Today we started with scrum. Matt synchronized the two Servos to lift and lower the hand. Alex worked on autonomous with the infrared "double-barrel" sensors, and Cody worked on the construction of them. Adam worked on writing previous Engineer's Notebook entries. Jonathan, Henry, Adam, and Cody worked on organizing the building materials. He also worked on securing the USB connection to the Samantha Module. Samuel worked on a support channel on the back of the arm, so it would shake less. Later he worked on relocating the NXT so all the wires connected to it would be able to reach all the way up the arm to the hand. Later on we tested with ring placement and movement across the course.

This robotics meeting, we began with a scrum.  Most of us worked on building and fixing the two ring grabbing hands and mounting them to the robot.  The robot arm seemed to support them fine and it all seemed to work smoothly, even though it was heavier.  Cody worked on autonomous IR sensor tunnels to give them better sensing power.  It seemed to work, however, it was too heavy for the arm to support.  This prompted the redesign of the arm.  Some of the ideas tossed around were lightening the IR sensor, adding a second arm, and more.  Matt worked on programming.  Others worked on designing the Engineer's notebook, with little success.

Today, we planned to stabilize the arm and give it more power to support weight by adding a second arm.  Samuel built a replica of the first arm to use with the first arm for more lifting power.  Henry, Cody, and others worked on the rebuilding of the gear train to support both arms.  This required much movement of gears and drilling to fit in more axels.  Others worked on the design of the Engineer's notebook, however they were not necessarily concerned with making entries.  Jonathan's dad will later give use help and advice with the design and set up of the Engineer's Notebook.   Matt worked on programming for both of the robots.

Today the only people here were Matt, Cody, and I (Adam), so this entire practice Matt worked on programing for autonomous and  testing the autonomous programming.  Cody and I fixed the gear train on the other robot and attached the axels and arms.  Cody had to use the power tools to flatten parts of the axel so the set screws had better grip on the axel, ensure that the arms had more lifting power.  Then I took all of the wiring off of the robot and remounted it so the wires were facing out.  This way the raising of the arms would not rip the wires out of their motor controllers.  Then, I remounted the motor controller plates on the outside of that wall.  The next practice we planned to rewire all of the wires that were taken out, build a wall for the other side of the robot to add the stability that the other side has, mount the hand, and perfect the arm.

Today, we decided to scrap the holonomic drive robot and only use it for the purposes of testing.  Matt then proceeded to use this robot to test the autonomous on the robot with the two IR sensors mounted on the hand.  The reason this robot was scrapped was the fact that it could not get up on to the black board that supports the ring rack.  It still worked for testing purposes though.  On the other robot, we worked to perfect the arms and hand. We successfully reattached the hand after much work on both of the servo motors in order to have them mount and turn with ease.  The metal frame around the servo motors had to be taken off and screwed into each arm.  Then when mounting the servo motors around those frames, we discovered that one of the servo motors had a broken stop, therefore could twist all the way around.  We had to completely replace that motor, but then it seemed to work okay.  Then, we built the wall for the other side of the robot to add stability an giving us more area to run wires through the robot.  It ened up as a nearly exact replica of the wall on the other side.  After that I was endowed with the task of cutting the axels in the robot's arms with the Dremel.  After they were cut then the robot had to be rewired which was successfully completed, and by the end of practice, minus a few wiring errors, the robot was practically finished.  However, also at the end of practice, we discovered that the servo motors for each arm were fighting each other, which we hope to complete next practice.

    Today we started with scrum. The group with the tank-drive robot began working on expanding the frame upwards, to better fit the motor controllers and the arm mechanism. After that, we started relocating the motor controllers to the ideal placements. Then they remounted the arm and 

Today was the first day of our fourth sprint, and we started with the sprint planning. We organized our epics, stories, tasks, spikes, etc., into different tiers; We decided to complete the most vital and essential projects first, then finish various other projects in later sprints. On the tank-drive robot, Jonathan started working on innovating the hand so that the fingers wouldn't meet and jam as they closed shut. Cody started drilling and cutting beams so we could have longer arms on our four-piece mechanism arm. After we installed the longer arms on the tank-drive, we practiced scoring on the top level on the score frame, which we couldn't do before because of the short arm. Henry and Alex worked on different tables and spreadsheets with our sprint planning data for the Engineer's Notebook. Samuel worked on refitting the tank-drive for the longer arm. When we were finished editing the robots, we had a few scrimmages.

Today we started with scrum to talk about what we are gonna do today. Henry and I worked on graphs for the Engineer's Notebook. We managed to score a line bonus on the middle row (60 points). And we talked about which competitions we might go to. The defensive robot built tread guards and the offensive robot worked on driving. We also found problems on the hand mechanisms and slider motors.

Today, as usual, we started with our scrum and went over what we'd finished, what we plan to do, and what is blocking us. Jonathan, Adam, and Matt started working on the tread-guards, and began reinforcing them. Alex and Samuel began the construction of the replica of our arm prototype. Cody started cutting and drilling the aluminum channel. The defensive robot, with a complete arm prototype, began practicing scoring on the scoring rack on the first and second height levels.