Just so you know, this is a half hour show that is devoted to science and technology. Team 904 enters the scene at about 6:30 into the broadcast.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Programming Poll Results
So for the last few weeks, my blog has had a poll that asked users how they'll be programming their FIRST Robotics Competition robots for 2009. All 3 votes unanimously pointed to C++ as being the programming platform of choice.
This is quite interesting since National Instruments (maker of the cRIO) has been heavily pushing LabVIEW. Not coincidentally, National Instruments is also the developer of LabVIEW. Makes sense right, make us use their hardware and then give us their proprietary development environment to use for programming the hardware.
I know Wind River is providing their Workbench for C++ folks to use, but in the end, C++ can be used in thousands of different environments, from Microsoft to Eclipse from Sun Microsystems. There are C++ environments that are free and there are some that cost a lot of coin.
LabVIEW isn't what I would call a language but an application where the user can drag and drop "things" to make logic to solve a problem. This is essentially what a computer program is, however it is written using commands and specific syntax to create an algorithm that solves the problem.
I'm not trying to beat up on LabVIEW; I have downloaded it and have given it a whirl. I have intended on posting a review. I'm not sure if that will happen or not, but I'll try. I am surprised that all votes on my poll went to C++ considering the amount of effort NI has used to promote LabVIEW.
Now, time for a new poll.
This is quite interesting since National Instruments (maker of the cRIO) has been heavily pushing LabVIEW. Not coincidentally, National Instruments is also the developer of LabVIEW. Makes sense right, make us use their hardware and then give us their proprietary development environment to use for programming the hardware.
I know Wind River is providing their Workbench for C++ folks to use, but in the end, C++ can be used in thousands of different environments, from Microsoft to Eclipse from Sun Microsystems. There are C++ environments that are free and there are some that cost a lot of coin.
LabVIEW isn't what I would call a language but an application where the user can drag and drop "things" to make logic to solve a problem. This is essentially what a computer program is, however it is written using commands and specific syntax to create an algorithm that solves the problem.
I'm not trying to beat up on LabVIEW; I have downloaded it and have given it a whirl. I have intended on posting a review. I'm not sure if that will happen or not, but I'll try. I am surprised that all votes on my poll went to C++ considering the amount of effort NI has used to promote LabVIEW.
Now, time for a new poll.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Why FIRST?
FIRST was started over 15 years ago by inventor Dean Kamen. He felt that Americans were idolizing sports stars and pop culture to the point that we were beginning to suffer with respect to science and technology. His philosophy was, we need to create an activity for young people, where they could idolize scientists and engineers, and direct their endeavors toward a future where they'd be best equipped to solve problems. He is absolutely correct and that is why I devote a lot of my time to helping FIRST and students on FIRST teams.
I feel that we (Americans) are losing the lead on science and technology breakthroughs. We've stifeled creativity at the educational level and that is no longer blossoming into a rich creative group of scientists and engineers. We need them badly.
FIRST is all about letting students be creative along with learning real-world skills to solve engineering problems. This set of skills is what we need to solve many of the problems we are facing today.
I try to read a few blogs every day; most of them are related to either science or astronomy. I just finished reading a post regarding the distant star Betelgeuse. The post went into a lot of detail regarding the discovery of a bow shock that was recently imaged around the star. To me, this is wickedly cool. It shows that there is some sort of interstellar medium surrounding the star (not just a vacuum, like I learned in school). That aside, what device made this discovery you ask? It was Akari, a Japanese satellite observatory.
Americans have fallen into a rut, and believe that everything new that is discovered or invented comes from our great land. Not so.
Congratulations to Japan. Maybe the next discovery will be from the US of A... maybe not. This is why we need FIRST.
I feel that we (Americans) are losing the lead on science and technology breakthroughs. We've stifeled creativity at the educational level and that is no longer blossoming into a rich creative group of scientists and engineers. We need them badly.
FIRST is all about letting students be creative along with learning real-world skills to solve engineering problems. This set of skills is what we need to solve many of the problems we are facing today.
I try to read a few blogs every day; most of them are related to either science or astronomy. I just finished reading a post regarding the distant star Betelgeuse. The post went into a lot of detail regarding the discovery of a bow shock that was recently imaged around the star. To me, this is wickedly cool. It shows that there is some sort of interstellar medium surrounding the star (not just a vacuum, like I learned in school). That aside, what device made this discovery you ask? It was Akari, a Japanese satellite observatory.
Americans have fallen into a rut, and believe that everything new that is discovered or invented comes from our great land. Not so.
Congratulations to Japan. Maybe the next discovery will be from the US of A... maybe not. This is why we need FIRST.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Games
I know all kids like games, and some adults too. I've found a couple games online that I like and I'm going to give them a quick review.
