Skip to content

Tech Day Retro 17th March - Minutes

What went well?

Setup time

There was enough time Could have done with trolleys (Denis' trolleys are gone?)

Labs (Thanks Dave!!!!)

Equipment access, Workshop access - They were able to use a lot of the lab equipment to test their robots.

No bored teams

Most of the teams were working/seemed engaged Because it's a later tech day, filtering out only interesting+capable teams?

Identified issues with kit

Possible features teams asked for:

  • Debug flag for robot.see(), capturing the things the robot saw (actual images, e.g. in frame? out of focus?), e.g. debug=True or save=True
  • Or, a separate function call?
  • PWM Output on pins
  • robotd logs to the USB stick

What went badly?

Broken kit issue

USB connector on pi was dislodged Should have some red tape on hand (to mark stuff out of order)

We gave out our dev kit

Lost pi power cable. Shouldn't do this. -> Get another one

Didn't have a full arena

8m x 8m We could make 6m x 6m We could have in Mountbatten 53/4025 (seminar room 1) Would then have: starting zone, 1 full scoring zone, pillars Could have zone 0, zone 1 Or could bring it out to the pillars (on whichever side is the smallest)

Could have an arena upstairs mountbatten + then something downstairs? Problem w/ distribution

No (budgeted) pizza from Joyce

Though this would be taken out of our budget, e.g. ~£100 for lots of teams, or equiv. proportional to #people

Security / door access issues

Need South Zepler access

Some people were lost; need to have clear instructions (go to lift, press these buttons)

Would have been nice to have rotating door access, but not possible according to security. (but someone needs to stand there and watch it)

We still need to:

Find the cost of booking SUSU

Get more cables and equipment (for dev)

Pi power cables - No redundancy (only 10) TODO: Make a new cable - using USB A-micro B

Make a Mock Arena

Build the columns (laser cut plywood?) * Using the robot base * Undefined height: min height = marker height + 10cm? * Laser cutter: 600x300mm?? *

Make some lift signage

Point out which floor to go to on the lift + buttons