Day Eight: Construction Complete

The Tuesday before we left for the Turkey holiday, Karishma and I finished the construction of all the programming and physical construction for the rooms.  We finished the sensor for opening the room of requirement and the fireplace to talk to Sirius is constructed and hooked up.  That's probably one of the coolest and one of my favorite rooms.  When you speak, the light in the fire turns from red to green, like when harry talked to Sirius in the fire in Order of the Phoenix.  So that leaves Decor and making this into a Hogwarts castle.  Finding a stuffed animal to play Fluffy may pose a problem, but that's the only thing I can think of at the moment that needs attention.  We'll find something, it just may not be the perfect Fluffy.  Even if we end of making a sock puppet.  Hey, that's not a bad idea.  The Great Hall needs to be hung with the House Banners, and the fireplace room could use some Gryffindor cheer.
Anyways, here are some pictures of the bare rooms in our castle.

This is the box-ish fireplace.  You can see the light inside.  It will change colors from red to green, when spoken.
One of mine and Karishma's favorite parts to the castle.

This picture was taken outside the room of requirement.
The foil sensor in front needs to be tapped three times and then the room will open.

This cricket resides behind the fireplace and powers the light for the fireplace. 
Of all the switches to flip, this one is the most difficult, because its near so many walls,
but its not impossible.

That's our current progress update.  Little more than a week and we'll be presenting the castle at our class exhibition.  I'm excited!

Days Six and Seven: Almost There!

  I wrote this blog's title and now can't get that song from The Princess and the Frog out of my head, of well.  Anyways, this week the castle came together smoothly, or mostly smoothly and we are almost done.  Which is good because we have now have little more that two weeks until our exhibition and we'll miss one class because of Thanksgiving break.  Karishma finished the programming for the great hall this week, so our Harry versus Voldemorte battle is complete.  I won't tell more, because its a surprise.  I fixed the supports on the bottom of the second stack of rooms.  I tried my best to get the LEGO's sturdy, but when we do move this castle upstairs fro exhibition, we'll have to move it in parts.  We acknowledged this from the beggining as the castle grew larger(and heavier), but now its for sure, as long as the castle isn't being moved, the support columns on the bottom should be fine.
  So that was Tuesday's work.  On Thursday, we moved on to finishing Fluffy's room and the room of requirement.  I had one of the room's finished, and then quickly finished the other's construction.  We moved the small room, from being on top of the already constructed room  and moved it so that it now straddles, part of the hallway.  This works better in the overall construction as it helps connect the great hall and the stacked rooms, both constructionally and visually.  It definently is more visually appealing.  We ran into some issues with trying to figure out how to get the door to open in the room of requirement, but that was solved at the end of class when we found out there was a motor smaller than the one we were using, that went at a slower speed, and so had enough torq to open our LEGO door.  That was exciting.  So I think we will be in a very good position when leaving for Thanksgiving.  When we get back, all that's left is to put in all the accessories and decor; hand banners in the great hall, decorate the room of requirement with stuff, stylize the DADA classroom (this may take thought as to what year we would want it to display), and then to set-up Fluffy and the Sorcerer's Stone.  I'm starting on the Maurader Map Instructions this weekend hopefully, if not, I'll finish it over the break.  That will be fun to do, I think.  Well, here's the pictures from this week.

Here's one of the cross beams we put in to help keep the support columns from break/bending.

Here's a view of the extended hallway without the stairs.

This is a top view of the door to the room of requirement.
It took a while to find the right LEGO piece in which to make
hinge for the door.

Here's a picture of the hall with the stairs added in.

Another stairway picture.

 

Days Four & Five: What goes here?

Monday was pretty useful as Karishma(my partner) worked on the programming/construction of the epic battle in the Great Hall while I was working through constructing the walls and floors and the supports for our Hogwarts castle.  I ran into a little difficulty on building, when I forgot my layout sketch in my room, but I did finish the hallway's floor as well as starting the columns that would support the floor of the room across from the great hall.  We're still trying to decide what to exactly do with the area that's across the 'hall' from the chamber of secrets, it may turn into the Potions classroom, not really sure at the moment.  Today I didn't get as much done as I'd have liked.  Neither Karishma or me could make the crafts store run, due to commitments right after class, but craft materials are not a real integral part of our project, unlike other final projects, so about that I'm not really worried for.  Below are some pictures of our progress thus far.

Harry's path to victory.

The mechanism for which Harry Potter will run to defeat Voldemort.

The underside of the hallway and parts of the support columns.

