Sidewalk

This was poured how many months ago, and *this* is the first time I've been back to see it?!?

Wind Tower

Tower itself:

The hinge that Dad had made for the base:

I'm out of the country for the first snow!

Snow! As we are walking into the big house

Snow!
As we are walking into the big house to watch U of M play Indiana!
Did I say snow?!?!

We got to watch the "birds and the bees" put on by the Marching Band

There were 109,503 fans in attendance today

And then Win (of course!)- 63 - 47

She's out of jail!

In like Flynn

Learned a new trick: freeze the ball joint that won't go in, it gets smaller and presses right in.

Who would've thunk!

BANG!

Heat plus pressure = pow!!

It made me jump!
But it jumped out!

Ball joint kicking my butt

The ball joint is stuck in the lower arm.

 

Looking at the new ball joint, its on a taper, so I gotta find a way to bust it loose.

Blog catch-up

Spent this evening posting entries and photos basically since spring.  I had a smattering of posts, but some of the entries were on the wrong day, so now they are all straightened out.

So, if you're seeing this post and thought you were caught up -- think again! I modified entries as far back as May!

Enjoy!

Latest harvest

Mailbox repair

It takes every extension cord in the house to reach the mailbox!
I counted 9!

All fixed up for winter!

Will they make it this year?

Garage Siding repair

Gotta repair that garage siding.

Finding "helpers" during the garage siding repair project:

I just rode 5.6 miles!

I just rode 5.6 miles! Check it out on #strava: http://app.strava.com/activities/80011506

Busy bee

He does the work, I get the beans.

Out picking what I can to take to the vegetarian today.

Radish harvest

Lunch from the garden

Taking the vegetarian off to school tomorrow, so need to get what we can in her!

Montana repairs

• 1-5/16" socket: $11.30
• Control Arm bushing: $14.30
• Wheel bearing: $97.99
• Working in the bad words area with mother-in-law: priceless

As weed free as possible!

And planting in the last week of July! How unreasonable is that. Trying to get rid of the old seeds for lettuce and radish to make a clean slate for next year...

Cooking for our visitor from Switzerland

Cooking with wood!

"Playing" with the chain saw

Knocking down the nearly dead pine in the front yard.

Before: After

Netted about 3 wheelbarrow loads of wood.

Making progress

Let there be light

Back to running full power!

That one lamp not working for the last several months finally got to me, so spent several hours and about $6 at ACE for a replacement switch, swapping out the bad one.

Holiday at Dad's

Mowed the grass to get started.

Forms getting ready for sidewalk concrete.

Half way there

Fire with family

Finally got those blinds up - took only two years!

Officially off the hard line

Made the switch to wireless only!  Half the monthly bill to boot! Cool thing is, we keep our same phone number.

A bit of painting

Making a window insert that will contain a cat door.

Silly or what???!?!

Kitty's window box

Michigan Championship games for FIRST, 2013

We had a rough weekend.
We were ranked #12 headed into the competition against 63 other machines. Due to several things, we were dead last for a while, and finished #61 out of 64.

Surprisingly our statewide rank (based upon all team's 2 district plays plus this State Championship) dropped only to #30 out of 207 teams.  Michigan gets to send 26 teams to the world competition, so we finished just 12 Qualification Points below the lowest ranked team that did qualify.  This means had we won 2 more matches, we would have been able to travel to worlds!

Anyway, it was a good year for the kids, we all learned a lot and we'll see what happens next year.

Saturday just prior to noon we went through the selection process (after the 128 games have been played and we are all ranked 1 though 64) the top 8 seeded teams get to select two other teams to work with them to be the alliance that wins at Michigan.  Of course we were not picked, though there were 8 teams picked outside the top 24, two of them even as low as #52 and #54!  I get the idea that it's more based on who you know, not how good you are...

Before the selection process they played a parody of "call me maybe" with a FIRST robotics spin on it, like a lower ranked team pleading to get selected to play in the Elimination matches for the title.  Pretty cute: http://youtu.be/FwyQQlNjPm8

Some statistics shared with us Saturday morning show just how competitive it is in Michigan:
- the average losing score in 72 games was 115 points
- the average winning score in those same games was 155 points
- the average winning score outside of Michigan at similar competitions was 68

Our 12 matches broke down thus (trying to find video links too!):

