This week JP and I did most of our work together in TechSpark. We went through 5-6 different versions of the loading mechanism for the launcher, starting from a ramp, and ending up with a small mechanism that uses a servo to push the ball into the spinning motors.
One thing that we noticed right away was that the long distance between the point the ball starts and the motors introduced a lot of inconsistency in both the direction and the power of the launch. We addressed this by moving the servo closer to the motors so we could precisely control the speed that the ball enters the motors as well.
The other big development of the week is I assembled the final launcher mechanism and placed it in the housing. There was a lot of troubleshooting we had to do to get the serial communication figured out between the nano and the arduino but we left techspark Friday in a really good place; we had the cup detection measure the distance to a cup we placed at an angle away from the robot, then it sent the angle and distance to the Arduino, which initiated the launch sequence, turning the launcher towards the cup, and shooting the ball at the correct distance to land in the cup.