Sunday, January 12, 2014

Another busy Sunday for SODA students

Most weekends, there are several students working on various projects at SODA.  This Sunday was no exception.  Besides the InvenTeam students, there were several other students in and out of the room throughout the day.

10:00 AM - Chloe arrives and starts working on paperwork for the InvenTeam.

10:30 AM - Botball team captain and FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team member Jose arrives and starts working on cutting pvc pipe.  Some of the pipe is for the FRC robot and a whole lot is for the Botball game course.

11:00 AM - Albert and Denton arrive at SODA.  Albert starts working on the vision for the Police ALERT camera.  Denton starts working on the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) robot.

11:30 AM - Members of the FIRST Tech Challenge arrive to pick-up their robot and equipment to go to the New Mexico Natural History Museum in Albuquerque.  A FTC game field has been set-up there for teams to use for the next month.  Another adult mentor is taking them to the museum.

Noon - Clara and Zack arrive.  Clara starts working on the police car demo model.  Zack starts working on the FRC netbooks and OpenCV for the Police ALERT.

12:30 PM - Daniel arrives and starts working on making more mirrors for the prototype.

1:00 PM - Victoria and Maria arrive.  Maria is working on building a large centrifuge for her science fair project.  Victoria starts working on InvenTeam finance items.

2:30 PM - Late lunch break.  Food from Dion's.

3:00 PM - I inadvertently break one of the LED indicator rings that Chloe had spent an hour soldering to an extension board. 

3:30 PM - InvenTeam members Denton and Danielle along with Jose take a break for their projects to work on learning how to import png images to netlogo for their Supercomputing Challenge projects.  Denton's project deals with modeling blood-borne pathogens.  Jose's projects deals with designing a program to help maximize golf course management.  Danielle's project deals with pairing a drone and land-based robots together to solve mazes.

4:00 PM - Clara leaves.

4:30 PM - Maria leaves to take parts to her project to welded at her uncle's house.

5:30 PM - Jose leaves.

6:15 PM - The remaining students have packed up the essential parts of their projects and we head to Quelab for Hacknight.

7:00 PM - Chloe, Denton, Zack, Albert, Victoria, and I arrive at Quelab.  Chloe and Victoria work on bread-boarding an LED indicator.  Zack and Albert start working on writing code to port data from the Raspberry Pi to the LED indicator.  Denton works on the FRC robot.

8:00 PM - Receive call that the FTC team has returned to SODA after a great day of practicing with their robots and the museum.  The high school FTC team has their autonomous code working near perfect.

9:45 PM - Leave Quelab.

10:15 PM - Arrive back at SODA and unload vehicle. 
 
10:30 PM - Students go home.

The students spent part of Saturday rearranging the room to make space for projects and robot competitions.
FRC team member Jose anding pvc pipe for catapult arm.



Clara working on mounting hinges for scale demo model.

Denton working on FRC robot.

Danielle working on making more mirrors.
Chloe trying to get the indicator to work correctly.

FRC robot's catapult arm built by Jose and InvenTeam members

Danielle and Chloe working on even more mirror designs.

Maria looking in the FRC parts for a drive wheel for her science fair centrifuge.

Denton's got the first part side of the catapult slide built for the FRC robot.

Maria and Victoria working on their Supercomputing Challenge project.

Danielle working on methods to import images of mazes into netlogo to be solved.

Clara adding details to the model car for the Police ALERT model.
Progress on the FRC robot so far.  Over half of it was built by InvenTeam members.
Working on Botball course.  Jose and InvenTeam members worked well sharing classroom space.
Chloe and Albert - still trying to get the indicator to work.

Clara with mostly finished police car model.

Chloe with just paid-for Quelab users card for InvenTeam.

Denton using shop at Quelab to work on FRC robot frame.

Victoria and Chloe working on second method for indicator panel.

Zack, Victoria, and Denton in back shop at Quelab.

Albert and Chloe still working on indicator warning lights.

Albert, Zack, Chloe, and Victoria trying not be stuck on - you guessed it - the indicator lighting.

Morgan from Quelab helping Albert and Chloe with programming the indicator light.

Still helping and Zack jumps in.

Still trying to figure it out.

And Bandit offers Zack some more advice.



Saturday, January 11, 2014

Another Busy Saturday for SODA's InvenTeam

This past week, most of the members of SODA's InvenTeam were busy as ever.  With the kick-off of the 2014 FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) last Saturday, most of the team members spent some of their time helping the FRC team design their robot.  Three exceptions to this were Albert, Seth, and Zack.  These three InvenTeam members spent most of the week in Albuquerque rehearsing for the All State Guitar Ensemble.

8:00 AM - Albert, Seth, and Zack were at the University of New Mexico to start warming up for their morning concert performance.    

9:00 AM - Chloe and Denton go to watch their teammates at the guitar concert.

10:00 AM - Danielle arrives at SODA to work on her Supercomputing Challenge project for a few hours before going to work at her part-time job at the local movie theater.

10:30 AM to 1:00 PM - a few FRC team members arrive and start working on the team's robot.

1:30 PM - Albert, Zack, Chloe, and Denton arrive to start working on InvenTeam, Supercomputing Challenge, and FRC projects.

5:30 PM - Danielle returns from work and start helping with InvenTeam.

7:00 PM - After having great success on several projects, the students (InvenTeam and others) decide to call it a night.

Zack and Albert working on the program for the InvenTeam's Police ALERT project.  In the foreground is FRC robot they had just finished installing software updates on.

Chloe and Danielle making "mirror" prototypes for the Police ALERT.

Success!!! Albert pointing to the area where Chloe's movement is being detected.

The box in the top-right corner showing where motion was detected.

Camera connected to Raspberry Pi looking up at 360 degree conical mirror.

Two different "mirror" designs.


This week with SODA's InvenTeam

Talysa mentoring InvenTeam member Maria with her science fair project.

Danielle, Clara, and Victoria working on designs for FIRST Robotics.

Seth with scale model of FRC robot design.

Dion working on robot designs for FRC.

Dion's design ideas during brain storming session for FRC.

First time in weeks all the InvenTeam students were at SODA at the same time.

Victoria and Noah cannibalizing last year's FRC Robot.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Parent Meeting


Last night's parent meeting went very well. We caught all parents up to date on our latest progress of the Police ALERT system, along with reviewing the key messages of Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams. We also discussed budget and fundraising for the trip to Cambridge. We are lucky to have such wonderful parents who support our team greatly!

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Belen Police Officer Visits InvenTeam

Officer Lopez meeting some InvenTeam members.

Officer Lopez discussing places to mount the Police ALERT indicator unit.

Power Requirements

Quelab

I needed advice on how to figure out the power requirements for the Police A.L.E.R.T, so when we went to Quelab I asked for help and advice. At Quelab I talked to Ray, and he told me that I needed to do several calculations to figure out the wattage, amperage, and amp hours required for the system to work. He helped me with the calculations, but since we didn't have all the information we needed he came up with some common numbers to help give me an idea of what the requirements would be. We didn't get through everything, and on another trip he said he would help me with the LED indicator.

After Quelab

After the trip to Quelab, I found the missing information and used that to figure out the power requirements for the Raspberry Pi, XBee WiFi, and the Camera were. I figured out how many Amps that whole system would need. I also started figuring  out the power requirements for the Inside indicator.

Police ALERT Logo

After several revisions our logo is finally completed!
To view out progress click on the link below!




http://soda-inventeam.phanfare.com/6375287