Logomotionator

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Logomotionator is an App for the FIRST Robotics Competition 2011 that I created during the build season while helping out Team 296: The Northern Knights! You can download it on iTunes for free.

Here is the description of Logomotionator:

Logomotionator provides a way for teams to organize and collect their ideas about strategy and scoring during the 2011 FIRST Robotics Competition season.

Features:
- Fabulous user interface design
- Track the scoring for the red and blue alliance
- Up to 5 tubes per peg will be counted (in case some are deflated)
- Record which teams were on the alliances, their minibot scores and penalties
- View your saved scores and email them
- Draw strategic plays on the game field in red and blue
- Easily access the usfirst.org website

The FIRST Robotics Competition is a fantastic way to get youth interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Check out one of the regional competitions in your area to see what the future holds.

Inspiration for the App came about by the temptation of an Apple eMate 300 (an iPad of 10 years ago, basically)! I took in some feature requests and just started to work away at it. Making the calculator algorithm was fun

All of the coding was straight forward. I must be getting really good at making Apps or something. Making the game field drawing stuff was probably the part I most enjoyed:

I also really enjoyed the email stuff too:

The only rough spot was on the saved scores view, because the “Remove button” is actually in a different section, I have to replace it with an invisible cell when removing everything because of the protective UITableView cell math.

Once all of the functionality was there I wanted to make something that would really capture the energy that the competitions have. I figured it would have to look snazzy, so I paid close attention to detail when styling the App. On the iPhone 4′s retina display, the graphics look beautiful.

This is what the background looks like, I had a lot of fun making it!

This is my most complete App ever (so far). I really like the finished product. I can’t wait until after the season is over to go through some of the code with the programming students. It would be a fun exercise to break down the calculator algorithm!

I hope you enjoy it. There’s some more screenshots on flickr. Go download Logomotionator now! It’s free!

FIRST®, FIRST® Robotics Competition, FRC®, FIRST® Tech Challenge, and FTC®, are registered trademarks of FIRST® (www.usfirst.org) which is not overseeing, involved with, or responsible for this activity, product, or service.

Posted in: Art, FIRST, Programming, Projects, iPhone.

All Coding Ahead

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, September 27th, 2008

Woohoo! I fixed my soldering iron – it’s FANTABULOUS now! All I did was file it with an Xacto, and sanded it a bit. Now I can finally tin the tip (before I couldn’t) ^_^ It’s amazing!

My two WiiChuck adapters are finished – I tried to make it work this afternoon, but for some reason the WiiChuck header file by Tom Igoe isn’t working!!! :S I’m confused… maybe it’s because I’m using Arduino 0012. I’ll be playing around with it more tonight.

The WaveShield is all soldered up I’m thinking about which song I should put on my SD card to test it out… hmmm

There’s so many fun things to do eeeeee all of them are now at the coding stage yay!

Posted in: Programming, Projects, Robot.

Fun Weekend Ahead

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, September 26th, 2008

This weekend is going to be pretty fun for me

I have soooo many things to play with, it’s going to be wickedly hyper awesome!

I went to the RobotShop and got my Lynxmotion SSC-32, Soldering station, and some female jumper wires, and a force sensing resistor!

The SSC-32 is awesome! I tried it out the other day, and my MANOI is ALIVE! I made it move its head
The only thing though is that I’ll have to power all the servos externally – which is okay now as I got a 12V DC transformer to plug into the breadboard

The soldering iron is horrible I was (and still am) trying to solder the Wave Shield, but the solder won’t stick to the iron >:( So far it has taken me 3 hours (and counting) just to solder in the resistors. The iron doesn’t melt the solder, and the flux is GOOEY! It’s disgusting! I’m even trying lead solder (this stuff SUCKS) and it won’t work… going to try to sand the tip tomorrow, and see if it works better.

The old soldering iron literally exploded… so it’s in the garbage now.

