Howdy! Welcome to the official blog of the Texas A&M University Eta Kappa Nu Micromouse competition team. For more information, please visit our website at http://hkn.tamu.edu/micromouse or knock on our lab door - 225A in Zachry
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Shirt Draft 2 Type 1
Okay,
Ben decided to change the font of the writing above the mouse and I also added some logos for HKN and Texas A&M.
Ben decided to change the font of the writing above the mouse and I also added some logos for HKN and Texas A&M.
What do you guys think?
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Shirt Draft 1 Type 1
I went ahead and took the image that Ben drew and put it on a shirt.
Ben says he plans on going over the final product in pen, but I kind of like the sketch look the drawing has. Let me know what you guys think.
Micromouse T-Shirt Draft 1 & Follow by Email
(1) - Micromouse T-Shirt Draft 1
Below is a sketch that a friend of mine (Ben Loeb) drew today for our Micromouse T-Shirts. Please comment on what you guys think. Also, do not hesitate to give any ideas to the drawing. If you guys like it, he is willing to draw it up again so that we can use it.
(2) - Follow by Email
On the right hand side of the blog, you may now see a gadget which will allow you to subscribe to this blog by E-mail so that you do not have to check back at the main blog for new updates. Of course, the blog utilities such as the calendar and the contacts list will always be available here.
Below is a sketch that a friend of mine (Ben Loeb) drew today for our Micromouse T-Shirts. Please comment on what you guys think. Also, do not hesitate to give any ideas to the drawing. If you guys like it, he is willing to draw it up again so that we can use it.
(2) - Follow by Email
On the right hand side of the blog, you may now see a gadget which will allow you to subscribe to this blog by E-mail so that you do not have to check back at the main blog for new updates. Of course, the blog utilities such as the calendar and the contacts list will always be available here.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Wednesday's Meeting & New Blog Features
(1) - Wednesday's Meeting
Members at the Micromouse meeting on Wednesday worked on the following items:
Members at the Micromouse meeting on Wednesday worked on the following items:
- Software - (Matt Paige, Anderson Puckett, Sam Carey)
- Discussed the details of different methods for the discovery of nodes in the maze.
- Worked on the implementation of one of the search methods. This method will be able to detect open spaces and blocked spaces by sensing the walls of the maze.
- Researched various libraries to allow the Arduino to handle multi-threaded type applications
- Found libraries which may be of use.
- Brief talk about the Arduino interface.
- Using the initial ideas of the maze discovery software, discussed how the integration of the sensor software modules and the maze solving algorithm block.
- Hardware -
- Nothing completed in this area.
(2) - New Blog Features
I took some time this past week to make the blog site more useful to the team by adding more utility. The site now features a Calendar and Contacts tab where relevant information may be found.
Calendar - This tab of course contains an embedded Google Calendar of coming up events of our team. Please add this to your calendar if at all possible. If you have a Google Calendar, you can do this by clicking on the
button on the bottom right of the calendar.
Calendar - This tab of course contains an embedded Google Calendar of coming up events of our team. Please add this to your calendar if at all possible. If you have a Google Calendar, you can do this by clicking on the
Contacts - This tab contains an embedded version of our member schedule spreadsheet. I have only allowed the email addresses to be seen through this view so that not just anybody can start calling your cellphone. If anyone has a problem with privacy in me adding this feature, please let me know and I can either remove it or come up with some other way to present contact information.
If anyone would like to let me know of anything else I could add to the blog site in order to increase its functionality and use, I would appreciate it.
I will most likely post again on Sunday before Monday's meeting.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Meeting Tonight!
Attention Team Members!
Don't forget that there is a meeting tonight at 7pm. Rumors of free HKN pizza later on at 8pm have been circulating 
.
