Robot Art Show

The two things I love most in this world are socializing, and programming, so you can imagine my excitement when it was announced that we were doing a project that involved programming! I immediately knew that I wanted to do something BIG! However, with the WORST POSSIBLE TIMING, I got really sick, and had to stay home for a week. Sadly, I was not able to take this to 11 like I would have loved to do had I been here. I also didn’t know much because I only was here on presentation day, when I did some last-minute bugfixes.

What We Built

My teammate, Peyton, to his credit, did very well when I was gone. He decided to do a distance tracker, similar to what you would find in a car.

Loss of code

The code, unfortunately, has been lost to time after an mistaken rm -rf (remove recursively, and forced in Linux). I was doing some late-night coding, and tried to tab-autocomplete a directory name, and deleted my ~/Arduino folder. I, of course, hit CTRL+C to trigger a KeyboardInterrupt harder than I ever did in my entire life, but sadly 87% of my data was gone, including the RobotArtShow folder.

However, in pseudocode, it:

• Got the distance from the ultrasonic sensor
• Got the distance (in centimeters because ultrasonic sensor returns microsecond values)
• Turned on LEDs in order to show distance

It also used a buzzer to give audio feedback, however that was scrapped due to bugs.

Post-project analysis

What went well?

This project turned out pretty good, and quite a few things went well:

• We got a finished product that worked
  • This shows that we both pulled our weight (well by that I really mean Peyton because I was gone for the most part)
• We did NOT do the bare minimum (Ahem, Happy Birthday using a buzzer)

What went poorly?

• I was not here to contribute, sadly (I think I could have took it to 11 if I was there that week)
• Last minute bugs stopped some functionality from being shown
• rm -rf-ing my entire code project. This reminds me of the ChromeOS developer mode sudo warning message “We trust that you received the usual run-down from the system administrator, but just in case, it usually boils down to these three things: (1) With great power comes great responsibility, (2) Think before you type, and (3) Respect other people’s privacy.“, and I did NOT think before I typed that destructive command.

HOWEVER, after not taking it to 11 in this project, in the Do it Better project, I am going to… do it better and take this to 12. A MACHINE UNRIVALED BY ANYONE ELSE’S!

In conclusion, this was a very good project, and I loved it. I got to do my favorite thing in the world, programming, AND DO IT FOR SCHOOL! This project was wonderful and still went well, considering that I was not there.