Today, we had a lock down drill during 3rd period, which, for me, was design 1-2. Since Mr. Ngai was really chill, we just continued working under the skylight. During 5th period, we went over website grades, and for the first time this schoolyear, I got a perfect score on my website. My website got shown off, and it was all really cool. During the FRC meeting today, I worked more on practicing on Autodesk Inventor, this time making a Bullet Bill from Super Mario Bros. In afddition, I helped a bit in the CAD of the electronics board, which was really cool because it completely broadened my scope of what was possible to do with Autodesk Inventor.
Today, in 3rd period, we started a new project that was based on color schemes. We were to divide a piece of paper into six 6 inch by 6 inch squares, draw a copy of an image/character/object onto each square, and then color the image using a different color scheme on each box, whether it be primary colors, secondary colors, warm colors, or cool colors. I decided to draw Saiyan saga Goku from Dragon Ball Z, as his various transformations and gi give me a variety of colors to work with. The model that I drew was from the bottom right panel of page 6, chapter 230 of the manga. During 5th period, we started on the preliminary steps to building this year's longboards, which was to make a 4 wheeled cart that could get to the bottom of a 5 meter ramp. The cart had to be made out of cardboard, straws, and wood glue, and had to fit within certain size constraints. Since last year's design worked pretty well, I pretty much just copied it. I was able to cut out and glue together the body of the cart, but because I didn't have anything circular with me, I wasn't able to get to cutting out the wheels of the cart today. During today's FRC meeting, I just worked some more on practicing with Autodesk. Since this is my first year doing CAD, I'm pretty sure that this is what I'll be ddoing for the entire build season other than working on miscellaneous tasks like teambuilding (sanding PVC pipes) and thinking of ideas for decorations or ornamentation for the people going to the actual competition.
Today, we had a Wednesday Challenge where we were tasked with creating handouts for this year's FRC handouts. My grouop consisted of Connor, Erin, Keilah, and myself. Our idea focused on an aerial screw, which was the main part of the airship. From there we came up with the idea of putting an aerial screw on the end of a pen, dowel, or something of the sort, and turn it into something akin to a hand-powered helicopter toy. Afterschool, I went to Office Depot to buy some school supplies, and found that they had a particular model of solid state drive for order. I was able to order and pay for the SSD in store, and was even able to get free 1 day shipping.
Wednesday Challenge 3: FRC Handouts
Today, we had the Visual and Preforming Arts assembly, but I was tired because of too much homework yesterday, so I fell asleep during the assembly. During 5th period, we had more time to work on the cardboard cars. I had the compass that I had bought at Office Depot on Wednesday with me, so I was able to make the wheels for the cart in about 10 minutes. After looking at the body of the cart, I realised that with the height and thickness of the wheels, the cart would not fit within the size constraints, so I redesigned the body of the cart to fit within the constraints. This new body was much simpler to make, and also took far less time to build, as it was essentially just 4 layers of cardboard glued together. Durting today's FRC meeting, I was in the CAD room, but I worked mostly on a cool idea that I had for an addition to the robot costume.
Today, we were working on our cars and websites. Since I had so much time to work, I managed to complete my cardboard car. Dr. Neato told us that our group won in the previous Wednesday Challenge. When I got home, I saw that my SSD that I had ordered on Wednesday had arrived, so I quickly indstalled the SSD into my laptop and then went to the FRC meeting. However, during the meeting, for whatever reason, my laptop wasn't turning on, so I took it to Kirk, who thought that it was a crack in my motherboard. After fiddling with the laptop for the better part of an hour, I raged a bit and hit the keyboard of my laptop, and it miraculously started working again. Tonight was taco night, and the food was really good. In addition to a wide variety of tacos, there was guacamole, salad, and a bunch of other really good foods. When I got home, I tested the shut down and boot speeds of my laptop with the SSD now installed, and it was approximately 10 times faster, going from almost a minute to boot and 30 seconds to shut off, to under 6 seconds to boot and 4 seconds to shut down.
