Tiny Superbug

Time for something normal for a change, and here it is: A Dragon 1/144 F/A-18E Super Hornet. There's a little nostalgia while building this tiny model, as the first model I've ever built was a 1/144 F/A-18C Hornet. Not exactly the same model, but the memories definitely hit home. The first model I built (with some assistance from my sister) was completed in an afternoon back in 2000, using scissors, a penknife and household paper glue. It was an afternoon well spent, and that tiny kit convinced me enough to pursue this activity as a mainstay hobby. After 11 years of plastic cutting, my skills have changed quite a bit, as evident in this photo:



Left: Original 1/144 F/A-18C built in 2000; Right: New 1/144 F/A-18E built in 2011.

The funny pigments on the old model is actually poster colour. I didn't have any enamel paints back then, and I didn't know what were 'decals', 'weathering' and 'airbrushing'. Now I do, as my latest build shows.

Back to the build(and the future):

This is the first time I've ever built a Dragon model kit, and I'd say the kit soars pretty well on my rankings. Good points are aplenty: Very nice, albeit slightly over-accentuated recessed panel lines and rivets; Detailed landing gears and cockpit (for 1/144 scale); Superb decals; Usable canopy and more or less spot on in terms of shape and size, at least to the Mk. 1 Eyeball.


There are a few flaws, though. Dragon gives the option of folding wings, which IMO shouldn't be applied to 1/144 scale as it involves very tiny details, even in 1/32, let alone 1/144. They moulded the wings in inner and outer parts, and the attachment between the 2 parts are in the form of a lego-like male-female attachment. The attachment has a rather wide gap, and looks awful and inaccurate, folded or unfolded. I attached the wings and filled the gaps. There are some minor gaps between the fuselage halves, but then again, that might be my fault. There are also some minor inaccuracies in the decals for the CAG scheme. The formation lights below the tail were molded incorrectly (they were molded under the wings).

But to be honest, those flaws are minor and are easily outweighed by the good points of the kit. So well done, Dragon. Now I don't particularly dread building the 1/72 Tiger tank in my stash.


Here's a coin to scale:


The model was sprayed with a mix of enamels (for the exterior) and acrylics (for the MLG and NLG bays, air intakes). Weathering was more or less standard, with a pastel wash and some light pastel dusting (CAG birds aren't usually dirty). The markings depict the CAG bird of VFA-147 "Argonauts" in Dec 2007.


-stcoponegripen-

Robotics: Part 5

This should be the final installment in this series of robotics-related blog posts, until the next competition, if I'm requested to help by then. This post is about the best and greatest robotics project ever produced by the robotics club me and my friends founded back in 2008. It is the culmination of a superb idea from today's members, the expertise of the most knowledgeable robotics members past and present, and the efforts of the people who contributed to this project.


National Robotics Competition 2010 Open Category (State and National Levels)
Theme: Robot Promote Tourism
Team Members: Charissa Chan, Daphne Song, Lee Yee Yen

Just before the state level competition, I was contacted by the advisor teacher of the robotics club to help out on their open category robotics project. The project was basically a 'house' with a screen on the front which displayed a shadow puppet show. Behind the screen were moving clear plastic cutouts that moved, and an overhead projector which projected light and a background for the shadow puppets.



The idea was superb, combining 2 elements of Malaysia's heritage. Malaysia is a country with many different races and religions. Showing off the many varieties of dances in the country was a superb way of promoting tourism, as it depicts the multicultural society of Malaysia in its most beautiful form. "Wayang kulit" literally translated to "Skin Theatre" is a traditional Malay pastime that was used to provide entertainment to the villagers. It is native to the Malay isles, including Peninsular Malaysia. While traditional "Wayang Kulit" performs folk tales and stories, the "Wayang Kulit" in this robotics project are about the dances of Malaysia.

The main dance in the project is the Sumazau dance of the Kadazandusun natives of Sabah:





I started out by redesigning the shadow puppet's mechanism. The original mechanism places too much strain on the Lego parts, and does not move the arms of the dancers well at all. What was actually needed was for a shaft to extend and retract, pushing the arms outwards and inwards continuously. I achieved this by connecting a shaft onto a large gear that rotated, and extending the shaft to the bottom of the controlling mechanism to a loose guide, so that the shaft extended linearly while the gear rotated. The whole mechanism was mounted on top of a motorized set of wheels that moved the robots horizontally across the house (i.e. left-right on the screen)



I did not do much beyond that, as they were leaving for the state-level competition the next morning. That, however was the main part of their performance, and was rather crucial for them to win.