The Great Hall, in the midst of being finished, programming wise.

Friday was even a greater leap as I finished extending the floor for the third room(across the hall from the great hall) and built up the walls and ceilings.  Forgot to put in a window, but inserted one towards the end of class.  So there is our third room, Umbidge's office.  So that leaves the Room of Requirement above Umbridge's office and then Fluffy's chamber above that.  I'm pretty sure we'll have the rooms skeletoned before Thanksgiving break.  Which will be a good place to break.  Karishma worked on programing the motor for our epic battle, but the programming was starting to get fustrating as the motor wanted to turn fast one way and then incredibly slow the other.  It had something to do with the programming though, because the motor turned fine when you told it to turn this way or that at normal speed.  After fixing the programming, we ran into more problems on how to gear this part and our blocks didn't want to line up nicely when connected, so by the end Karishma and I were both fustrated with this part of the project.  We'll come back to it on Tuesday.  Here's some pictures from today's work.

Here's one of the supporting columns for Umbridge's office.

A column next to the stand in column(my water bottle) while we fixed a column.

The motor that wanted to be so difficult. :|

Unbridge's office

Another picture of Umbridge's office in relation to the Great Hall and The Chamber of Secrets.

Day Three: Raise the Roof!!

     Today, I finished the ceiling of the Chamber of secrets/floor of the Great Hall, which will be directly on top of the chamber.  My partner was absent, so I focused on just trying to get the structure right.  I actually just started marking where i'd need to leave opening's in the wall where the windows should go.  The ceiling/floor took a little of time, but I enjoy putting this LEGO construction together.  I'm really excited for how this project will turn out.  Because our project really has more physical contruction than computer/program constructing, we look to have a lot of stuff accomplished.  Depending on how my work load goes this weekend, I may try to get in and finish the great hall. 
     After that is accomplished, we'll only have one more room to complete for the minimum design.  Although, I could very easily see us creating five rooms instead of the original three. It'd be really cool if we could get a total of seven with each room featuring a different main event in each of the books then colmenating ina final battle of sorts.  We're still trying to find out what/how we'd like to create the final battle, considering it would need to be epic. 
    Another question for next time is what is the outside of the Basilik going to be covered in?  I don't remember who, but one of my classmated pointed out that whatever material we used would need to be able to flex with the Basilisk's jerky movements.  Tells you how much I at least hadn't thought about it.  If we could find an ugly looking greenish sock, that could work.  With my sewing skills I could take it around enough give it some shape, and the sock material would allow the mechanism to stretch and recoil.  I don't know, its food for though at the very least.
   The sad news is that since I needed to be elsewhere right after class, I forgot to take pictures, so no pictures this time, but I'll be sure to get some for next blog and show how far we've then gone in two class periods.  Expect a very boxy great hall/and large creepy basement.

Day Two: And so it begins...

Today was our finalization of plans for the final project.  And the project will be...(drum roll) the Hogwarts Castle, complete with large snake in the basement and growlig three headed dog in the upstairs.  We designed about five different rooms, to decorate and build, but we can go less or more, as long as we construct mainly the first three rooms in our castle.  These rooms contain major events from the books, telling Harry's journey from fighting the 18 year old Tom Riddle to who knows how old adult Voldemort.

Today's Featured Room:  The Chamber of Secrets

We started fromt the ground up, building first this room, which will be featured below the Great Hall.  It was our first choice due to the fact that we knew most precisely what we wanted to build for this room.  We started the skeleton and had all but the roof on this room by the end of class today.  Oh by the way, our design will be made majorly our of LEGOS, allowing us to be able to customize the style and shape of the rooms, will keeping them sturdy and easily changeable if something needs to be changed or fixed.  The Basilisk skeleton and triggering was completed.  It currently looks like a yellow skeleton, but by the time December rolls around, it will sure to be an ugly green grotesque monstrous cockatrice.  Brainstormin what to make the snake's skin is slightly hard.  Felt would be furry, aluminium foil would be to bright and shiney?  We'll think of soemthing eventually.

Picture of Progress:

The Terrifying Basilisk-Don't worry, he doesn't have eyes.

The bare skeleton of the Chamber of many Secrets

This shows the outside of the walls, where the supports are so our walls don't just fall over.
The square hole is the entrance into the chamber, although that entrance may still change.

Great start to our project.  I'm really excited as to how fast this first part of the skeleton went up.  Not happy with the LEGO blocks that didn't want to come apart and thankful for the LEGO brick separator.  It's the greatest tool ever invented. 

