Well, it was a pretty uneventful day today. Mike and I were the only ones available today, most of the guys were unavailable this month. That's the way the cookie crumbles, but we made the best of it. We went thru the agenda rather quickly. We did brainstorm on a few ideas for the SciTech exhibit and got something accomplished.

    I brought in the Sumo dohyo for a trial run with the SumoBot. I used the demo code which is included with the CDRom. This gives a rudimentary operation for a Sumobot so it can exercise it's functions. However, I think there's a bug in the code pertaining to the Line sensors. I didn't notice it until this morning before the meeting. But I couldn't debug this in time, but it runs ok to show everyone. I'll have to mention this to Ken at Parallax, and try to debug this tonight. I was hoping that BG would have made it with the other SumoBot. I guess we'll try next month then with two SumoBots.

    I have a connection to get a good deal on Golf Shirts with embroidered logos. It's basically the same price as printed shirts for low volumes. And he can get shirts that are on close-out - basically it's discounted even more. This looks 10 times better than any printed shirt. Mike said he can get a poster printed for the SciTech exhibit as long as we get a the artwork ready. Also for the new flyers announcing our exhibit.

    We have to come to decision on the Robot Mouse design. As the deadline is looming in the project schedule. We are hoping that Bob Nansel's breadbot idea will be available in time. As we have to make plans to design this and program it too, as well as organize the kit for potential buyers. If there is a shortfall in getting this design ready, we will have to look at alternatives.

    We have looked at the possible options of the maze design. The 4x8 option seems the most reasonable, as it provides enough challenge while keeping the complexity to a minimum. We also looked at the maze construction options, of all the options we have so far(we could use some more ideas), type #3 is the leading choice so far as it minimizes the numbers of parts while allowing it to be sturdy enough.

    A review of the project will be needed to check that we are on track to finish the exhibit. I hope there's enough people to volunteer in building this. I feel this will be an exciting project which we can all look back on as being memorable. All this will be found in the Minutes and the Design workbook on the
website.

see you next month!
Dan Roganti