And win they did. They managed to win Gold in the State-level competition, allowing them to compete in the national levels as state representatives. However, the team decided to go for a completely revamped project for the national levels, like we did 3 years ago. And like 3 years ago, there wasn't much time for such a load of work, so it was time to bring out the big guns:



From left to right: Alex Lo, Aaron Raj GC, Jason Lee

I called my old robotics team members from 2007 to help out. It was just like old times. Aaron Raj GC, Jason Lee and Lee Joeshua were still in Tawau, so they joined in the fray. Between me and my team, plus the current club president, we had about 2 decades of experience and several projects under our belts.

I started with the Sumazau dancers. During the state level competition demonstration, the dancers were prone to collision, as their running tracks had to be as close as possible. Rather than improving the wheel drive system, I opted for a tracked system to improve on its reliability. After years of experience, this was possibly the best set of tracks I've ever made. It was strong, rigid and allows for the moving mechanism to attach to it perfectly:




I modified the dancing mechanism to incorporate a pinion gear and various attachments for it to move on the track without derailing.








While I was doing that, Joeshua, Aaron and Jason built the lion dance puppet control mechanism. Rather than mounting a real moving lion, I suggested a simpler plastic cutout controlled by an overhead mechanism. The mechanism runs on a track mounted on the top of the house, and controls the lion dance plastic cutout using fishing wire like a marionette. The mechanism allows the 'lion' to 'jump' up and down the stilts (which was projected using the overhead projector) according to the rhythm of drums and cymbals. I added another motor that pulled a line connected to the 'lion' head to allow the head to shake (something often seen in real life lion dances), and started programming the 'lion' to dance.







View from the outside:



We also improved the alignment of the roller mechanism for the slides passing through the overhead projector, which was designed by the team members:




The final programming that synchronized the performances, curtains, leaflet dispensers, lights and sounds was done by Alex Lo, the current president of the Robotics Club. I helped out by developing the raw programs for the dances, and developing new methods for the various NXT controllers(about 6-7 of them) to communicate with each other. After the bad experience with Bluetooth 3 years ago, I suggested a light-to-light-sensor direct wire system, whereby an NXT switches on another NXT by turning on a light, which activates the light sensor of the other NXT. This was used in the end to complement their Bluetooth network, which worked.

The automatically drawing curtains, lighting systems, leaflet dispensers and other aspects of the project including the house, with its atap leaf roofing, bamboo walls and various decors were made by the team members along with some support students, guided and supervised by the advisory teachers.


House under construction:


Leaflet dispenser:


Master controller+ iPod player:


Automatic curtains:


During the competition:

Left to right: Daphne Song, Lee Yee Yen, Ms Koh (Teacher adviser), Charissa Chan

After so much work, it was payback time. The team won Bronze in the national level competition which was the greatest achievement the club have ever had so far. After so many failures and setbacks in past projects due to various reasons, the success of this project definitely made up for them. Next stop for the club: the World Robotics Olympiad.

Robotics: Part 4

On this installment of blog posts about robotics, we’ll take a look at smaller and simpler robots built for the regular category of the National Robotics Competition (NRC). These robots usually involve just one controller (NXT these days), and usual maximum of 3 motors, with 2 sensors. They are built to achieve objectives and complete missions, rather than being a full functional robot used to demonstrate certain real world functions.

I have joined 2 regular category competitions, once during 2006, another during 2008. NRC 2006 was my first ever competition and I did not win, although one of our senior teams did, and made it to the national levels. I do not have any pictures of our robot, but basically it has to travel along the black line on the competition mat along an obstacle course that looks like this:

As you can see, the course has a slope and Lego ‘bars’ along the course, so the design of the robot has to take those into account. Many concepts were tried out (4-wheel drive, caterpillar track, flat 2-wheel drive, etc), but the Form 5 team (which won that year) came out with a ‘raised vehicle’ concept which allowed the robot to pass through the slope and bars easily and quickly. This concept was quickly added to our list of practical designs, and would be used again 4 years later.

National Robotics Competition 2010 Primary School Regular Category: Adventure Race

Earlier this year, I was contacted by a teacher from SJK (C) Sin Hwa (my ex-primary school) to coach and guide their robotics teams. To my surprise, the track was an obstacle course similar to the one used in NRC 2006, although there are many modifications, with extra objectives:

The robot needs to carry a ping pong ball, and pass through all the hurdles, slope and obstacles. The robot must always be over the black line, else it’ll be considered a mis-track, i.e. game over. The robots initially built by the students were flimsy and did not manage to achieve many, if any of the objectives on the track. I promptly disassembled one of the robots and started rebuilding, ending up with a robot that utilized the ‘raised vehicle’ concept, but with numerous improvements and modifications.

