Friday Feb. 4th Meeting is On
Posted by Sean Shenold on Friday, February 4, 2011
I've just returned from a trip around the southwest side, and road conditions are not all that bad, though far from ideal, of course.
We also are up against a time limit with the APEC MicroMouse competition, which is March 7th. While we've got our robot designed and built, and a sample maze partially complete, that's only about 25% of the total task we've got to do. The big challenge now is programming--designing and creating a program that will enable our robot to successfully navigate its way to the center of the maze without any outside assistance.
The first step with this is to brainstorm how we can use the RobotC programming language to tell our robot what it needs to do. And if we learned anything at all from our experience with the OKBEST competition, it's that we really need to improve our programming skills for all members, not just one expert.
So, it's important to hold the meeting on Friday evening. There are of course ways we could do a virtual meeting; businesses do this all the time. However this requires a considerable amount of software, which we don't have, and I doubt that sort of stuff is free. We are looking at using the Dropbox file-sharing software, whcih we might be able to use to do a combination conference call & internet-based meeting, but once again we'd all have to have the software (Dropbox does offer a free version) and we'd all need to know how to use it. After MicroMouse, we're going to have some more time to do all sorts of stuff before OKBEST this fall, and we'll probably get into that then. But for now we're limited to face-to-face meetings.
The only two problems I ran into while I was out was, first, that Pennsylvania isn't a snow route, and second, that eastbound SW 119th just east of Pennsylvania, where it goes up a small hill, was so slick as to be nearly impassible. As for snow routes, both May and Western are designated snow routes, and SW 119th wasn't too bad (except just east of Penn, of course). The church parking lot has not been plowed, so I'd recommend pulling into the Dollar General parking lot next door. Bill and I are planning on being there early to clear the entryways and throw down some salt as needed, so we'll try to clear a path from there to the church's fellowship hall.
We also are up against a time limit with the APEC MicroMouse competition, which is March 7th. While we've got our robot designed and built, and a sample maze partially complete, that's only about 25% of the total task we've got to do. The big challenge now is programming--designing and creating a program that will enable our robot to successfully navigate its way to the center of the maze without any outside assistance.
The first step with this is to brainstorm how we can use the RobotC programming language to tell our robot what it needs to do. And if we learned anything at all from our experience with the OKBEST competition, it's that we really need to improve our programming skills for all members, not just one expert.
So, it's important to hold the meeting on Friday evening. There are of course ways we could do a virtual meeting; businesses do this all the time. However this requires a considerable amount of software, which we don't have, and I doubt that sort of stuff is free. We are looking at using the Dropbox file-sharing software, whcih we might be able to use to do a combination conference call & internet-based meeting, but once again we'd all have to have the software (Dropbox does offer a free version) and we'd all need to know how to use it. After MicroMouse, we're going to have some more time to do all sorts of stuff before OKBEST this fall, and we'll probably get into that then. But for now we're limited to face-to-face meetings.
The only two problems I ran into while I was out was, first, that Pennsylvania isn't a snow route, and second, that eastbound SW 119th just east of Pennsylvania, where it goes up a small hill, was so slick as to be nearly impassible. As for snow routes, both May and Western are designated snow routes, and SW 119th wasn't too bad (except just east of Penn, of course). The church parking lot has not been plowed, so I'd recommend pulling into the Dollar General parking lot next door. Bill and I are planning on being there early to clear the entryways and throw down some salt as needed, so we'll try to clear a path from there to the church's fellowship hall.