Post 1 Meeting 1

Today was my first meeting with Eli! It was awesome! We had a lot of equipment and ideas, but we needed to meet to put them together.

The first thing we did was brainstorm ideas and then we got to work. The machine starts in the shower and our original plan was to have a pitcher fill with water and then pour out onto a car to make it move. After our first try we realized it’s a lot easier just to have the pitcher hit the shower door and then the shower door will knock down a lot of Wii disc holders which then hit dominos and then push the Anki overdrive car onto the track. The car has its own power so it can drive up a track. We tried this many times and found a way to make it all work.

Next Eli and I both wanted to find a way to get our project on the table. This was our biggest problem because we had to find a way to get everything high enough. We tried many different ideas such as stacking magna-tiles with dominos on top of them and using a board to have a car drive up to the table, but it was too steep. Finally we got the idea of using a remote control robot that we could have on the table with the controller on the ground. Our first idea was to have a ball hit the controller to start the robot. We were so excited but then we realized it’s not so easy to get the ball to hit the remote in the right spot. We also realized that the robot was too far away from the remote so we had to move the tables closer and have the robot climb up a pool table to get on the final table. In the beginning we had a huge pool ball rolling through a big tube but we couldn’t find a consistent enough way for the ball to get pushed into the tube and still hit the remote. Next we had the idea that was simpler. We thought the Anki Overdrive car could hit a ball that was touching the remote to start the robot. We needed a brick behind the remote to keep it from moving. After a couple tries we realized it was very successful.

Once we got onto the big table we realize that we had many options and they could all be really cool with a lot of speed involved. We decided to use a hot rod track that starts on the table and goes all the way to the ground.  It was very steep so the car went down very fast. We attempted to add a loop de loop with some of the equipment, but it did not work. We couldn’t find a way to keep it under control.

It was awesome session, but then Eli’s dad came to pick him up. We realized that we had been working for six hours straight without many breaks. I think we didn’t notice the time because we were having so much fun with the project. We showed our parents quickly what we had worked on and then he left. It was a productive day!