Testing..... Changing....The Uncooperative Gear

Most of this day was spent on changing the gearing for the rack and pinion system. When I tested the structure at the beginning of the class, I discovered that the motor of the rack and pinion system turned considerably slower when trying to move backwards. This was both a programming, and a physical torque problem. The gears did not have enough torque to move the structure, so I decided to change the gears on the structure to make it stronger. This, however, was not as easy as it sounds. It took me the whole period to figure out how to make the LEGO pieces fit together because somehow the gears did not want to align with the LEGO Flu. I'm still not quite sure how I managed to get everything to fit together but after trying the same few things about 10 or 15 times, the gears finally decided to fit together. (This did not happen during this class period but the next one).

I also changed the programming for this motor a bit, which I wrote in the text interface of the PicoBlock's programming language, because this was easier to do with the complicated program I was writing. I am also more comfortable with text languages because I took two years of Java Programming and also did a lot of work with Python. I have used "block-languages" like the PicoBlocks language. Specifically I used the LEGO NXT Mindstorms language, which is a bit different from PicoBlocks. It can do a lot more than PicoBlocks too........ahhhh...one thing I hate about PicoBlocks: THE LACK OF WHILE LOOPS!!! =[

I changed this program

To this program:

The parts about the IR beams refer to changes I made later that

correspond with the cricket for Voldemort so that the two crickets

can communicate for the final battle program.

Further Progress:

Supports For Umbridge's Office

The Uncooperative Gear

The Rest of the Castle So Far, Umbridge's Office