User:Beruk.habte/Project 2

Week1 Narrative
I stayed on the same project, maize. Now that I know what we are supposed to, all my partner, Jaison and I have to do is execute. For the first week, I took notes, designed mazie on google sketch up as well as sketched the areas that I'll be cutting on maze. At the end of first week, I presented the areas Im going to cut to the class as well as the professor. Out of that presentation, I found out that there are no rooms for error. I only have limited amount of boxes for the maze. With that being said, one wrong cut can slow down the entire mazie building task. Cutting error is something I plan on not having. And last but not least, on week one, I scheduled for a presentation at the seminar.

Week2 Narrative
Since there are lots of maze parts that need to be cut, its very important that I am cautious. I used this week familiarizing and understanding where I will cut the boxes, figuring out where the turns are going to be. And most importantly, how sharp the turns can be. I cut out the first 2 maze's and made sure that they are labeled. After cutting and labeling, I made sure that the parts fit well. At the end of week 2, I used makedo parts to attach the parts I have cut out. After making sure, I took apart the parts, stored them safely where no one will be able to touch them over the weekend.

Week3 Narrative
This week, we wanted to solve the whisker problems as well as finish assembling the maze. First thing is first; I started out soldering paper clips with the 3 pin headers in order for mazie to be able to have whiskers that dont make unwanted contacts. To be on the safe side, We twist bent one paper clip and bradded it and attached it with a 3 pin header. After testing on side, we realized that it was a perfect idea. As a result, I did the same thing for the other whisker. The way I bradded the paper clips is as follows. I cut a clip short, bradded it and made sure that it was sturdy. By sturdy, I mean by sturdy enough to stop a whisker from making unwanted contacts. After bradding, I attached it with one end of a 3 pin header. And repeated the same process for the other whisker. Mazie was capable of climbing on a wall as a result of unwanted contacts. But now, it makes necessary contacts. And of course nothing to little unwanted contacts. Which was technically our main goal. Secondly, I wanted to finish assembling the track so that we can test mazie with its new whisker system. There were 8 tracks. That sounds easy but truly speaking, they are not as easy it seems. The main problem we had was that the makedo parts were popping out. That's because the gripping power makedos had was not enough to hold the maze together. As result, I used binder clips. You'll see the picture above. Those clips are 10 times strong and sturdier than makedo parts. With that being said, I collected as many box clips as possible and avoided makedo's as much as possible. Out of the 20 makedo parts there were, about 6 of them broke because they were not sturdy enough hold the maze together for half an hour. As another problem I over is that the were few gaps between some maze parts. If the mazie is running and one whisker gets into one of the gaps, mazie would get stuck. Even worse, the whiskers would get damaged easily. As a result, I gathered as many scrap boxes there were and tried to tape them into the gaps. That successfully worked and solved the gap problem. The rest of the problems I over came were basic issues. Such as entrances being small. To solve that, I simply cut the entrance to be much bigger. At the end of the week, mazie was tested and it successfully completed the track. Now that mazie has completed the track successfully, I will spend sometime researching IR sensors. And hopefully, I'll be able to use them on mazie.

Week4 Narrative
Unfortunately, this is one of the worst weeks on mazie building project. Out of 8 tracks, 4 of the tracks went missing. As my plan for this week was to use IR sensors, I spent this week creating the missing parts of the maze. Since there were no more boxes left, I had to go to my office and find more boxes to use. Luckily, I found just enough boxes to help me make 4 tracks. I realized that now my room for error was nothing to limited. With very little time left and very few boxes left, this maze had to be done very quickly and very fast. As a result, I changed the complex track we had and tried to come up with some simple tracks and yet, interesting. To do that, I had to plan out the track on a piece of paper. After analyzing everything that Im going to do, I quickly dug into the project got my hands dirty again. With the help of my team mate Jaison Green, I was able to quickly finish the maze and with in the few days I had, the 4 track parts are now again, successfully completed. To be on the safe side, I made sure that the maze parts i built are labeled and most importantly, stored in a safe plave were little to no people can touch it.