January 12th: The LionBots at Salesforce Tower, and Celebrating Dario's Birthday

Today was great!

In the morning the LionBots loaded up the van with our robot and the other necessary items. I also tested our new code, when I realized a critical flaw in my code. Basically, the controls didn't properly override each other when they were supposed to, which meant that the normal, "don't-do-anything" code ran all of the time. Granted, I was programming at 1AM last night.

Anyways, we tried to fix the code, but we ran out of time, so I had to program in the van. I managed to finish in enough time.

When we arrived in San Francisco, we had a lot of trouble parking, so our advisor, Mr. K, pulled the van for loading, while our other mentor, Ms. Flo, took us to set up in Salesforce Tower. The tower was really, really tall. From up close it didn't stand out, but later, we could tell that it was very visible.

Anyways, once we set up and turned on the robot, we tested the code. The grippers worked fine, since it was the same code across multiple controllers, but for the movement, each controller used a different system to abstract the complexity of the movement away, so we had to create a condition so that whatever controls were actively being used meant that the robot was taking control from the active controller. We were finally done and the movement was working well.

Then, for some reason, the SparkMAX motor controller CAN ids kept resetting. As it turned out, you're supposed to press "Burn Flash" to completely save your configurations which would last a power reset.

Then, when it was our time for our robot demo, we scored a game piece in the middle hybrid node.

However, that's when we noticed that one of the motors weren't turning on. After lots of looking around, we initially thought that the SparkMAX was busted, but then we realized that the power cable for the SparkMAX was unplugged...

After that, our robot was doing great, but the demo time was already over, and it was lunch time.

After lunch, we went to the career panel that Salesforce was hosting, where we learned about what makes a good career and the careers in Salesforce.

After the career panel, we got to go up the the highest floor (61st) to see the view! That's when we got to really see how Salesforce Tower stood out in San Francisco. No other building in San Francisco beat the height of Salesforce Tower, which was really cool. We also tried the water, which was really good despite just some basic additions, including apples and rosemary. Then, we packed up and left in the vans.

When I got home, I changed my clothes and got on my bike to go to my good friend Dario's house. It was supposed to be a surprise party for him, but since I had to go to the Salesforce event, I had to miss the surprise, but I was still able to attend the party. We played many fun games and we sang happy birthday.

Thanks for reading,
Issac