• Match 2 as Blue, Lost 105 to 110. So close!
• Match 13 as Blue, Lost 89 to 113.
• Match 26 as Blue, Lost 54 to 151. This was the one our Digital output module had completely failed for the entire match; also, one other alliance member spent all of tele-op stationary.
• Match 36 as Red, Lost 85 to 112.
• Match 50 as Red, Lost 156 to 176.
• Match 55 as Blue, Lost 146 to 166. Opponent's video found here. Tried to play defense this match, didn't go so well.
• Match 73 as Red, Won 107 to 69. This even as we missed out on our Autonomous points due to a disconnected tilt encoder!
• Match 82 as Blue, Won 213 to 128. This tied the highest scoring match up to this point!  This score was exceeded only 3 times during 128 matches!
• Match 88 as Red, Lost 139 to 145
• Match 102 as Blue, Lost 125 to 155
• Match 111 as Red, Lost 102 to 210
• Match 123 as Red, Lost 72 to 162

As you can see, 4 of the matches were within 20 points, and could have easily gone either way!

At the end of the elimination matches, teams 469, 3539, and 217 were left to compete against 2054, 67, and 2337  for the title.  Found a 57 minute video from Detroit Public Television posted here.  The three matches played can be found at the following times within the video:
Final 1-1 (12:25)
Final 1-2 (30:12)
Final 1-3 (47:58)

Still in the top 10!

We've slipped to #9 with 73% of the games played in the state now.

I wonder why I got stuck in the minivan when I got home tonight?

Yet another AWESOME robotic weekend!

Finalists in Gull Lake!

We've played our two District events this season for Michigan, finishing in the second place alliance again!  After these two weekends, our standing puts us #2 in the state of Michigan (out of 207 teams!).  This is a little early to say where we'll end up, but about 36% of the games have been played for the state (4 of the 11 district events). The remaining teams have the next 3 weekends to make their standings, then we'll see where it all shakes out.

We are certain to attend the State championship in Ypsilanti, Michigan at Eastern Michigan University.  Between our standing in the state and how we compete there April 11-13 will dictate if we have the ability to attend the world event in St. Louis MO,

We'll be keeping an eye on this spreadsheet that FIRST of Michigan will update after each weekend's games!

Go Paladins 3618!

We had a good weekend in Traverse City:

• We won 8 of the 12 matches we played
• We were ranked 10th (of 39 teams) at the end of the Qualification rounds, and had the highest amount of Tele-Operated points of all the teams
• We were selected into the 3rd ranked alliance by 3602 the "RoboMos" from Escanaba (and were joined by 2nd year team 4392 "The Deceivers" from Brimley)
• Our alliance won the Quarter Finals and the Semi's
• Thus our alliance were Regional Finalists
• The Paladins took home the Creativity Award sponsored by Xerox

Next weekend: Gull Lake in Richland, MI!

At a practice field

We checked that we can shoot full court (54') and get the 2 point goal (well, some of the time):

Shooting away

Time to bag it!

Now that's the way it's supposed to work!

Raspberry pi playing video files from my network!

Snow

Raspberry Pi!

I've joined the world of  Raspberry Pi owners, a cool little 500MHz computer the size of a credit card for $35!

Notes I've accumulated to make this work for me:

• Install Debian GNU "Rasbian Wheezy" ISO onto a 4GB+ SD card
• Follow the partition resizing instructions posted here by Simon the Pi man
• Remember the vi editor key commands, as they are seldom used (like dd is delete line)!
• Set the screen to align to my 52" Sony Bravia:
• edit /boot/config.txt and set the overscan_* parameters:
• left=20; right=22; top=-21; bottom=-16
• Install some helpful tools, for example Wireshark:
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install wireshark libpcap-dev
• sudo cetcap cap_net_raw,cap_net__admin=eip /usr/bin/dumpcap
• Set static IP for our robot (10.38.16.99), but also DHCP to the internet (/etc/network/interfaces)
• Install OpenCV and other required tools:
• sudo apt-get install git build-essential cmake libgtk2.0-dev python-dev python-numpy libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev
• mkdir OpenCV
• cd OpenCV
• cmake ..\OpenCV-2.4.3
• make
• sudo make install
• Trying to follow along with FRC team 3574's use of OpenCV
• Question becomes, "what possible frame rate might this deliver?"

Trim is looking good!

The 3rd time they got fed today!

Interesting perspective

And a day's hard work filled out 5 of the shed's 6 tinned surfaces.

This was waiting

For me after returning from Hong Kong. Just a little bit of snow!

What I'm not shoveling, because I'm traveling from Hong Kong

Could use a little help here!

Water goes up in Hong Kong!

We'll see how this looks on a computer, but the wind was kicking the water up the waterfall, throwing it across the upper level.

This is the view outside my very windy hotel window, some 12 stories above this outdoor area.

Christmas decorations are up in Hong Kong