Amber's Progress Summary

December 28th

I have been working on modifying parts of my code from Lab 5 to make it work for the egg hunt. For the button press, I need just need to just redirect the Create's actions to the new code, when it is written. To get the the goal, I am using, for the most part, the exact same code from the last lab.
I think we should have a device that acts much like a snow plow that scoops up eggs and then closes after a button switch his hit, which means there is an egg inside. I have drawn up some designs but have not began to program without talking to Lorraine first. I plan on working on that next week once I talk to her.

Lorraine and I have been going over some preliminary designs for our capturing mechanism. Lorraine is working on constructing a device like she envisioned and we plan on testing its effectiveness next week.
Over the weekend, I plan to work on the program to identify our color ball. I did a test to see the values of the different colors on the photoresistors and IR distance sensors. The values of the IR sensor showed the greatest distance between colors, so that is what we will use in our lab. I need to test the contrast between the blue ball and the blue paint on the table's side on Monday.
If I have extra time, I want to try to design an additional defensive device. I want to create a scoop that will pick up opponents' balls and toss them into the cargo bay for safe keeping.
I'm a little behind schedule on the button press code and the goal making code. I'm having issues writing it into code when I don't know what the rest of the code will be. I might end up having to make each one into its own function to call later in the main code.

I figured out that one of the problems with using photoresistors is that the room light comes up with very similar values to the yellow ball. I attached lights to the sides of the photoresistors to brighten the balls and give more accurate values.
No matter what I do I cannot get the lights to work. One of my original issues was using a port that was not able to use digital sensors, but I fixed that and now I can't figure out the problem. I wrote a small piece of code to get it working with the rest of the parts for the ball search commented out.
Amber Preliminary Ball Finding Code Δ
Amber Ball Finding Set-up Δ
Amber Light Hook-up Δ
Amber Light and Photoresistor Set-up Δ
I plan to find the ball initially to have the Create rotate and look for the optimum sensor value for the chosen color and then drive towards it. I am using a method similar to light following to try to center the ball under the arm so it can be captured.