Google Authenticator and a finished robot

Last Tuesday, we got our robot shipped, or rather, put in a big clear plastic bag with big red zip tie on it. Although we shipped overweight, and missing a few components, this is better than last year on completeness at ship. I have a few pictures in my “Robots” Facebook album, showing off Ursa Major (our robot).

Last night, I upgraded my Debian VM to Squeeze, and set up Google Authenticator on it. The Makefile is kinda terrible, but it works as of now. I just scanned the barcode that loaded the secret key into the authenticator app on my phone, and now I can authenticate with time-based one-time passwords. I got it to compile on Mac OS X (some things are hacked up), but I don’t think it exactly works. I’ll have to dig in further to figure it out though.

Google Authenticator works rather well, although one thing I want is a timeout indicator so I know when my password is going to expire, so I don’t get half-way through typing it and it times out.

That is all.

Robots and their construction

As you probably know, I’m in my high school’s robotics club. We participate in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), a competition sponsored by FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, which also holds lower level competitions.

The “Build Season,” when we construct the actual robot, has started. Four teams have been assigned components to complete, with one team integrating the components together, as well as building the basic chassis. Many teams are already jumping onto completing their tasks, and are making good progress to completing our robot.

Something this will accomplish that is very critical is being able to build two robots, and have LOTS of driver practice. Driver practice is critical for success, and the last year, we got next to ZERO driver practice in.

Of course, I can’t reveal details, as it’s top secret, and if other teams were to get in on it, I’d be in real bad trouble, but I can tell you that this reorganization of the club will certainly make our robot a serious contender in the competition.

This isn’t going to be the last time I post about our club, but it’s the first this year.

Maple Valley Days 2010

Today, Maple Valley Days in 2010 wrapped up. Bear Metal, also known as The Tahoma Robotics Club, had the opportunity to participate in the parade for another year, as well as have a booth again.

This year, we brought all three of our remaining robots, Catalyst, Bearenstein, and Odyssey.

Continue reading “Maple Valley Days 2010”

Mill type thing

The Tahoma Robotics Club recently purchased a CNC mill that we got delivered to us yesterday. Today, we got the mill moving and running GCODE via the Mach3 Mill control interface. When we first connected to the mill, we were unable to move the X axis but after a complete reset of all the machines (mill controller and computer) and reseating of the parallel cable, we got control of that axis and ran a program that was cutting in mid-air.

Unfortunately, we cut a lubricating tube because our Z-limit switch didn’t function. Thankfully, that part is easily replaceable.

The mill is actually a manual -> CNC conversion done by IH CNC. Kudos to them as they gave us help over the phone, even at 21:00 their time zone.

I’ll eventually post pictures.

Home, home again

I’m back home again, after a slightly disappointing Autodesk Oregon Regional. There were some Super Bowl XL like calls, but we did fairly well nonetheless. We lost in the semi-finals to the eventual winning alliance.

We are working on making improvements to our robot, that hopefully will give us a better performance on the field.

Final Qualification Matches, Beginning Elimination

Today, the qualification matches at the Autodesk Portland Regional finished up, with us performing much better. We ended up in 34th seed. When the top 8 seeded teams were choosing, we were lucky enough to be chosen by Team 8, The Vikings, and Team 1983, Skunkworks.

At the beginning of the elimination tournament, our first match we touched the opposing alliance’s tower during the finale, and judges are deciding h0ow to handle that situation during the elimination, they are claiming our entire alliance got disqualified, after they had said our robot just got a red card, which meant only our robot could not complete next match.

I’m slightly confused by the situation, but I am very pleased that we made it into the elimination tournament.

Things aren’t going too well.

Here at the competition, because of certain pieces not coming together correctly,  and our head programmer makes some very bad decisions. He blows off time that could be used. We’ve had so many issues, that we thought all the problems were fixed before the competition.

Also to facilitate more ranting, one of the mentors decided he has so much knowledge and that he needs to take over the club’s website. Thing is, he ain’t smart, at all. He doesn’t know about the PulseAudio exploit and went and used Fedora 8, a vulnerable version, in a world facing environment. The opposite of a good idea.

So now I’m debating whether I should just quit the club because I can’t get those two problem people out of my way from participating the way I want to.

Hello from Portland

I’m in my bed at my hotel, in Portland. Tomorrow starts the practice day for the Autodesk Oregon FRC Regional. We have some work to do on our robot, but we hope to be in practice matches by 13:00 (1:00pm). We brought our CNC mill, so we’ll have peak efficiency and ability.

Day of Trip

I’m waiting for the school announcements to end, or mention the competition I’m going to. Oh look, they didn’t mention it. I’m still excited for the competition.

We got a loaner trailer for our stuff, while our own trailer is finished being made and decorated. We were packing it last night, and we must finish that today.

I’ll post from Portland.