Below are a few pictures of our progress so far.

Day One: The Storming of Brains

I'll just start my counting of days over again.  Its the beginning of our final days in Robotic Design Studio.  In approximately one month we will have created some kind of final project in which to display our skills.  One month, and a few days, and this class will be over.  Well, better get started.

Today was serious brainstorming/tinkering around/solidifying slightly more your ideas about projects.  When everyone was explaining their ideas today, it seemed like partners were already picked and I'm okay with that.  Karishma and I are both huge Harry Potter fans, so if our one HP themed idea is the chosen one:) than we'll both be great on working together to complete that idea.  So here are the three ideas that are currently muddled and turning together in my brain.

Idea #1:  A Gryphlet

  This was my one of my first thoughts when thinking about sensors and a final project.  It followed the, "What can I do?"  Fantasy is definitely one of my loves and wouldn't it be cool to do some kind of animals and what better than to do an animal that is mythical?  Gryphons rank up there for my favorite mythical creature and baby animals are just sooo cute.
  Today's further thinking/brainstorming pulled up possible ideas for what this gryphlet could do or sense in the real world and react to.  One of the basic, I would like from it would be movement.  It would be desirable to have the gryphlet move its feet rather than wheels, which probably be easier, but look really fake then.  She movement and the shape of the creature would play major roles in this idea's success.  Another idea was to have a button or sensor on its head, so that when it sensed someone "petting" it, it would react with a gryphlet cooing like noise.  Don't know exactly what that would sound like, but yeah.  Gryphons are known in most legends for guarding treasure of sorts and so the gryphlet could have a necklace or something, that when taken away from him would result in his emminet annoying squawking.
  This idea would be pretty neat, interactive, and revolving around a theme that I'm interested in.  Thinking up to ideas after this was hard to do, but possible.

Idea #2:  Jedi Battle
  If not fantasy, why not sci-fi.  Lightsabers and battles between good and evil was too compelling to not think about. The idea muddled in my mind for a long time, as I tried to venture away from anything similar to the gryphon idea, trying to open my mind to other options.  I jumped from Jedi and Sith to Rock 'um Sock 'um robots and tried to take some ideas from that game's play.
  So, this idea centers around two jedi charachters, each wielding a lightsaber.  One is good(Jedi) adn the other evil(Sith).  How to move the charachters took a little of thinking, but I considered having the charachters hold their respective lightsabers with both hands, then moving one arm or the other to change the angle of the lightsaber.  So now the charachterse can shield themselves, but to get in a shot or such, their would need to be a little more movement, so I also considered putting the two charachters on circular platforms, that would be able to move in one direction or the other when a sensor is pressed.  So depending on what sensors are activated would determine what action the Sith or Jedi completed.
  This idea I fiddled with constructing today,trying to see if I could get a lego construction/skeleton for the arms.  This was accomplished, but I couldn't find a good combination or LEGO parts and pieces to allow for a lightsaber to be successfully used.  So this idea is not totally out of the running, but most likely not to come out on top.

Idea #3:  Castles
   I found myself wandering back to the realm of fantasy and the castle setting.  Two of my favorite castles include Howl's Moving Castle and the Hogwarts castle in Harry Potter.  Howl's Moving Castle(HMC) would be fun to design and create just 'cause it looks so weird and awkward and doesn't look like it should move at all.  Then there's Calcifer and the kid (Michael?) as well as Sophie and Howl, really cool charachters that it would be fun to give a part to.
  While Howl's moving castle seems lots of comic relief, Hogwarts(HOG) is a more serious castle atmosphere as it plays up to the whole magic, good vs. evil, dark kept secrets, scary/creepy monsters/creatures.  HOG would be a serious magical atmosphere that would be a classical sorta' fantasy and no doubt fun to design, create, and exhibit.  We could have a barking fluffy you need to calm by given him the right music,(i.e. sound between a certain loudness level)
  Both castles allow for ample use of sensors and such with their magical aspects.   They also both allow for flexibility in how much sensors and stuff to put together to create the whole project.  Only these three scenes or maybe it could encompass these two important rooms that each have a dozen sensors, or have many rooms with one sensor in each.  There is a lot of flexibility and with a time set as five weeks, flexibility is a wonderful concept.

These are three really different ideas and the more I think about each one, the harder it seems to have to choose and make a choice.  The castle(HOG or HMC) seem to be in the running for top place right now.  The fleixbility of size is a very attractive quality in this project.  And it could be this factor that decides what final project I do for RDS.