For the past few classes Chris and I have been
working on copying, drawing, and physically
creating simple circuits. We've started building
our H-Bridges. we mounted two transistors, one on
each side of a heatsink. Each of these represents
a half of an H-Bridge, and will put them together
later. We also soldred in two IC sockets, these
will hold our logic gates.
|
|
Our robotics class has undergone some changes,
most for the better, but these changes affect our
timeline and how often this website is updated.
First, the "not so good" change:
We lost our team leader, Victoria Lee. There were
complications with her housing arrangements
(Victoria is from Korea), so she was unable to
continue at our school. We all miss Victoria very
much, and her absence from the team is felt
deeply. However, Chris and Holly have really
stepped up to fill in the gap, and I've been
proud of their efforts.
The other major change has to do with the
scheduling of work on two separate robots. I've
found that as a teacher, I was stretched too thin
trying to supervise two separate teams of young
students at the same time. Issues of maturity and
safety prompted me to initiate a rotating
schedule, so each week we have just one team
working on the robot while the other team works
on their website and blog. While it seems like
this will slow things down a bit, now that each
team has my dedicated focus to guide and help,
they are more productive with the time they
have.
Work on the Bike-Bot has changed as well. We are
pretty much complete with the mechanical
engineering, and are now working on the
electronics to control steering and the main
drive motor. We'll be making schematics available
shortly. Our last class involved prototyping an
H-bridge and a logic "protector" (which prevents
a straight-through short on the bridge). Our next
goal is to hardwire this circuit and experiment
with steering control.
|
