The Cookie Jar

Today was another fabulous day here at the lab. We worked on things like rollers, hangers, and our final frame design! We’ve pretty much finished prototyping (almost! Just a few more things left) so we’re working on integrating all the parts so they can work without destroying each other. However, we were disappointed at the amount of no-show members. We only had six girls show up today! This wasn’t nearly enough to work on all the parts we wanted to, so we had to pool all our resources into one project at a time. We understand that a lot of us are busy on the weekends, but we really need to get some more girls in the lab!

On a happier note, we did quite a bit considering our lack of personnel and hope to see everybody at the next meeting! We need everybody up to speed as soon as possible. Have a wonderful day!

So, it’s been a while since our last blog post. But, we’ve still been quite busy in the lab. Finally, the fourth, and final week, of finals have ended! Which means that the lab will be filled with tons of manpower [excuse me, girl power] until the end of build.

Meanwhile, there has been lots of work on the various aspects of the robot during the past week. This past Monday, we decided on our final design, including which kicker and hanging mechanism to use. During the past few days, lots of work has been done on prototyping the kicker mechanism we: laid out a pneumatic board to support the kicker mechanism and began prototyping a second, metal pneumatic kicker system (because the wood split). Currently, we’ve encountered some slight configuration issues with the kicking mechanism, but not to worry, all will be quickly resolved. In addition, there has been much progress on the hanging mechanism, which has proved to be one of the most challenging parts of the game.

As a whole, the team is facing tough deadlines to finish cutting the parts of the chassis to length so it can be sent to the welder on Monday. All in all, “Breakaway” is much tougher than it initially seemed. Despite this, there is one aspect of build season that doesn’t come as much of a surprise each year- Chairman’s award submissions. The writing team met again this week to discuss the essay outline and to break down the authors of each of the subsections of the essay. With it’s creative theme, this year’s submission is bound to be eye-catching.

With 3 and 1/2 weeks remaining, the Space Cookies are trying to keep up the momentum and finish building a triumphant robot!

-Rachel

Marketing/PR Director

CADing the kicker and roller assemblies

Kicker Prototype 2

Half Dome is even more gorgeous, when covered in snow

It’s Monday and boy everyone seems tired. We just came back from a three-day-weekend snowboarding and skiing trip at Badger pass. We met at the Girl Scout house at 6 PM sharp and boarded the bus. Our bus driver hauled the truck into drive and instead of the five hour ride it was suppose to take it only took three. Yay! No one likes 5 hour bus rides. Well unless it was like the most awesome-limo with trampoline floors and candy and a movie theater now that would be my dream car/bus/ thing to ride five hours to anywhere in. The next three hours went down like this: iPods, movies, blabbing, taking photos and screaming-excuse me singing popular songs.

When we finally entered Yosemite they told us it was closed because of all the snow! So instead of bunking in Curry Village which we all know and love, we drove to a Best Western in a nearby town. We met up with the girl scouts who left early Friday morning in two other buses. We unpacked and “home-y-fied” our rooms, and gorged ourselves on the pizza left from the early-arriving-girls dinner. And in the morning, as it is typical of hotel chains, we had the world’s worst continental breakfast of our lives, well my life. The eggs were cold, cereal was soggy, and the toast was bland. Nothing was the consistency it should have been. Although I give that Best Western props for buying good hot coco packets, and for staying chill and vacant for like 150 unscheduled girl scouts (and Space Cookies) arriving on their doorstep.  At breakfast we found out that Badger Pass was closed today because of all the snow. But we learned Yosemite was open so we headed up to our rooms to pack our bags and load onto the bus. And by mid morning we were off driving to Yosemite.