Fantastic Contraption
A physics based game that requires the player to build machines to move the game-piece into it's finish zone. The first 20+ levels are free, and there are more that you can buy. I made it through all of the free levels, and haven't yet tried the additional levels. Some of them are quite tough, but I managed to figure them out, so I know you can too. You can save your contraptions and also see contraptions that other users have created. You can rate other players contraptions, some are simple and elegant, some are unbelievably complicated and others are just plain cool.
Assembler
Another physics based game that requires the player to build simple structures with the supplied shapes to get the game piece(s) into their proper zone. This game is much easier to complete the levels, but it keeps a timer running and shows speed records from other players. This part is kinda hokey, because you can restart a level as many times as you want. In the end all your timed on is how fast you can drag the shapes around, not really on how fast you can solve the problem.
To summarize, both games make you think and are quite addictive. I'd recommend that anyone getting their brains in shape for designing a FIRST Robotics robot, try them out and have some fun. Just make sure you don't play for too long, and get your homework done first!
Fantastic Contraption
A physics based game that requires the player to build machines to move the game-piece into it's finish zone. The first 20+ levels are free, and there are more that you can buy. I made it through all of the free levels, and haven't yet tried the additional levels. Some of them are quite tough, but I managed to figure them out, so I know you can too. You can save your contraptions and also see contraptions that other users have created. You can rate other players contraptions, some are simple and elegant, some are unbelievably complicated and others are just plain cool.
Assembler
Another physics based game that requires the player to build simple structures with the supplied shapes to get the game piece(s) into their proper zone. This game is much easier to complete the levels, but it keeps a timer running and shows speed records from other players. This part is kinda hokey, because you can restart a level as many times as you want. In the end all your timed on is how fast you can drag the shapes around, not really on how fast you can solve the problem.
To summarize, both games make you think and are quite addictive. I'd recommend that anyone getting their brains in shape for designing a FIRST Robotics robot, try them out and have some fun. Just make sure you don't play for too long, and get your homework done first!
Sunday, October 26, 2008
WMRI comes to a close
Yesterday was the West Michigan Regional Invitational, hosted by four local FIRST Robotics Competition teams. Please take a minute and read some of my recent posts that describe in more detail the WMRI .
I got over to Grandville High School at about 7:45am on Saturday to get things rolling for the event. The opening ceremonies started shortly after 8am, featuring the Creston High School Jr ROTC color guard. After a few announcements, things got under way. It all started a little late, but things got back on schedule relatively quick.
Our team (904) was in the first match of the day. Our autonomous mode was doing goofy things, but we ended up winning our first match. We fired up the computer and made some quick changes to the autonomous mode code and had it working fairly well over the next couple matches.
After our first win, we lost a couple matches in a row and then scored a tie by mid-morning. I'm not sure what our record ended up being by the time we broke for lunch, but we were well below .500. It really didn't matter a lot to us, since we were not putting any pressure on ourselves to win, and we were letting any student drive the robot that wanted to. Every match we had someone different driving the robot, and that was the most fun; to see kids really getting excited about being more of a part of the team.
We broke for lunch at about 11:30 and had a couple slices of pizza. After we finished eating we discovered several of our wires that connect our sensors to the robot controller had pulled out. We hurried and carefully reconnected the wires in the proper spot, but that was the first little bit of pressure we had for the day. It got a little worse towards the end.
So, we finished up qualification matches; all the students were having a great time and I assumed that all teams would move into the elimination rounds since there were only 19 teams. Typically they take the top 8 teams, and let them pick 2 additional alliance partners to begin competing in the quarter final rounds. I wasn't worried since the top 24 teams would advance.
Then, the shocker... Since this was a smaller event, they decided to take only the top 4 teams which meant only 12 teams would compete in eliminations and the day would be over for the other 7. At the end of qualifications we were ranked 16th out of 19. Yikes!
Alliance selections began and with the top 4 teams. The top ranked team was from Swartz Creek MI, and they picked a team from Flint MI as their first alliance partner. They continued on with the next 2 teams and the fourth ranked team was a new team that is just getting started. In fact we let them borrow our backup robot so they could get some experience before the 2009 season started. I had my fingers crossed that they would pick us as one of their partners, but they had other plans. They picked two other teams, that were certainly good choices. Finally, the last selection would be made by the top rated alliance and they selected us! Whoo Hooo!! We made it into the big dance!
The top 4 alliances immediately began talking strategy and charging batteries. The semi-final rounds were scheduled and we were to be in the first match. The announcer called for our team and we began the march to the field. At that very moment I was told that one of our alliance partners wanted us to put a 3 second wait into our autonomous code. This would cause our robot to wait 3 seconds after the match started, giving our partner a better opportunity to knock a track ball off in autonomous mode which would give us 12 extra points. I grabbed my computer and we took off towards the field. I made the changes to the code as we walked out into the gym where the competition was taking place. With the computer connected to the robot, we tried downloading the new code, but were getting all kinds of errors. Little did I know that I made an error in the code and it prevented us from downloading the updates. The event officials told us we'd have to wait to solve our problems because that match had to start right then.
