Final Day and Exhibition

The last class day, the day of the exhibition was a very successful one. The major remaining pending task, Fluffy's room, was finally finished. Tuesday morning, I woke up thinking that I would not be able to carry out what needed to be done for that room. The sensors were just not working even though I had made an identical working one for the room of requirements. I could not figure out what the problems were for this sensor or the harp sensor. I went back into the robotics studio about an hour before class started trying to work on the castle again with a fresh mind. Soon after I started working on it, I figured out the problem, it was right in front of me the whole time. I had forgotten that I had switched the sensor wires into a different port, thus the scratch program was simply displaying the wrong sensor value.

Kaity and I worked on fixing everything up together. We suspended my small laptop speakers with pipe cleaners outside Fluffy's room, and I transferred the program onto my computer.

The difficult part was taking the project upstairs. While picking it up off the floor and on to the wheeled cart, parts of it broke off. We took the castle up in two pieces. After transferring it upstairs, Kaity and I spent about an hour to an hour and a half putting it back together and setting everything up and making sure everything was still working. By 4:30, Hogwarts was ready to go.

The exhibition was great. Kaity and I had a lot of fun, and our project was very popular. Our table was crowded by kids, and we learned that a great feature about our project was that it was built for a wide age range. For the really young children, They really enjoyed talking into the microphone of the Gryffindor common room and watching the flames in the fireplace change color.The older kids enjoyed the challenge of the Red Light Green Light Game we had disguised as the battle between Harry and Lord Voldemort. Despite it's difficulties, the kids were determined to make guide Harry to the finish line. Kaity and I enjoyed the company of a kid who went through all the challenges of the castle at least three times. We could tell that he and everyone else were really enjoying themselves.

After the hour of fun, we were sad to see our robotics design days come to an end. The next class was spent taking apart our beloved Hogwarts, (but of course Kaity and I kept some souvenirs). This was such a fun class!! I will definitely miss it.

Unfortunately, videos of the project are unavailable on my blog. I have forgotten the link of the videos posted by Professor Berg. To see a video of our project, you can see my partner's blog here:

Kaity's Blog

Well this is where my blog ends. I'll really miss this class!!!

Final Week Or So....Finishing Touches

Over the final week or so Kaity and I took care of the aesthetics and fine details of our projects. I tweaked some programming and construction while Kaity created Fluffy the three-headed dog. I printed and meticulously cut out the house banners of each of the four Hogwarts houses as well as the Hogwarts Banner to put up in the great hall.

Hogwarts Banner

Hufflepuff and Slytherin House Banners

Gryffindor and Ravenclaw House Banners

We also fashioned out own Harry Potter LEGO minifigures by giving the original LEGO minifigures stylish capes and wands. The Voldemort minifigure also has a white face (fashioned with white electrical tape), with a truly evil look drawn in. The two figures truly look as if they are about to engage in battle!

Next I worked on creating the sensors for fluffy's room. These elaborate sensors require a number of creative looking devices. We need a harp with some sort of metal strings, a wand with some sort of metal tip (so that touching the tip of the wand to the correct harp string would complete the circuit required to make the program you saw earlier function properly. It also requires a sensor similar to that of the room of requirements that will be disguised as a carpet (covered from the bottom in foil which is attached to an alligator clip and another piece of foil attached to an alligator clip on the floor of the LEGO castle; a piece of paper folded like a zig-zag serves as the spring one will compress to press button trap that completes the circuit).

Sensor for the Room of Requirements
and my rug!! =]

Fluffy the Three Headed Dog

The Basilisk is in the process of being scaled thus pictures of him are, at the moment, nonexistent.

Pending tasks: The good news is that I have arranged for small speakers, I have small laptop speakers that can be suspended outside the room. However, we have a great task pending that is fluffy's room. Though I am making the sensors and such for the room, I have tested out several of them, and they don't seem to be working. I have created and repeatedly recreated each of the sensors and I am at a loss for why they aren't working. I have tried to trouble shoot potential problems in multiple ways, but I still can't seem to figure out what the problem is!! The exhibition is in two days and I don't know what to do!!