Capitol College hosted an FTC working session and seminar on Saturday, October 6th from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The “Ring It Up” field was erected in the Student Center. The seminars were held in the auditorium and some of the class rooms. We forgot to pack the metal poles that hold the center scoring rack. Other than that, the field set-up was smooth.

David presented the Samantha seminar from 10 to 11 a.m. The ten attendees learned how to mount, wire, and connect the Samantha module to the robot. They learned that the module connects the NXT Mindstorm to the Field Control System (FCS). The FCS provides the link between the student’s joystick controllers and the robot during a match.

Allan Cass held a beginning RobotC seminar and a more advanced RobotC seminar. There were fifteen attendees at the first seminar. The use of the NXT Mindstorm (aka the brick) was discussed and also the basic electrical wiring of the brick, motor/server controllers, motors, switch, and battery. The data wiring of the robot determines the configuration of the pragmas. Manual operation of the robot was the focus. Interpreting the output of the joystick controllers was shown, which included conditional statements. Programming of the joystick's dead zone and how that affects the programming of the motors was discussed.

Mary helped Allan during the second seminar by displaying a sensor robot that had been built the night before the event. They discussed motor encoders, a sensor mux, a touch sensor, an IR seeker, a light sensor, and an accelerometer. Thirteen attendees were given an overview of these sensors. The focus of this seminar was the sensors and their uses. The code was shown, but not discussed in detail.

Ten rookie teams attended the combined workshop and seminar (shown below). Two veteran teams were in attendance (3253 Carroll Metal Lions and 2843 Under the Son). Under the Son was on-hand at the working session to help rookie teams build their robots. Most of the teams were well on their way to having robots that could respond to joysticks. One team was able to drive their robot on the field before the end of the day. Another team was completing the wiring of their robot, but encountered a problem where the battery wire was too large to fit into the motor controller. Erik showed them how to flatten it with a pair of pliers. Unfortunately, two teams do not yet have their kit of parts.

The Thurgood Marshall Academy team is ready for a part of the competition. They told us that they had been working on their dance moves. We (at least Mary and Lydean) can’t wait to dance with them during the breaks between matches.

Below are the slides from the Robot C workshop and Samantha workshop in PDF form, to the right they are provided in Power Point form.

Mary programmed the sensor robot to follow the IR beacon. The robot would turn in the direction of the IR beacon using an IR sensor. It would drive forward in the direction of the IR beacon. She programmed the ultrasonic sensor to halt the robot when it was too close.