Chris will be meeting everyone at the beginning of the meeting in room 111B to help facilitate ideas on what needs to be done today. Some suggestions of mine are:
- Discuss more about parts
- Short range IR sensors were found last meeting which should suit our needs - [Short Range Sharp IR sensors: (GP2D120XJ00F) http://www.sparkfun.com/
products/8959 ] - Check the blog at tamu-micromouse.blogspot.com for more parts suggestions
- Join the blog (Become followers)
- Work more on soldering
- *Note - there is a PicAxe board that was soldered so that the LED's are too close to the board. If you believe you have mad de-soldering skills, go ahead and detach the LED's, otherwise leave the board for me to take care of later this week or Monday. If you are to apply much more heat to the board, the pad may lift and the board will have to be modified in order to provide the same functions
- Research info on Arduino platform
- find how to implement something like software threads. Basically, the robot must both be able to handle low level functions such as motor control and sensor reading as well as computing the maze-solving algorithm at the same time. The PicAxe uses two separate pic controllers to complete these two functions. It would be preferable to allow our design to use only one micro-controller to handle both tasks though a call needs to be made back to each task frequently.
- Join the Blog <- I know this is the second time (we really need people to follow this)
Also, have one individual send either me (Brock Martin @ bamartin125@gmail.com) or Chris (chrisjagielski@gmail.com) an email with a short summary afterward containing some info about what was accomplished at the meeting.
Good luck guys!
Brock
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Next Week
(1) - New Parts
During our Monday and Wednesday meetings at 7pm (uMouse Calendar Link), we will be taking some time to decide on what products we should purchase.
Chris had suggested some products earlier this week:
If anyone would like to comment on these suggestions or make some new suggestions, please feel free to do so. We hope to make purchases such as these as early as next week.
(2) - Kit Completion
The robotics kit build is still underway at the soldering bench. Hopefully once this is done, new ideas for our home-brew Micromouse will surface.
(3) - Electronics Hardware & Software Challenge
Since we began writing the code for the Arduino platform, we have started to discover new challenges with incorporating both the live path-finding algorithm and using the basic environment understanding in order to keep the bot between two walls without hitting anything.
The code that we obtained from the PicAxe as well as the manual on how the PicAxe works must be broken down starting this week so that we may gain some ideas on how this challenge may be resolved on the Arduino platform.
(4) - T-Shirts
Last meeting, many members gave their ideas on what should go on the new T-Shirts. If anyone has any new ideas, sketches, or anything else to contribute, do not hesitate to either email Chris or myself or simply bring your idea to the next meeting you are able to attend.
This week should be a productive one!
During our Monday and Wednesday meetings at 7pm (uMouse Calendar Link), we will be taking some time to decide on what products we should purchase.
Chris had suggested some products earlier this week:
- LED Module
- More Full Kits
- http://www.robotstorehk.com/micromouse/RS-CRUISER.HTML
- http://www.active-robots.com/robots/robot-kits-1/airat-ii-micromouse-robot.html
- Inexpensive Chassis from another bot
- Arduino based Kit
- Sensor Kit
If anyone would like to comment on these suggestions or make some new suggestions, please feel free to do so. We hope to make purchases such as these as early as next week.
(2) - Kit Completion
The robotics kit build is still underway at the soldering bench. Hopefully once this is done, new ideas for our home-brew Micromouse will surface.
(3) - Electronics Hardware & Software Challenge
Since we began writing the code for the Arduino platform, we have started to discover new challenges with incorporating both the live path-finding algorithm and using the basic environment understanding in order to keep the bot between two walls without hitting anything.
The code that we obtained from the PicAxe as well as the manual on how the PicAxe works must be broken down starting this week so that we may gain some ideas on how this challenge may be resolved on the Arduino platform.
(4) - T-Shirts
Last meeting, many members gave their ideas on what should go on the new T-Shirts. If anyone has any new ideas, sketches, or anything else to contribute, do not hesitate to either email Chris or myself or simply bring your idea to the next meeting you are able to attend.
This week should be a productive one!
Friday, February 17, 2012
Howdy!
Welcome to the TAMU HKN Micromouse team Blog!
For more information about the team, visit us at http://hkn.tamu.edu/micromouse
Thanks & Gig 'em!
For more information about the team, visit us at http://hkn.tamu.edu/micromouse
Thanks & Gig 'em!
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