the diary

1.[color=#248d6c][u]First Entry[/u]
2.This robot does what it's built to: knock stuff over. Its purpose is to detect objects using its ultrasonic sensor, drive towards it, push it off of a surface, and not to fall off of the surface itself. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well. it's not. This kind of thing is difficult for even the most well-trained spidermonkey, which is saying a lot. I think. Making a robot follow a line took weeks, and it was only slightly successful. However, that was created with my admittedly limited experience with Lego Mindstorms and any associated digital and physical challenges. But Oshin will (hopefully) be able to pull this off. This page will be updated as Dave (the robot) progresses both in terms of design and programming.
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4.[u]Second Entry[/u]
5.I have been trying to build this robot for a few weeks now, and nothing I've done has made any progress. I shouldn't have tried in that aspect of this assignment, as I have little to no experience with building these things and I've wasted more than enough time already. Designing this website is my job, and I'm sticking with it. I'm giving Oshin a try at building it, because he's been doing god knows what for the past few weeks. Pieces have bent, misplaced and outright stolen, and it's been getting increasingly frustrating to build. The battery pack has been stolen, the longest pieces have been bent, and several small pieces have been 'misplaced'. Oshin is building the robot as I type this, and he's already having a lot more success than I had. Luckily I can spread as many unnecessary walls of text over this website as I want to pad it out. Lovely. I haven't heard from Oshin as of yet, but I'm hoping that next time he talks to me it'll be something along the lines of "[/color][color=#24678d]Hey George I've finished the robot![/color][color=#248d6c]"
6.Speak of the devil. That literally just happened! Well, I'm paraphrasing but he has essentially finished the structural aspect of it. It's a tad unstable and is more... unorthodox in design than I had expected, but it's better than nothing! Bitter ramblings are over, now we can return to the wonderful realm of informative texts.
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8.[u]Third Entry[/u]
9.Wowee, it's time for another update it seems. The computer that I'm used to sitting at has stopped functioning properly for whatever reason, so I've moved to another available one. This one is further away from Oshin, but not any more peaceful. So, an update on the progress of the robot. Its battery pack is still missing, and Oshin is having trouble reconstructing it. It has to be reconstructed because the completed robot won't fit into the limited space of the Lego Mindstorms tub. Around me I'm seeing a lot of more effective and concise designs than our own, and I'm wondering what Oshin's design has against any of these. He hasn't tested the design yet because of incomplete coding and a missing power source, the latter of which I have mentioned in passing a few times before and is becoming more and more frustrating.
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12.15 Minutes into the lesson, Oshin still hasn't finished reconstructing the robot. God dammit.
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15.Well I just spent the rest of the lesson trying to convince him to make a more stable design. Stable, as in, not falling over. I also spent the majority of that time building the back wheel of the robot, which I can't figure out how to do. Every configuration I try screws up in some way, and I can't figure out why. But at least we're making progress!
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17.[u]Fourth Entry[/u]
18.Oshin apparentely lost all of his programming data because someone else is using the computer that he was working on. I'm pretty sure that's not how it works, especially when the data is not stored on the computer itself, but on a file that is accessible on all computers stored in a school database, but whatever. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that it was just a glitch, and he totally had an "[/color][color=#24678d]Almost Finished[/color][color=#248d6c]" program on the other computer that apparently didn't save/was deleted magically. Oh god. I'm in too deep. He's singing whilst building the robot. That's it, ladies and gentlemen, game over.
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20.[u]Fifth Entry[/u]
21.So, this is it. We're practicing for the real deal today; the one day wherein I can't do an acrobatic pirouette of the handle. Flying of the handle is, however, acceptable. Despite the sense of urgency Oshin is still fooling around with the robot. Okay, look. I've been a bit salty in regards to Oshin in this diary thing, and looking up at the text above I can see the unfairness that I'm spewing. So I'll give him one more chance.
22.The program is still messy. That's fine, my program was no work of art to say the least. The robot is still unstable, and I can't really convince him to spend any more time on it because we don't really have any more time.
23.Dave's program has made some progress, I'm happy to say. He asked me for some advice and to look over his program, but oddly enough he made me sit there as he changed it and then sent me away again. But he's made progress! And that's good. That's fantastic. He's said that he will have the program done in time, because he has a Lego Mindstorms kit at home and knows how to program decently. That's great. I'm not even joking.
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26.[u]Sixth Entry[/u]
27.So. Today's the day. The day our robot gets tested. Of course, Oshin is making the program from scratch-- WAIT WHAT. Why? Why is he doing this? I tried to sort out the programming issue, and he said he'd have to program finished and ready to go today, and that he'd have an entry ready for this thing. He has neither of those things, and is looking at a tutorial for how to detect objects. Oh. Okay.
28.He's not even half-- HE'S NOT EVEN HALF DONE. When the test is done and we have failed, I'll get back to you. I mean this isn't really the kind of thing that you can just say 'Oh I Do Really Hope We Win Because I Put In A Lot Of Gosh Darn Effort', Because there is not even anything to ride those hopes on. We don't even have a FINISHED PROGRAM that will fail, we have a [i]TUTORIAL PROGRAM that's been modified SLIGHTLY and [u]ISN'T FINISHED[/u][/i]. I'll talk to him later. I'll just... talk to him later. This is not okay. This isn't 'cool', this isn't something you can just say sorry for and laugh about it, this isn't something you can just go ahead and say "[/color][color=#27678d]Well Gee I guess I'm Not As Good At Programming As I Thought![/color][color=#248d6c]" This is just dumb. And someone has to pay for his laziness. God Dammit.
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30.First run, forfeit mark. The program didn't work. At all. So... Yeah. It was just a forfeit mark and that's it. That's it.
31.Second Run, we got 0 objects knocked over in 3 seconds. It fell of the table and smashed to bits. Wow.