Robotics - GitHub Time

From this day forth, Thursday robotics meetings are 45 minutes longer than usual, for a total of more than two hours of robotic goodness. This enables me to run around like a crazy man searching for various tools for even longer.

One of the FLL (middle school robotics) coaches happened to drop by. She is a project manager somewhere and knows a lot about organizational efficiency. She talked to us for a while about what kinds of things would help us get our work done better. All our rooms are a huge mess, and we don't really have a plan currently. I was planning on reading the full rulebook and maybe creating a task list during today's meeting, but then other things happened.

Specifically, since the teams had been reshuffled, I needed to get the NXT renamed and the wireless router reconfigured. Those tasks were very easy to do, but then I got the urge to also configure the Samantha wireless module. I ran around the rooms to collect the appropriate cables and the motor controller, but soon ran into a problem: the wires were frayed and fused and generally in disrepair at the ends. I then ran around some more looking for scissors and wire strippers. I found scissors, but the only wire strippers around didn't actually strip wires. So, I made do with what I had:

I pulled a knife and cut the insulation from the wires. (Dramatization. I actually had to scrounge around for any sharp object and ended up settling with a replacement pocketknife blade slightly poking out of its packaging.) Then, I used the scissors to cut off the frayed bits (metal shavings everywhere!) and screwed the now-much-tidier ends into the motor controller, which was actually being used to convert between power cables instead of controlling motors.

For some reason, the Samantha module wouldn't power on even though the motor controller light did. I tried with a different Samantha module and a different Samantha cord, so the problem must be with the battery or motor controller. That will wait for another day.

Then, I helped to continue assembling the field. After acquiring a drill, it was very easy to remove the failed rivets and then rivet the Plexiglass to the correct brackets. (One person also managed to break the riveter itself, which was kind of exciting. Fortunately, the math teacher (and I have no idea why he was in the room) fixed it, but it acts a little different now.) We made a lot of progress, adding the Plexiglass, the upper crossbar, and the support pipes to the center assembly.

Finally, I talked with the other programmer on the team and we decided to use GitHub for managing the robot program source code. Since GitHub is offering lots of cool free stuff to people with .edu e-mail addresses, we will have a private repository there. I created that today, granted him access, and started looking around on GitHub. It seems like a pretty nice thing. I will soon install the Windows Git client on my school-issued laptop and get to writing some code.