The first semi-final match started and our autonomous mode worked fine, even though we did take off immediately when it started. We won that match easily and with a little more time, we saw the coding error and made the necessary changes. We downloaded the updated code and our second semi-final match went in our favor again.
Now, with the coding changes behind us; our alliance partners were happy with us not getting in their way at the start, I thought we were in good shape. Little did we know that our sensor cables began to work their way out again. So, back into panic mode we fired up the computer to show us where the each sensor cable was supposed to be connected. We had plenty of time to work out those problems and were ready for our first final round match.
In the finals, we won the first match in a very close race. However, in the second match we weren't so lucky, losing in a close fight. This set us up for a 3rd tie-breaking race. In the final match we were out-played, but I saw the official issue 3 penalties to the blue alliance (we were red), which would have made the outcome very close. In the end they issued the 3 penalties to our alliance, and that gave our opponents the win. After looking at the score, even if the 3 penalties had been given to the proper alliance, we still would have lost, but it would have been very very close.
It really didn't matter, our team was very happy to have won second place, and to top it off, we were awarded the Gracious Professionalism award for letting the new team borrow our back-up robot. They also mentioned that Team 904 is always eager to help out in events like the WMRI, and I am very proud to be associated with this good group of students, teachers, engineers and parents.
Team 904 is looking forward to 2009, and I think we will be a force to be reckoned with this season.
I got over to Grandville High School at about 7:45am on Saturday to get things rolling for the event. The opening ceremonies started shortly after 8am, featuring the Creston High School Jr ROTC color guard. After a few announcements, things got under way. It all started a little late, but things got back on schedule relatively quick.
Our team (904) was in the first match of the day. Our autonomous mode was doing goofy things, but we ended up winning our first match. We fired up the computer and made some quick changes to the autonomous mode code and had it working fairly well over the next couple matches.
After our first win, we lost a couple matches in a row and then scored a tie by mid-morning. I'm not sure what our record ended up being by the time we broke for lunch, but we were well below .500. It really didn't matter a lot to us, since we were not putting any pressure on ourselves to win, and we were letting any student drive the robot that wanted to. Every match we had someone different driving the robot, and that was the most fun; to see kids really getting excited about being more of a part of the team.
We broke for lunch at about 11:30 and had a couple slices of pizza. After we finished eating we discovered several of our wires that connect our sensors to the robot controller had pulled out. We hurried and carefully reconnected the wires in the proper spot, but that was the first little bit of pressure we had for the day. It got a little worse towards the end.
So, we finished up qualification matches; all the students were having a great time and I assumed that all teams would move into the elimination rounds since there were only 19 teams. Typically they take the top 8 teams, and let them pick 2 additional alliance partners to begin competing in the quarter final rounds. I wasn't worried since the top 24 teams would advance.
Then, the shocker... Since this was a smaller event, they decided to take only the top 4 teams which meant only 12 teams would compete in eliminations and the day would be over for the other 7. At the end of qualifications we were ranked 16th out of 19. Yikes!
Alliance selections began and with the top 4 teams. The top ranked team was from Swartz Creek MI, and they picked a team from Flint MI as their first alliance partner. They continued on with the next 2 teams and the fourth ranked team was a new team that is just getting started. In fact we let them borrow our backup robot so they could get some experience before the 2009 season started. I had my fingers crossed that they would pick us as one of their partners, but they had other plans. They picked two other teams, that were certainly good choices. Finally, the last selection would be made by the top rated alliance and they selected us! Whoo Hooo!! We made it into the big dance!
The top 4 alliances immediately began talking strategy and charging batteries. The semi-final rounds were scheduled and we were to be in the first match. The announcer called for our team and we began the march to the field. At that very moment I was told that one of our alliance partners wanted us to put a 3 second wait into our autonomous code. This would cause our robot to wait 3 seconds after the match started, giving our partner a better opportunity to knock a track ball off in autonomous mode which would give us 12 extra points. I grabbed my computer and we took off towards the field. I made the changes to the code as we walked out into the gym where the competition was taking place. With the computer connected to the robot, we tried downloading the new code, but were getting all kinds of errors. Little did I know that I made an error in the code and it prevented us from downloading the updates. The event officials told us we'd have to wait to solve our problems because that match had to start right then.
The first semi-final match started and our autonomous mode worked fine, even though we did take off immediately when it started. We won that match easily and with a little more time, we saw the coding error and made the necessary changes. We downloaded the updated code and our second semi-final match went in our favor again.