I also bought a nintendo wii nunchuck (the accelerometer thing) to go with my WiiNunchuck Arduino adapters. I’ll be using it to control MANOI (and of course, many Processing programs)

I was playing around with the Fourier transform again today… and I somehow made it to morph time. It’s really freaky! I was recording sound, when my watch beeped. When I played back the sound (after the FFT alg) it was morphed… in a totally weird and unexplainable way XD kind of sped up, but also kinda moshed together…

This entire week I’ve been studying for the SAT. This pretty much involves me trying to sit in one place, focus on one thing, and not fall asleep/daydream for 4 ENTIRE HOURS! I just can’t stay focused that long… I make so many sleepy mistakes … I have absolutely no idea what to do. The real SAT is on October 4th (in 1 week) I’m not really in a panic as the test is so trivial and boring … I just can’t focus on one thing for more than 45 minutes! My brain is always in hyperdrive mode thinking about what ifs and whys… “Why exactly do they think this test evaluates your reasoning abilities” “What if they made this test interactive, like a game, on a computer?”

I’ve been asking what if and why a lot the past week… here’s some of the questions I can remember

What if time wasn’t measured in anything… but was just a continuous flow like a river
Why do we have to measure time?
Why do we always use graphs in two dimension? I don’t care about a squiggle function on a line… why can’t everything be graphed in 3 dimensions?
Why do we always round decimal points when it’s obvious it gives us inaccurate answers?
Why is the tinfoil on my lamp making high pitched noises like vibrations? Is it because of the heat… or did I just discover something I should look into further about light?
What if light had mass?
Why don’t we know what’s in/through a black hole?
What if we could make our own net of space and see how everything interacts with anything?
Why didn’t they put more corrector magnets into the LHC?
What if the computer isn’t monitoring enough information to really see what the Higgs is like?
What happens if they’re smashing the wrong particles together?
Why can’t they just model it on a computer?
Why is the LHC in a circle?
What would happen if it was in a spiral?
Why are my desks always messy?
What will happen when robots will become pets?
Why are people so judgemental about robots?
Why are robots stereotyped to be wirey and ugly?
What if the answer to better AI systems would be to create an “AI Internet” with many algs, and an API, to create a general AI?
What if cancer can be eliminated with the use of dandelions?
What if robots could code themselves and make better versions of their algorithms?
Why is random not random?
What if there were many robots in one square, and they were given random coordinates to navigate to and from? Would it be classified as swarm robots as eventually they will all converge?
What if I made a parrot robot that could read twitter feeds out loud, in a parrot voice?

So yeah… that’s pretty much the way I think all the time… I hardly can focus on one thing, ever!

Weeeee I can’t wait to get MANOI moving and waving this weekend!

Posted in: MANOI, Other, Programming, Projects, Robot, School.

Stanford’s Version of MIT OCW

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, September 19th, 2008

Looks like Stanford has their own version of MIT OCW with some neat courses up! It’s called Stanford Engineering Everywhere.

I’m just looking at the Machine Learning course now… it looks pretty fun – definitely worth checking out

SEE

Posted in: News, Other News.

Stuff!!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

^_^ Thanks to very kind people, I had a $200 gift certificate at Adafruit and was able to buy stuff!

• Arduino
• 2 ProtoShields
• Arduino bootloader
• Multimeter
• Boarduino
• Motor Shield
• Wave Shield

All of these are going to be extremely helpful @_@ In fact, the old multimeter broke just the other day ^^;

What’s a little cool is that the Arduino now has Italy on the back! Someone who had the Arduino at Stanford also had this style, so I guess it’s kind of cool that I had one of the Arduino Dicemilas without the map The motor shield sounds a lot of fun… as does the wave shield! I’m not sure which ones I’ll put together and test first…

Either way, I now have lots of interesting stuff to keep me entertained for a while longer

Thanks Ron & Evelyn!!!
(and I hope I won’t blow any of them up)

Posted in: Other, Projects, Robot.

Sightseeing Around

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

I think I have been stuck in a bubble for a long time judging by how long it has taken me to post this- more pictures from my trip to Stanford It is mainly the Golden Gate Bridge and Capitola Beach. The Golden Gate Bridge is pretty amazing in real… I wonder how much paint it needs per year?! As for Capitola Beach, this was one of our outings for the first Saturday. It was okay, a bit of an ugly beach though. The weather was cold… water was cold… everything was very cold! The ice cream was good though. Oh yeah- I wrecked my camera at Capitola Beach because of the water and the sand. It was pretty sad. But I picked up a better camera at Best Buy, for a really cheap price, so it was pretty cool!
There are also some pictures of De Anza drive and… APPLE! ^_^
Click continue reading for all the pictures

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Other, Projects.