Explore the Volcano

FSM: Year Two

Our second year was a huge success. We won first place in Tech Challenge, a thousand dollars for the team, and were invited to the Tech Museum Awards annual dinner gala. We also won second place in the open division of Robogames with the same device, a hybrid airship that we designed, built, and modified throughout the year.

Tech Challenge 2009: Explore the Volcano

Upon deciding to build upon our previous year’s success, we once again came together for the 2009 Tech Challenge competition. Raymond Zhong joined our team, bringing in another soldering hand to the team (and a crazy fast one at that). This year, the challenge was to build a device that would bring ping pong balls, representing sensors, to a test rig that represented an active volcano.

Our design was a dual-envelope hybrid airship, an airship that would be slightly heavier than air, which we could control by using vertical and horizontal propellers. It would be equipped with a camera and radio. The frame was made out of carbon fiber and lashed with cotton string and cyanoacrylate glue at the joints.

Due to the increased cost of participating in the competition this year, considering what materials we were planning on using (electronics are expensive) we tried to find sponsors to help defray the cost of building our airship. However, our efforts only produced $200. Our biggest challenge for next year will be finances: by the end of the season, we spent $1.7k and are currently $550 in debt. However the cost of materials on our blimp came out to be around $500. We just bought a lot of extra parts just in case.

In the meantime, building commenced. The blimps were purchased online, and were made of mylar:

Motor controllers were soldered by Raymond and Eric, and motors and propellers were bought from hobby town. They were lashed to the frame, and our drop mechanism was made from cardboard and attached. We started building the device early during spring, and had most of an airframe completed by March.

During the last few weeks before competition, we faced control difficulties. We had been using unidirectional motor controllers, which were commonly available at hobby stores. However, we found out that we needed the ability to reverse our propellers to keep the airship steady, so we had to build and test a new set of speed controllers in the last week before competition. In the end, we had a device ready to run, and we tested it at school:

Practice in the cafeteria

And then on we went to the competition site.

Judging at the Tech Challenge.

Our speedy device, with a round trip time of an average of 30 seconds, won first place overall at the Tech Challenge competition. Competing against over 70 teams in the high school division, we won $200 for each team member. We also recieved a nice suprise gift – an invitation to the Tech Awards Gala.

First place at the Tech Challenge. Photo courtesy of the San Jose Tech Museum