Lunar Landroids

Our live webcast was one of the most stressful days of our Moonboots competition.

As a veteran FLL team, we thought we were very, even overly prepared for the live webcast with 6 cameras trained on our tiny robot, and upgraded our high speed internet connection. We had one camera and PC hard-wired for Skype, one camera to broadcast live to all of our friends and families, one fish-eye on the side, one top mounted for an overall view, one panning for the YouTube footage, and lastly, one Spy Cam on our robot.  This whole contraption took 2 days to setup and fine tuned.

At the exact time of our live broadcast on 8/24/10, everyone (past and new Landroids members, parents and grandparents alike) tuned in to watch, and everything went smoothly and quickly. We made one run, got 310 point, and happily signed off with Moonbots within less than 20 minutes.

However, our happy feeling did not last long.  When we checked the on-board video footage for submission, we found out that the on-board camera was out of memory, nothing was recorded! By trying to test and set up the time stamp properly in the morning, we used up the entire 1 GB memory in the Spy Cam.

By then, the team was out to lunch, literally.  With a couple panic emails, thankfully, Moonbots was kind enough to squeeze us in for another run.

Abandoning our sandwiches, we promptly reset the field.  The second run, the robot got 330 points, happy feeling was back! But the on-board video file had crashed, and we were happy no more, had to immediately call Moonbots again for another run.

After that, things deteriorated even faster!  Murphy’s Law struck us again and again!

By then, the robot battery level was low.  Once put in new batteries, the robot was too “hot”, we had to let it run wild for a bit to “burn off” some juice. While doing so, the robot flipped down the ramp a couple of times, parts came loose, and start to rub the chassis.

Finally, everything was readied, but the birds-eye camera was out of memory. More delay.

Then, the 1 GB on-board camera memory was full again, and files needed to be cleared out.  Time-out again while Moonbots patiently waited.

Just when we thought everything was ready, we started our robot run. Half way through, Moonbots lost Skype connection.  Sigh…..

Our team was ready to throw in the towel by then, but Moonbots reconnected the Skype, and did not give up on us. He was impressed with the first 2 runs, and wanted all the equipments to work well so that we could properly record the mission.

After combating Murphy’s army of gremlins, we finally got all of the equipments back on track, and went for a 3rd robot run, which got 330 points again.  Most importantly, the on-board video was recorded!  We now have a newfound respect for NASA trying to communicate with the rovers.

Watching our live webcast video, some people might ask, why did you leave one loop on the field? Well, we had a design that could potentially get 350 points, but it was not consistent enough, and there was not enough time to make it otherwise.  Beside, our team captain (aka my dad) promised me a bag of corn nuts for every 10 points we get over 300 points. So weighing the risks and probability, I decided to go for less points with a more solid design.

In the end, I didn’t get my revered 5 bags of corn nuts, but enough to last me till the end of the summer (probably destroying all my braces in the process).  The only problem was that when we went out afterwards to buy the corn nuts, there was no store that carried them. Murphy had the last laugh! So if anybody know where to get some corn nuts, please let me know.

With that, Landroids respectfully signed off.  Good luck to all Moonbots teams.  It has been a wild ride!