[srawn] SR(A)WN 2015 -- 15

[Tom Leese]

SR(A)WN 2015 — 15

This is the fifteenth issue of the Student Robotics (Almost) Weekly Newsletter, a (roughly) fortnightly newsletter which summarises the goings‐on across Student Robotics. Emboldened items are ones which we believe could do with extra hands. An absence of emboldening does not necessarily mean that everything is done.

Internal Updates

• Bristol hosted its second tech day—9 teams turned up.
• Steering committee vote happened and the results have been published (see below).
• A hangout to discuss the competition software occured, with various outcomes. Tickets have been created and anyone can feel free to pick up any task. Already bugs and features are being submitted to Gerrit and merged in.
• Part of the 'How to Help' page on the website has been rewritten to make it more readable.
• A discussion on tinker time at the competition has been initiated and is ongoing.
• Funding has been confirmed from Motorola.
• The first Volunteer Activity Day happened and was a great success.
• Investigations have occurred into whether keeping Git objects in a database is any better for the IDE.
• Research into improved match scheduling at the competition has happened.
• A private PyPI has been set up to put any Pip and Setuptools based Python projects we have.
• A commit to merge the new tools branch back into the tools has been submitted to Gerrit.
• New power board firmware, capable of playing sounds via the on board piezo and with raised current limits, has been released. The flashing process is fiddly, though, so teams will have to request it.
• Andy Busse is organising a Computing and Microelectronics Summer School in conjunction with the Smallpeice Trust and the University of Southampton, and needs a number of volunteers to help out.

Steering Committee Results

The results of the Steering Committee elections are in. Although there was a tie for events, Lilafisch has stepped down leaving the following as the new Steering Committee.

• Community: Tom Leese
• Engineering: Richard Barlow
• Events: Sam Phippen
• Public Interaction: Harry Cutts
• Schools and Mentoring: Jeremy Morse
• Sponsorship: Rob Spanton

Team Updates

• The Peter Symonds team have released a photo of their chassis.
• Queen Mary's College have mounted their camera and a suction cup, and programmed their robot to chase a cube with a marker.
• Collyers have been tidying their wires and installing a microswitch.
• Cornwall College Saltash have been programming their Ruggeduino.
• KES are still having problems with their kit. It appears that the ODroid image wasn't the only problem in the end and their power board is faulty. A replacement will be delivered tomorrow.

Thanks to Tom Leese, Tyler Ward, Harry Cutts for working on this issue. The previous issue can be found here.

[Peter Law]

Hi,

> Steering Committee Results
*snip*

> Community: Tom Leese
> Engineering: Richard Barlow
> Events: Sam Phippen
> Public Interaction: Harry Cutts
> Schools and Mentoring: Jeremy Morse
> Sponsorship: Rob Spanton

I've just submitted an srweb patch which updates the /about/committee
page to reflect this: http://gerrit.srobo.org/2220

Peter