After 3 hours of driving through striking scenes of snowy cliffs and frosted trees and of course taking pictures the whole time, we entered Yosemite we were redirected from what we thought was open, Curry Village, to the amazing spectacular honeymoon-worthy Ahwahnee Hotel. Which if your reaction was like “Wait, you mean the Wawona right?” like mine was, you should know, “It’s a hotel built in the valley of Yosemite. It’s truly beautiful and it was built by the first settlers of the valley.” When the adults heard we got to stay in it, they were thrilled. Most people don’t stay there because of the sheer expense. Apparently, a one night stay in the most rundown room is approximately $500.  Well, the adults were right it’s stunning and breathtaking, it’s surrounded by all the landmarks that Yosemite’s known for, like Half Dome, which we could see-very well I might add- from our room! Also I know I sound like such a teenager but instead of the swipe keys like most hotels have these days, the Ahwahnee has like legit keys from like the early days. It’s so historic. The hotel was furbished like it would have been in the old days yet it was still completely sanitary, safe and functional to the 21st centuries standards. They did some maintenance of utilities ex: plumbing, electrical, and heating, but surprisingly everything else stayed intact.  After we moved our bags up to our rooms we were given the rest of the afternoon to do as we please.  At 4pm the girl scouts were able to schedule ice skating for later at Curry Village.

OMG Seals... ahh man it's just Elizabeth and Isabelle having *wink wink* too much fun in the snow, they're not at all stuck in it.

We went around hiking in Yosemite with our ski pants on so that we could play in the snow, after getting completely lost because we failed to ask for directions we ended up hiking the long way. Whoops. But it was fun to see all the beautiful sights in Yosemite. We made snow angels, drew faces in the snow, and took pictures of the scenery.  After hiking for about 2 hours we decided to play in the snow. We had a snow-fluff fight and attempted a snowball fight that was pitiful. During a snow fight Isabelle and I got stuck deep in the snow. Then we sledded for another 15 minutes and before we knew it, time for dinner. We got on the bus, went to our hotel, changed into formal, or as formal as we can get in skiing clothes, and ate very yummy food.

After dinner, we got on the buses to Curry Village ice rink, and skated! After a few hours of skating, drinking, talking, and of course falling, we left the rink to head back to the Ahwahnee Hotel to “sleep”. Our troop went down to the piano player and drank soda as we listened to our requests being played on the piano. The pianist said “you made my night” and he was really happy we came. His shift was over at 10pm and we had to sleep at a reasonable hour, we were hoping that the slopes would be open tomorrow and that we could wake up early and go! So we trudged off to bed.

The next morning, after eating a delicious breakfast we found out the slopes were open. We went back up to our rooms changed into our ski clothes and packed our bags we were loading the buses for the last time.  And within 30 minutes we were off driving to Badger pass. Most of the bus ride was spent taking pictures of the beautiful scenery. I mean it was gorgeous.

The Space Cookies and a member of my Girl Scout troop 173, yay Troop ELI, Ice skate in Curry Village! From left to right: Sakura (Troop ELI/not a Space Cookie), Isabelle (Troop ELI), Julia, and Annie.

After about an hour we arrived at Badger, and those of us with lessons quickly got out rental gear and suited up. Those of us who fail epically at skiing, chose to try snowboarding  and thus we got lessons, those lucky few who don’t have a tendency to cross their feet skied.

The day started out great, and this being my second time snowboarding I can now “escape from a serial-killer if we were on a mountain, and if I magically had a snowboard” (because you know that situation happens often) as I said to Christina speaking about my confidence in my snowboarding abilities at the end of the day, and successfully making it down the mountain three times without falling or losing balance or colliding into anyone! Hazzah that my friends is the definition of success.

Space Cookie Conga Line on the Ice. PARTAY!!!

Those of us in lessons were rushed to leave at 2:30pm before our lesson was over at 3pm because some girls had to be home by 9pm, so we ended up boarding the buses at 2:50pm after packing and getting unsuited. and we drove off at ~3pm. and then we drove home it took us 5 and 1/2 hours (including the pit stop the drivers took to eat at Jack and the Box/Starbucks that a few of us lucked out because I know a few minutes before I was saying how a shake would be really good right now, and we debated who had the best shakes and I said “Jack in the Box’s Oreo shake!” Guess what I was able to buy? Yep. You guessed it—Starbucks. No I’m just kidding, I got my shake and the rest of my troop got an assortment of different shakes, with the most common choice being Oreo because of my advertising. We arrived home at 8:30pm to find our parents outside waiting. We each got home and went straight to bed. It was a great ending to a splendid weekend adventure of spifiliciousness.