Now, with the coding changes behind us; our alliance partners were happy with us not getting in their way at the start, I thought we were in good shape. Little did we know that our sensor cables began to work their way out again. So, back into panic mode we fired up the computer to show us where the each sensor cable was supposed to be connected. We had plenty of time to work out those problems and were ready for our first final round match.
In the finals, we won the first match in a very close race. However, in the second match we weren't so lucky, losing in a close fight. This set us up for a 3rd tie-breaking race. In the final match we were out-played, but I saw the official issue 3 penalties to the blue alliance (we were red), which would have made the outcome very close. In the end they issued the 3 penalties to our alliance, and that gave our opponents the win. After looking at the score, even if the 3 penalties had been given to the proper alliance, we still would have lost, but it would have been very very close.
It really didn't matter, our team was very happy to have won second place, and to top it off, we were awarded the Gracious Professionalism award for letting the new team borrow our back-up robot. They also mentioned that Team 904 is always eager to help out in events like the WMRI, and I am very proud to be associated with this good group of students, teachers, engineers and parents.
Team 904 is looking forward to 2009, and I think we will be a force to be reckoned with this season.
Friday, October 24, 2008
WMRI Set Up
This afternoon I volunteered to help set up the official FIRST Overdrive competition field at Grandville High School for this weekends West Michigan Regional Invitational. Grandville has a beautiful school and they have ample room for the competition and pits. It will be a grand time!
When I left, the field was almost completely assembled. They still needed to inflate the track-balls (this years game pieces), but most everything else was complete. I helped assemble various parts of the field; it is utterly amazing the things that can be done with Velcro!
This event is going to be a bit more tame than the West Michigan Regional, however I'm very excited; this is going to be a lot of fun. The West Michigan Regional is an official FIRST event that is held in March (during the regular FIRST season). That event completely fills the field house at Grand Valley State University and has an incredible amount of energy.
Anyhow, this will be the last time we'll do "Overdrive" and that makes me a little sad. I have many fond memories of this year that I will never forget. Watching my daughter as she was a part of our "drive team"; she ran the robotic arm/claw mechanism. My younger son played an integral part of our 3D animation team. It was a great year for me and my family. We're looking forward to 2009, and it starts in just 70 days!
When I left, the field was almost completely assembled. They still needed to inflate the track-balls (this years game pieces), but most everything else was complete. I helped assemble various parts of the field; it is utterly amazing the things that can be done with Velcro!
This event is going to be a bit more tame than the West Michigan Regional, however I'm very excited; this is going to be a lot of fun. The West Michigan Regional is an official FIRST event that is held in March (during the regular FIRST season). That event completely fills the field house at Grand Valley State University and has an incredible amount of energy.
Anyhow, this will be the last time we'll do "Overdrive" and that makes me a little sad. I have many fond memories of this year that I will never forget. Watching my daughter as she was a part of our "drive team"; she ran the robotic arm/claw mechanism. My younger son played an integral part of our 3D animation team. It was a great year for me and my family. We're looking forward to 2009, and it starts in just 70 days!
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
WMRI is this Saturday
WMRI - West Michigan Regional Invitational (website) will be this coming Saturday, October 25, 2008 at Grandville High School in Grandville Michigan (map). There are currently over 20 FIRST Robotics Competition teams that have entered the competition and it will certainly be a fun time. If you've never experienced a FIRST competition, and you are in the area, take the time to stop by and check it out. Admission is free and everyone is welcome.
Our team, 904, will be competing in and co-hosting this event. Other teams that will be also co-hosting are the teams from Grandville, Zeeland and Holland. Our team is providing many adult volunteers to help with the tournament and make sure that everything is run smooth and safe.
Last week we had a meeting and also again tonight; we had students driving the robot and also had some students and mentors looking over it's chassis and components. It seems to be making some funny sounds.
We will be meeting again on Thursday to finalize everything and pack up our tools. Another group will be meeting Friday evening to set up the field, and everything kicks off early on Saturday. The pits open at 7am with the opening ceremony at 8.
If you can't make it to the event, but are interested in how our invitational unfolds, check back here. I hope to add some blog entries throughout the coming days.
Our team, 904, will be competing in and co-hosting this event. Other teams that will be also co-hosting are the teams from Grandville, Zeeland and Holland. Our team is providing many adult volunteers to help with the tournament and make sure that everything is run smooth and safe.
Last week we had a meeting and also again tonight; we had students driving the robot and also had some students and mentors looking over it's chassis and components. It seems to be making some funny sounds.
We will be meeting again on Thursday to finalize everything and pack up our tools. Another group will be meeting Friday evening to set up the field, and everything kicks off early on Saturday. The pits open at 7am with the opening ceremony at 8.
If you can't make it to the event, but are interested in how our invitational unfolds, check back here. I hope to add some blog entries throughout the coming days.
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