The goal of this project is to design a fully functioning device out of VEX materials that will position a cookie on a device and move it into a position so that a dropper can place a chocolate chip on it. It then should move the cookie to another position when finished.
GENERATE CONCEPTS
Silas’ Sketch
My Sketch
Silas' Flowchart
My Flowchart
Our Pseudocode
Actual Pseudocode
DEVELOP A SOLUTION
After we made a decision on which model we were going to use, we started brainstorming for which was best way to replicate conveyor belts and use motors to turn them to get the cookies from place to place. Silas brought his sketch and we built it as similar to the picture as we could and made changes along the way. We used the pseudocode based on his flow chart, and I had about 5 minutes to program it.
CONSTRUCT AND TEST PROTOTYPE
EVALUATE SOLUTION
Our main problem was time. We completed this project in two days. It would have been ideal to have at least twice the amount of time that we had, and others had longer time than us. This was caused by computer problems that we were having when doing the practice problems. We didn't really have much trouble with building, it just took us a while. We decided not to use a ramp for the cookies to go down once completed, unlike the sketch, because it would’ve taken up too much valuable time. Instead, we built a little box for them to fall into. We again did not have a lot of time to program, but luckily we had the pseudocode already planned out. We ended up not using the sonar which would’ve been used to sense the presense of the cookie, stop the belt that the cookie was on, and then drop the chocolate chip. We didn't think about the possibility that the sonar would detect the belt instead or the metal across from it, which it unfortunately ended up doing. We didn't have enough time to change the height of the sonar or the distance, so we just had the motors move and then wait for a determined time that we found to work well.
PRESENT SOLUTION
CONCLUSION
For the coding we used an infinite loop, which is a feature that we learned earlier from the practice problems. Other than that, we just used simple start motor, stop motor, and wait commands. The most surprising element of the project was the coding, although they were both straightforward and simple, the code was shorter than I expected, but it also didn't work how we had planned. The most difficult part was the definitely the building, because it took so long. To improve our design, we could have added a platform where the cookies would sit before they entered the conveyor belt. There could be another motor and a piston of some sort to push each cookie on to the belt at the correct time. This would make it so that the time when the cookie stops and the chip drops will be aligned perfectly, and we wouldn’t have to manually put the cookies on the belt. Another optimization would be to make a bigger basket for the cookies to fall into. Most of the cookies were too big for the little basket and bounced out.