Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Team Just Ducky is honored to be featured on GeekDad Blog
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Pay It Forward with Moon Beams
Lessons in Life: Everything we have learned we learned from someone, whether it was an adult, a mentor, a friend, a sibling, a teacher, a TV commercial , a You Tube video, an actor in a movie , etc. etc. Team Just Ducky believes knowledge is something not to waste and we believe in paying forward what we have learned from our robotic journeys.
On Tuesday, Aug 3rd, members of Team Just Ducky were asked to help the 4th graders at St. Ambrose School in Woodbury, MN program their robot for their upcoming FLL practice. Earlier in the summer, Team Just Ducky met with the parents and kids of St. Ambrose to show them their FLL experiences and how much fun learning can be. Shortly after this presentation, the St. Ambrose team was formed and they are now hard at work figuring out the many circles of robot programming. Just Ducky member, Steffan, got a huge laugh from seeing the youngsters hysterically laughing when he programmed the robot to do just that, twirl about in seemingly endless circles.
Team members have been following our belief in always sharing our knowledge we have gained throughout our FLL experiences. With each of the presentations we have done and will continue to do we always keep in mind to encourage all young minds to think out of their usual box and have fun learning the many lessons provided in these FLL and MoonBots challenges. It has been requested that we set up our challenge mat once again to example to the fairgoers of the upcoming MN State Fair in St.Paul, MN just how much fun our robotic learning can be. We look forward to paying if forward with moonbeams.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
EPIC HAS LANDED!!!
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Jim Flis comments on Rocket Negotiation Strategy
“ I looked at your Just Ducky team page and video. Very cool J Man, what I could have done if I had access to this kind of technology and programs when I was a kid! It’s wonderful to see you getting so involved and working so hard. I loved the suspense aspect of the slow-motion footage with the voice over commentary like a real NASA launch followed by the humor of the tree negotiation. HINT: Go back and negotiate while holding a chainsaw. Trees tend to be much more agreeable in such situations..LOL
Keep up the great work and special congrats !
Warm regards,
Jim”
Epic Problems Solved
For the past few weeks we’ve been working everyday for lengthy hours. We have run into a few snags, starting with programming and the new advanced sensors we ordered. First we started with the gyro sensor. We contacted a local programmer and asked for some help. With his help we understood the basic math needed to program the sensor; however, we decided not to use the gyro sensor because the offset was proving to be more difficult than we anticipated. So we replaced the gyro with the compass sensor. We were able to write a program that allowed us to point our robot accurately, anywhere we choose. We have made many prototypes for the robot arm. We encountered problems while trying to pick up the rings with several of our arm prototypes. We could solve the problem when the rings were facing one known direction; however, when changing the orientation of the ring it added more of a challenge. While experiencing frustration we integrated humor to reduce our stress level.
Click here for Link---> Youtube Video
We have finally finalized an arm, solved a difficult engineering task that can pick up the rings regardless of the orientation. This is a big milestone for us and deserves a celebration. We have now successfully gathered the first two water/ice rings from the crater and working hard to gather all the rings.
Nantucket Sound Wins Eau Claire County Fair
Lars enters the FlisKit rocket he made for the Eau Claire, WI County 4-H Fair. It is the a lighthouse titled
“Nantucket Sound” which is a 2009 NARCON Commerative Kit in the Robert H. Goddard Historical Series. It is a whimsical lighthouse rocket reflecting the beautiful New England setting. It is 12.67” in length, and 5.02” in diameter with a fin span of 7.85” and weight of 4.12 oz . The rockets uses a parachute recovery system. Lars has painted it per the design specifications rather than using the paper shroud skins. A C11-3 to an E9-4 engine is recommended for launch although Lars will keep this in his personal not-for launch rocket collection.
On Wednesday , July 28th, 2010 ,the aerospace 4-H judges awarded Lars’ rocket a Blue Ribbon and the special distinction of selecting his “Nantucket Sound” lighthouse rocket to advance onto the WI State Fair competition 8-2-2010.
Jim Flis of FlisKits, Inc sent Lars this email message “ Congratulations on your blue ribbon! That is fantastic! I am STUNNED with how well that came out and knowing that you PAINTED the spiral pattern on the body shroud is simply amazing. You did an incredible job and should be VERY proud of yourselfJ Best of luck and success in your endevours! “
“History in Our Hands"
Click here for video link---> Youtube Video
At our post rocket launch cupcake meeting, Team Just Ducky spent some down time reading what we now realize as awesome archives of the NASA space program.
Last February, Lars’ uncle, Tom Kewan, had dropped off a 12” x 12” old box filled with memories of his youthful interest in rockets and anything related to space and the NASA space program. Lars immediately started thoughts of using these as a 4-H project on a history of rockets , space and robots to be entered in the July Eau Claire County Fair . Little did Tom know his memories became a history lesson 45 years later for Team Just Ducky as they progress through their educational quest of space travel to the moon and all things lunar in this Phase 2 of the Google Lunar X Prize Foundation Moonbots challenge.
Bit by bit, the members of Team Just Ducky carefully unfolded newspaper clippings dating from 1965 to 1972 chronicling the USA and world race to the Moon, beginning with news of the first manned space mission, Gemini 3 to Apollo 17, the last mission to land men on the Moon. We all took turns reading these headlines from the Eau Claire , WI Daily Telegram and Milwaukee Journal piecing the clippings on the living room floor to form a time line of man’s attempt to land on and explore our Earth’s one and only Moon. Forty five years and a generation apart, these headlines told us the story of the pioneering spirits of these early astronauts through the trials, the failed attempts, the successful launches and landings and the grim reminder of the human cost of space exploration detailed in the tragic Apollo 1 fire killing the three astronauts on their launch pad.
We read with interest each story but were also fascinated to learn that even grown ups in the real world have technical failures maybe of different proportions than finding our Legendary payload and parachute stuck high up in a tree but problems turned into lessons. Gemini 3 fell 60 miles short of splash down target because of incorrect calculations in the wind tunnel tests, the pilot of Gemini 4 had trouble closing his hatch after taking the first space stroll because of unforeseen friction on the metal parts which were eliminated for future missions, Gemini 5 had problems with a broken heater in its power producing fuel cells. We read about weather and technical delays . We were intrigued to learn that the Apollo 15 astronauts for 6 ½ hours drove their $8 million lunar Rover 1 even though its front wheel steering did not work making due by steering with the rear wheel apparatus to explore the lunar surface of Hadley Base. We were quietly awed when reading Apollo 15 Astronaut David Scott’s words upon landing on the dusty lunar surface: “As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown of Hadley, I sort of realize there is a fundamental truth to our nature: Man must explore, and this is exploration at its greatest.”
Forty five years later, it may be the hands of different teenagers holding these space stories, but they are the hands of holding space interest in their minds and souls. Let’s race to the moon and back to continue this history we were holding in our hands! Go Team Just Ducky, keep on learning!