I got back from the RoboNexus today, where VIA announced us as their official Grand Challenge sponsored team.

I left Tuesday night at about midnight. The trip was paid for by VIA, but I still had to skip three days of school and driver's ed. Chris was unable to go due to school work, but my dad was able to drive down. We arrived in Santa Clara seventeen hours later and built an open-air style computer case to show off the VIA mainboards. Thursday was spent setting up and explaining the project to other exhibitors. Friday I had a few interviews and a press conference to speak at, and many people to explain the project to. Saturday was a little less busy, but I did a radio interview as well as another TV interview, and of course I had to explain the project to all those curious people. Overall I'd say it went quite well.

The drive back was interesting. At 5:00 PM right after the show ended we started out by almost immediatly getting lost in the driving rain and pitch black of the San Francisco area. Eventually, after stopping at a store that turned out to be filled only with Chinese speaking people and a gas station, we made our way back onto I5 North. At about midnight we stopped at a hotel in a small town near the California/Oregon border, but we were too tired to go inside so we slept in the car. At 5:00 am we drove accross the street to a gas station. Upon entering a man said to me "Hello, you're from The Prodigies!" This was quite surprising. It turned out he too was driving to Washington from the RoboNexus. He had some news for us... I5 was closed due to a spill. This led to a detour in which we ended up driving through snow-covered mountains and eventually making our way back to I5, and finally Olympia.

While down at the show Vortex Solutions bought the domain name of TeamProdigies.com for us, so you can now see our website there. Also, I have updated the News page to include several new articles about/including The Prodigies.

I've been working on the computer case most of the day. I got some bolts for the hard drive and CD drive, and I cut out one side of the case for connectors. Now I have to get ready for the Homecoming Dance...

I took the robot to Zeigler's Welding and got a lever for the chain tensioner welded on. I also added some pictures to this page (below).

I took the robot to a nearby park to try to drive it by remote control, but the safety engine shut-off circuit wasn't working. We took it back to my house and then discovered that all we had to do was flip the switches in the correct order. The park was filled with soccer players so we took it to an empty parking lot and successfully drove it by RC. The only problem was that the chain kept falling off, but I now have an idler to keep tension on the chain, which I will install soon.

The deadline: Drive X by remote control on Sunday. Friday afternoon I got the new belt for the CVT in the mail and put it on. I also mounted the sheet metal flooring using plumbers tape and 1/4" bolts and mounted the battery on that.

On Saturday I mounted the Roboteq motor controller and also made a mount for the throttle servo on the engine and then connected the servo. We ran the engine for the first time on Saturday, controlling the throttle by RC.

On Sunday I built a safety circuit to automatically turn of the engine if the RC signal is lost or if onboard power is lost. I hooked up the steering but when I tried to run it... it didn't work! This was odd because it was running a few weeks ago just fine and I hadn't changed anything. It took me the rest of the day as well as a few hours today to find and fix the problems. The Expeditor is now ready to be driven by remote control.

I got a 1' x 2' piece of sheet metal to use as the floor of the Expeditor. It's galvenized so we won't be able to weld to it, but I don't currently have access to our weklder anyway. It will have to be mounted with bolts.

Today was probably the first day that we finished everything we set out to do. We mounted the new engine, continously variable transmission, and gearbox without any (big) problems. Before driving by remote control we have to put oil in the engine, connect the gas tank, put gas in the tank, put a belt on the CVT, and shorten the chain. I'm planning on having that done this weekend. We also have to mount the alternator, but this isn't necessary for RC driving.