Scioly.org

I wanted to keep up with the forum with RSS feeds, but the forum doesn't display a good way of doing that... so I'll share that if you view page source on any page, towards the top it gives you various feeds you can subscribe to. For example I wanted to subscribe to Build Events > Scrambler C so I w...

So my regional was last weekend and the photo gate system worked wonderfully! I did not have enough time in the morning to experiment with the mirrors so I had to go straight to plan B and setup 2 lasers and 2 sensors with the cat5 cable running down the length. Throughout the day, the sensors and l...

Am I allowed to attach the backstop to the car by drilling holes and using screws to screw it on? Among the other requirements for the backstop, the rules mention this specifically (I've bolded the relevant part): 3e. The egg must rest on two (2) 1⁄4” wooden dowels which extend out between 3.0 and ...

After testing a lot with my olive can sensor and mirrors, I've come to the conclusion that I likely won't be able to solve my vibration issue. There are actually two issues.. First is probably to do with the mirrors I have. The round mirrors with the built in stand worked fine for testing on the gro...

I'd interpret that as "no" - the ES provides a pencil, and wants it back in the same state it came in (which means you can't sharpen it, or add lubricant, or whatever else). But you might get away with it. Wait, but would adding lubricant after they give it to me and wiping it off after m...

The rules sheet says that the energy used to propel the car can only come from the hanging mass, can we use mini bunjee cords or other springs that will increase the possible energy to the cart? Rules section 3h covers this Conversion of the falling mass’ gravitational potential energy is permissib...

I think I have a solution to the "larger sensor" issue. I experimented with a variety of materials starting with foil, thinking it would bounce the light around in the tube to make the whole tube glow red. This did not work very well. I noticed some materials scatter the laser beam when it...

So my idea for this photogate is to use one laser, one sensor, and two mirrors to make the beam travel across both timing lines. drawing.png I purchased a couple of round "table mirror" from the dollar store. They are about 4.5" in diameter and have a little fold out stand so it shoul...

For the software, I wrote a simple finite state machine code to go through the various states of operation. There are a number of stages, but the important ones follow this pattern: START - wait for laser to be aligned ARMED_WAIT - wait for laser to break TRIP1_ACTION - start timer - wait for laser ...

I figure I'll use this thread to document my trials and then create a wiki if I come up with something that works well. I'll start off with the electronics. I'm using what's essentially an Arduino Uno. It's an ATMega328p with Arduino bootloader, programmed with a Sparkfun Pocket AVR Programmer . I'm...