I have been under-employed the last year, so I went back to College…
I am studying Electrical Engineering, with a Focus on “Robotics and Control Systems”.
The Community College I am currently attending has an Underwater ROV Team. We filmed a Video, in the hopes of winning some money, to help ALL our team make it to an ROV Competition, in Hawaii.
You can HELP US, by Watching and Voting on the Video. If we make it to the final 5 Videos, we get a chance to win a prize… First Place is $5000.00 (USD) and 100 Dyknow Licenses.
Your assistance for a fellow Vex Enthusiast and Roboticist would be greatly appreciated…
You will need a You Tube account to Vote, but not to View. Only sign up if you feel it is worth it… Any Support is fantastic!!!
MarkO,
You might get better results if you made it a bit more obvious. It took me two tries to find the link to what I believe is the correct video. However, I didn’t see any place to “vote”. I suggest you make it a bit more clear which link you’re asking us to follow and how you’d like us to “vote”.
Eric
Mark, did it occur to you that by being back in college you completely legitimately qualify to compete in the college level of Vex robotics? You could start a team or join up with a current team if you wanted (as far as I interrupt the rules).
if you are then i am too. I rated the video 5 stars and watched it a few times but never found a “Vote” option or anything. I figured views and rating were used to determine a winner.
Interpret the rules?? Yes, AFAIK, if I am in College, I can be on a College Team… I would seriously think about that, other than this is the Third Season of Underwater ROV at this college, so it is well established, so I would be a little busy with both…
I would have used my Vex Controllers on the ROV, but at $150.00 for the original one, I though that was a little expensive, in case of failure…
Programming is done in MPLAB, with the MCC18 Compiler, but I had to switch to Version 3.1, from Version 2.4 because of Linker Issues.
For control of Large Motors and Stepper Motors, I am using a Pair of PIC 16F877A Micro-controllers for their copious I/O tied to HB-310 H-Bridges for PWM motor control and the EasyDriver v4.2 and I am also looking at the Pololu A4983 Stepper Motor Driver, because they can handle twice the Amps the Easy Drivers can.
One of the coolest devices we have was a donation from PNI Corp. It is a TCM-5 Tilt-compensated, heading Module.
Combined this with Enclosed Variable Buoyancy and Forward/Reverse and Up/Down Thrusters and we have a *potential *Automatic Leveling and Station Keeping system.
More details later…
The bottom line is there is a lot more latitude with the Underwater ROV Systems than even with the Vex College Competition… Not that I won’t give the Vex College competition a try at some point…
Mea Culpa…
To Vote is to Rate the Video… You will need a You Tube account, or if you have Gmail or Google Groups or Google anything, you use that for a login…
Click on the Far Left Star for a One, the Far Right Star for a Five, or any in between Star for in between.
The top five videos based on Ratings or Views or Both, go to the Judges for the Final decisions.
Thanks for taking the time to view (and maybe vote).
I did not have time to participate in the Final Editing, so the Audio is all over the place, and the Story Line is not as clear as I hope it would be, be it had to be posted on You Tube by 12-MAR-2010. Also the Video Quality was sub-par… I think transferring from the DV camera by Firewire to the PC, then to a Mac caused a Quality Loss, because the footage on the PC is much better looking…
Mark, you could be PTD’s coach, meaning we currently have no coach. We have myself (driver of “Potential Energy”) and Camaron Townsend (driver of “Kinetic Energy”) but a coach would be neat. Were you going to the world championship?
“While colleges are not limited to one team and while a team can consist of students from multiple colleges we hope that each team is identified with and proudly represents one (1) post-secondary institution.”
PTD does not represent our given post-secondary “institution” but I’ve made my point clear on that one, our “institution” doesn’t seem to even try to support us so I’m effectively returning the favor.
I could qualify as a Coach,or as a Team Member, but I am a little busy with an Underwater ROV at the moment. Plus 19 Credits per Term. Besides, your in FL and I am in OR. It’s not real easy to get together regularly.
Bottom Line: I am over committed already…
I had not planned on attending the World Championship, because I have limited time and limited money. It would be nice to attend and meet face to face with all the people I have talked to the past 3.5 years…
I knew the area difference, we already have our first bot almost finished, I just figured, if you were already coming to Dallas, it would be neat to compete. With that said, good luck on the ROV team!
You should come some time if it’s possible, you’ve certainly helped enough teams on the community.
I though it was awesome too… The Four Year College I will attend next is Oregon State University. They have an Autonomous Underwater ROV Team, a Mars Rover Team, and the Mechanical Engineers have a Race Car Team.
We use the City Pool in Corvallis, OR (Home of Oregon State University) and the School/City pool in Albany, OR (Home of Linn-Benton Community College) after hours. This competition that my College (which is the LBCC mentioned above), competes in has High School Level teams as well. So you might think about starting a Club to compete in such competitions.
I am on a rocketry team at my high school and we entered in a mars rover competition this year but unfortunately we can’t do :mad::mad: I was going to build a really cool rover that deploys from a casing built out of mostly parts from Sparkfun but with all those HUGE snows on the east coast we lost the time for construction.
Hopefully next year will be better for us
Now I have a huge aquatic center near me which now that I think of it they might let me put something like that in the pool but then again they might not. The people there are a bit crazy so you can’t really know.
We are Team #3, out of 26 Explorer Teams.
Our Team Competitors include, “Massachusetts Institute of Technology”, “Arizona State University”, “Georgia Institute of Technology”, plus others, including teams from Russia, China and Scotland.
The Team to Beat is Long Beach City College (The other LBCC).
Here is the footage of our qualification at Portland State University, in Portland Oregon, on 20-MAY-2010.
We have 15 days to get everything Operational before we leave for Hilo, HI…