Elizabeth

“Bee Happy”

Although, of course, the robot is something that much of our attention is focused on, FIRST considers community service and the promotion of science and robotics to be much more important than a winning robot.

Our team is applying this year for the Regional Chairman’s Award.  Chairman’s is the most prestigious award given to teams in FIRST.  This is only our second year applying for the award, but we are optimistic as always.  Although last year our essay was very bland and informative, this year we are a little more comfortable with the Chairman’s format and had fun brainstorming fun ideas we could use to make our essay pop.  After all, the judges have to read a lot of these.

We also tried some new prototypes for a kicker mechanism.  Our previous design was a pivoting kicker, which was similar to a human foot playing soccer.  However, today we tried a linear kicker design, which is easier to engineer.  We also hope to be able to generate top spin.  This helps control the ball, and is easy to create with your foot but trickier to generate with a robot.  We’ll see!

Callie

Odd Jobs and Scouting

One of the most difficult challenges in robot design is– making it simple– making it elegant. So far this year, we have contemplated building 5 major sub-systems: gearbox, winch, connecting arm, ball kicker and ball possesor. Yeah, I know… that’s a lot of little mechanisms. And if not designed/manufactured properly, a lot of little mechanisms that can break. I am hoping that we can pull it all together. We have made a few prototypes and gained inspiration from old robots. However, the work is piling up and the clock is ticking. The team has the additional challenge of 4 weeks of finals. Since our students come from several different high schools, they are all on a different schedule. Next week we will be losing more than half the team, as the Palo Alto school district has finals. And next week…will be crucial. We have to finish our design.   The frame has to be machined, sent to the welder, to the powder coater, and back in time to attach the 5 mechanisms, add all of the electrical wiring, and test the programming . We have five weeks left. It will take many long days, but I am hopeful the Space Cookies will build something to be proud of…and hopefully, it won’t be too complicated.

-Krystine

NASA Mentor

1 week has passed since build season was kicked off at the early time of 7am. At 7am this morning I was sleeping. A good activity for that time in the morning I might add. Despite not starting as early as the week before, enormous amounts of work has been accomplished today.

For starters: THE ROBOT WORKS!!! I realize you may be wondering what I mean. Obviously we have not built our entire robot all ready- that would be superhuman, Nor am I trying to insinuate that our robot didn’t work last year– It actually worked beautifully. I am trying to communicate how excited I am that last year’s robot is now able to be driven using this year’s driver station! This has been a long and deceptively difficult task. Much more than just hooking up a few wires, this entitled reloading almost every bit of software, uninstalling said software, reinstalling the same software and a lot of glaring at inanimate objects. Only of a few of us went crazy.

Today also saw progressive movement on the kicker mechanism. Now that we have a good idea of what it will be, girls started to work on some of the finer details of how the mechanism will work: for example how to set the kicker up and then reset it for the next kick.

Prototyping a mechanism to lift the robot so it hangs from a bar 7 feet off the ground also began today. Drawings overtook our entire board depicting many creative ways involving lifting a robot. My personal favorite was the design using a grappling hook.

The website has also been updated to include new pictures from this season. Go check it out!

With so much progress it’s hard to believe it has only been one week of build season!

Christina

Programming and Electronics Director 2010

 The Space Cookies 2010 FRC Kickoff       Sorting the Kit of Parts

Drilling holes in the Kit-bot chassis     Not having paper didn’t stop this smart cookie

 New Carpet!                                        Testing different chassis designs

 Updating the website                         Creating a ‘kicker’ prototype

‘Kicker’ prototype

Totally awesome new crate    

  Uh-oh, looks like we already have stow-aways!

