ROBO-TALK

[DanMarotta]

During the FRC build season, all FRC and FTC teams are welcome to a free weekly webinar called "ROBO-TALK." Topics such as improving program management of your team, quick conceptual design tips, documentation and calculation tips, etc. will be covered as well as guest appearances of teams, mentors, and special guests.

The weekly webinars begin tomorrow January 12th. Check here for dates, times and registration.

Good luck this season!

[JoshH]

Yesterday's Robo-talk topics:

Jordan Cox did a demo of assembling a robot on the 2012 field and moving it around in Creo 1

Jordan also answered some Creo 1 questions about assembly

Scott Morris answered more questions about Creo 1

The entire group discussed the 2012 FRC game and different approaches to chassis design and ball shooters

We even had one particpant from FTC with a question

Overall, it's a great forum for teachers, students and mentors to discuss just about anything and everything about designing an FRC or FTC robot.

Thanks PTC for the resource!

[sm · Accepted solution]

Please join us tonight for this week's session of ROBO-TALK! If you have not registered yet, please visit http://bit.ly/ypMhAz to get signed up. All you need is a pc and microphone to connect to the web session

We'll have a special guest speaker with us tonight, Greg McKaskle from NI to review the targeting system, lighting controls and data acquisition (image refinement). Greg will show you quick and easy ways to use the tools in NI to find the backboards, find the distance to the backboards and get the information you need to make an accurate "shot".

We'll also have the regular crew available to answer any questions you have on Mathcad, Windchill and Creo (Pro/E) along with robot design, mechanics and ideas.

-Scott

[sm]

ROBO-TALK was a great session last night with 30 participants from around the country. We has some great presentations and discussions on National Instruments, Windchill & Creo and Mathcad. We were asked to post the Q&A log from the event for everyone to reference later, so here it is

National Instruments Questions

Q: What is the divergence angle of the camera? IOW, how close can we be, and still see all four basket squares?

A: Greg answered this one live.

Q: How difficult would it be to set up the vision system to A) turn on ringling, take frame; B) turn off ringlight, take frame, C) take diff, D) select threashold?

A: Greg answered this one live.

Q: What is the Visoin white paper URL? Do you have a cheap Reflective material purchasing source?

A: White paper is locaed here: https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-20173

Q: Please note that many teams need .DOC and not .DOCX files, to be able to read them. Please resave as a DOC file. Thanks!

A: DOCX can be opened on Windows machines using the MS Word Viewer: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=4

Windchill & Creo Questions

Q: Comment - Our school's network is constantly varying in speed. We ONLY download and edit locally, then upload again, as we don't trust our connection (our school's firewall constantly kills connections).

A: I will get a video in PTC Learning Exchange ASAP...

Q: We also have a lot of problems downloading. How can we have a couple of CREO 1.0 load DVDs sent to our team?

A: You can request DVD's from - or use Free Download Manager from c|net to download the 4gb DVD image.

Q: How do you log OUT? We have multiple students using our computers, and there's no Logout button!

A: Unfortunately there is no specific "logout" button for Windchill on this server. The only way to logout is to close the all the associated browser windows.

Q: As feedback... Many systems are done offline in the school, as they're on laptops and other desktops that are not on the school's network as they work. Please make sure that CREO can run OK that way.

A: Yes, will double check the non-network connection this weekend. I've never had a problem with this in the past, so it should be okay.

Mathcad Questions

Q: Can you please post this example MathCAD file, so we can look it over more carefully?

A: Chris will post them to planetPTC in the Academic Program/FIRST community following this webcast.

Q: How about considering the critical angle problem? The hoop is an eleiptical projection vs the diameter of the ball, so there should be a critical angle range that you can sink the ball...

A: Chris says yes!

Misc. Questions

Q: Where can we find a copy of the Q&A for this meeting, after the session?

A: I'll ask Jordan to post them on planetPTC

[ptc-3842357]

Is there anywhere to view a recording of the webinar?

[sm]

At this time we are not recording the webinars. We are hosting them every week on Thursday evening/afternoons. If you miss one, you can always request the topic of your choice when registering.