Week 4

Goals for this week:

• Be able to demonstrate four events
• Have semi-consistent results

Tasks performed during this lab:

        This lab was spent putting together and perfecting the exchanges of energy between the first four events.  The first event, the robot, has already been made and coded, and simply needed to be able to trigger the second event.  The robot moves forward and hits a ball that rolls down a track into a third event.  This second event was slightly adjusted today in lab, as instead of a ball rolling down a track, we decided to use a ball with a hook attached to it, similar to a Christmas ornament.  This ball zip-lines down a wire into the third event.  Small adjustments were made to these events, such as adding more K'NEX as support and for more height in order to get things to run smoothly.

Another change we had to make was with our exchange from event two to event three.  We originally were going to have the ball swing into marbles in order to have them run down the plinko board.  This was switched to the ball hitting a cup that will have three marbles inside which will spill down the plinko board into event four.

Event four was originally a stylus that would hit an iPad that would then call an iPhone.  During this lab we ran into a lot of trouble.  The stylus would hit the iPad correctly, however it rarely worked.  We believe this has something to do with the stylus being attached to the cup rather than held by a hand.  The stylus was replaced by a wireless mouse, which is taped down and hit with the eraser end of a pencil.  This proved to work much more consistently and efficiently.  The mouse will trigger a computer to call a phone via Facetime, which would be the trigger for event five.  We spent a little time working out the basics of event five, which is the iPhone vibrating, falling down, and pushing a ball down a ramp.

When it came time to demonstrate our Rube Goldberg machine, some of the events did not transfer correctly.  The robot does not hit the ball correctly every time, so during our next lab we will work on lining it up correctly so that it works every time.  The same went for the ball sliding down the zip-line and hitting the cup.  The zip-line has to be adjusted so that every time the ball will hit time as well.  Over the weekend we plan on working on getting all events consistent.

Week 3

Materials brought:

• chopsticks
• cardboard
• plywood (for the base of our machine) and a bit of excess plywood (being used as a ramp for the robot)
• wire cutters
• plastic cups
• iPad with stylus
• NXT robot
• string
• K'Nex

Goals for this week:

• Complete event #2 (rail system that leads to event #3)
• Complete event #3 ("plinko" board that marbles run down and cause stylus to touch iPad screen)
• (Optional goal) Map out the placement of each event on the plywood base board

Tasks performed during lab:

     The majority of this week's lab period was dedicated to the construction of events 2 and 3, the rail system that a ball follows and the "plinko" board that causes a stylus to tap an iPad's screen. We split up into two groups to expedite the construction process; Dave worked on the "plinko" board and Alex and Kush worked setting up the rail system.

     It was decided early on that K'Nex would be extremely helpful with creating a scaffolding-like structure that would serve as the starting point of the ball (which is pushed by the robot's arm when it's in motion at the start of our machine). Also, we decided to change the construction material of the rails to a thick wire that was made available to use in the lab. This wire was more pliable and was much easier to work with than our previously planned construction material (chopsticks). Construction was started but not completed during the lab period unfortunately, but it will be worked on in the days between this week's and next week's scheduled lab time. We expect this event to be fully functional by next week's lab.

    The "plinko" board was pretty simple, but tedious to build. The construction materials used were cardboard, chopsticks, marbles (provided in the lab), and a small plastic cup which will house the stylus and capture the marble that will fall. The piece of cardboard used was mapped out as to where each post will be placed. A hole was also cut out of the bottom of the cardboard that will allow for the marbles to enter the cup with the stylus. The tedious part of this construction was cutting down to size a number of chopsticks that will be used for the posts in this event. This proved to be the most time-consuming process of the build. Unfortunately, we found out we would need glue to keep these posts in place as just sticking them in cardboard would not be enough to keep them in place. This event would also have to be complete outside of the lab in the days before next week's lab. We expect this event to be fully functional by next week's lab.

     Our secondary goal of this week was also accomplished as we roughly mapped out the placement of each event on the piece of plywood. This gave us a basic idea of the amount of space we were working with and made us more spatially more aware of the size each of our events will have to be. Pictures of the sketched out plywood can be seen below (it might be a bit hard to see as they were done in pencil to allow modifications to the plan if needed):

Week 2

Materials brought to class:

• wire strippers
• plastic cups
• cardboard box
• chopsticks
• iPad box
• stylist
• scissors

Main goal for today:  build NXT robot that will start and end our machine.  Also, we want to start building one other component of the machine (plinko board).

Component Ideas:

1. robot moves forward starting the machine by having touch sensor pushed by some kind of ball. The robot will stop due to an obstacle
2. during robot movement, it will hit a lever/marble on a suspended track, triggering the next event
3. plinko, ball rolls and hits a lever that starts next event
4. the lever in previous step will have a stylist attached to it, when dropped, it will call another phone, causing it to vibrate triggering the next event
5. one more event here
6. robot ends machine by advancing past the obstacle that was blocking it and hitting the next groups power surge

More materials were thought of (see next weeks post).  The NXT robot was made and programmed to start when the touch sensor was triggered, and programmed to stop when an obstacle gets in its way, and begin again when the obstacle moves.

Week 1

Research was done using YouTube to find inspiration for our group's section of the Rube Goldberg machine. Listed below are a few of the videos that were used as our research:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_748852&feature=iv&src_vid=6FzUx2EFk8s&v=cv5WLLYo-fk
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8vzbezVru4
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0LCFML6Y0A

We have communicated with the two groups that will be adjacent to us in the overall machine. For group 5, we will be triggering a power strip on their machine with some sort of lever or ball that toggles the switch (this is subject to change). Group 3 will be triggering our machine with an object that will roll towards our machine and activate the first event of our section of the machine. More specific and detailed descriptions will be posted next week and in the design proposal in week 3.

Much more thought was put into the two transition events of our machine. Group 3 (who triggers our machine), will have something similar to a baseball or tennis ball roll towards a touch sensor of a basic robot. This triggers the robot to move forward, triggering the second event, until it senses something in its way (using the ultrasonic sensor) where it will pause until the final event. In turn, the robot will be involved for the first and final event of our machine. The final event will move the object the obstructed object out of the way (probably a balloon being popped), causing the robot to perform the action triggers the next group's machine.

The following is a list of possible materials our machine will be made of (this is subject to change):

• cardboard/paper
• chopsticks, popsicle sticks, etc
• tape and glue
• rubber bands
• ball bearings/marbles/ping pong balls/ golf balls
• NXT kit, legos, knex
• wood
• pvc piping
• cups, bottles
• strings
• paper clips
• dominos
• (more to be added later)