SPACE COOKIES ROCK! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

Buried in a computer, I was unaware of a momentous occasion happening just across the room. When my (not very) quiet work area was penetrated by a chorus of cheers, I soon became aware of a epic moment in this year’s design process. Yes, it’s what you’re all thinking: we prototyped a mechanism that can kick a ball all the way across the room!

The prototyped mechanism has been under construction since Tuesday and each day we have improved upon the original idea. When it first started, it was a merely a piece of bent metal. It then grew under the work of many eager space cookies into the prototype it is today.

In other, much less exciting, news: the robot is still refusing to work with the new control system elements. Despite coaxing and pleading, the robot is not responding to our demands… er commands. Each day we learn more about its internal issues, like for example today we became well acquainted with error 0xe0004. Yet, it is only the 6^th day of build season leaving many days to solve this problem and move on to greater and more challenging errors.

The writing also met today to discuss Chairman’s award. All space cookies at the lab were in attendance. We started to get some great ideas on about what makes our team truly unique: Here are some of our better ideas: -All Girls (woot!) -From Many Different High Schools (ugh, we have collectively 4 weeks of finals) -A Girl Scout Troop (Cookie Season starts tomorrow!) -Mentoring an FLL Team (they’re really, really cute). Some that didn’t make the cut: -Great International Dishes for Lab Dinners (What? Pizza gets boring) -Susceptibility to a highly contagious disease known as The Game (you just lost) -Really Awesome Style (well… I guess we are girls)

If you haven’t spent the time to really check out the website www.spacecookies.org, you really should. This has been an ongoing project since September and it looks really nice.

Well, that seems to be about it from the Lab floor here on Day 6 of build. We’re off to a great start and jumping right in to this new season.

-Christina

Programming and Electronics Director 2010

“It’ll be announced at eight.”

“Eight-fifteen.”

And two minutes past eight-thirty, thousands of teenagers across the world, some red-eyed from five hours of sleep, erupted into argument. And where was I? I was one of the privileged, or not-so-privileged, members of my team that attended the kick-off event (no pun intended, as you will later see) at San Jose State University , waking up at the bright hour of six to listen to the hour and a half duration of speeches preceding the FIRST Robotics Game of 2010.

Breakaway is the name, and soccer is the game. At least, that’s what the game design committee probably had in mind. Predictions for this year’s robots? If you ask me, they probably won’t look like a thing like Beckham, but with enough pneumatics and springs and motors, they might end up with a trophy just as big. Anyway, here at the NASA Ames Research Center, the Space Cookies have been pretty busy. Strategies don’t come up with themselves, you know? And as funny as the smell of the new carpet was, the field had to get built. But moving on –here was how the cookie crumbled (again, no pun intended).

Day One: KICKOFF. After a thoroughly exhausting five hours of arguing, we succeeded in coming up with four ways to beat the system, then came up with a ten by eight chart to “visually” see our “priorities.” It was a tiring day, but a parent generously donated a bag of Hershey’s Kisses to the table, which more or less kept me awake.

Day Two: Ditched the chart in favor of a strategy-by-strategy analysis, and increased the strategies to five before narrowing it down to three. The strategies were almost put up to a vote, but we decided that focusing our hopes solely on one game play might turn problematic later in the season. We also prototyped some drive trains with six wheels and four wheels and varied the tread on each wheel, but were unable to try different wheel sizes due to a lack of supply.

Day Three: Drive trains have become the focus. The girls split up into two teams: one group working on CAD (computer aided design), and a group physically building a chassis with six wheels. It bottomed out as it went over a bump into the field, so back to the drawing board! Finally, we decided on a similar design similar to our lab partner, Team 254 from Bellarmine.

Day Four: The Classmate laptop from the Kit-of-Parts is getting hooked up so it can interface with the CRio. Drive train is in progress, so we’re chugging along smoothly! And dinner from another one of our gracious parents has kept our brains wired and our hands oiled. The kicking mechanism is in progress, and we hope to see some real progress in the next couple of days or so.

That’s it for now! Stay tuned for updates, because they will be coming soon.

Cara

Co-Treasurer 2010