The ‘raised vehicle’ concept allowed the robot to maintain enough traction along the slippery slope, and prevented (to a large degree) the robot from going off course while going through the hurdles. An extra motor operated a ‘scoop’ which captured and carried the ping pong ball securely along the course.

The biggest improvement over the original ‘raised vehicle’ robot was actually the program loaded into the robot. In 2006, the robot had 2 light sensors that detected the ground colour, in order to steer the robot on top of the track at all times. The program was a simple ‘multi-fork’ program, which was basically commanding the robot along the lines of:

If sensor A and B are light, go straight

If sensor A is light, B is dark, turn left

If sensor A is dark, B is light, turn right

If sensor A and B are dark, go straight (to pass through hurdles)

Such a fork is easy to program (using diagrammatic programming interface such as Robolab), but requires the robot to be very slow, and is very much prone to failure, as it is heavily reliant on the light sensor readings. Faster speeds will easily cause mis-tracking. Thus, I used a mix of ‘forks’, ‘switches’ and regulating command blocks that prevented the robot from going off the track.

I don’t have the program diagram, but here is a video of the robot going through halfway through the track during a practice session:

During the competition:

As it turned out, none of the primary school teams (those I coached inclusive) managed to complete the track during the competition. Despite that, one of the teams I coached managed to get a robot halfway through the track, good enough for 2^nd prize.

That achievement is quite weird, considering the fact that regular category is usually the toughest to win nearly every year. Points between competing teams are usually very close and every team needs to fight tooth and nail to win. That was the case during NRC 2008, the final robotics competition I participated in.

National Robotics Competition 2008 Upper Secondary Regular Category: Robot Planting

Team Members: Lim Jia Wei, Jason Lee Kee Hean, Lee Joeshua

The objectives of this competition are very much different compared to the previous ones described. The playing field looks like this:

Beside the start box are a few small Lego ‘plants’ of 3 types, called Tree, Flower and Grass.

Tree:

Flower:

Grass

Robot planting is about having the robot to move the ‘plants’ to the designated boxes of 3 types: Recreational, Industrial and Town. During the competition, the organizers will announce which boxes are for the Tree, Flower or Grass. Each plant is of a different mass and different frictional coefficient. Thus, we needed to prepare programs for each plant to each box, which makes for 18 separate programs in total. And because the performance of the robot deteriorates with decreasing battery power, we made a total of about 30 separate programs for the competition. The competitor is supposed to take a 'plant', mount it on the robot, and the robot should send the 'plant' and return to the start box. This is repeated until the time runs out, or when all the 'plants' are 'planted'.

This was the original robot we built. No gears, simple, quick to build, less risks of mis-tracking:

We added a few additional ‘shurikens’ (as it looked like the Japanese ninja weapon) to the front of the robot to make sure we abide the rule of ‘any part of the robot must be over the black line’, and to prevent the ‘plant’ from slipping out of the robot holding area.

We could complete the mission easily with this robot. Unfortunately, we heard that some other schools were achieving mission times that were much lower than us, which was a real wake up call. Thus, we added gears that increased the speed of the robot to about 1.5 times. Increasing the speed of the robot changes a lot of things. Programs need to compensate for such speed, the grip of the wheels may be easily compromised, and the chances of going off the track is much increased.

The addition of gears were done using our experience from the previous open category project. We knew that gears, especially gears that speed things up (as opposed to reduction gears that slow down the rpm) need to be secured firmly to each other, otherwise the robot would fail, especially with the program we used to run the robot. The organisers did supply a sample program which was as orthodox as possible. 'Forks', lots of them. We needed to speed things up, so we devised a program with many 'wait for dark/light' switches, plus a preprogrammed motor sequence that utilised the rotation sensor in each motor. Thus, if the gears were loose (i.e. cogs not touching with each other), the motor would run without the wheels running, making the robot inaccurate and causing the whole mission to fall apart. Thus, we secured the gears as best as we could, by mounting the gears on a large main structure utilising several 'L' bars and straight bars that were secured to the NXT on at least 6 points. The final configuration of the robot during the Tawau Local Competition looked like this:

We removed the 'shurikens' which were deemed redundant, and equipped the robot with several 'sticks' at the side to make sure it was always over the black line. This might be called trickery, but we weren't the only ones doing it, as it allowed for much faster movement. A fighter pilot's adage is to Lie, cheat and steal in the cockpit. Leave chivalry hanging in the closet with your dress whites.

This video was made by my teacher, and showed some of the rather outrageous designs by other teams for the robots to stay 'on track':




During the local competition, my team won Gold, by a very small margin. We had about 940 points, while the team who won Silver had about 10 points less than us, basically equal to 10 seconds slower time, or an extra penalty with part of a plant remaining outside the destination box. The regular category of NRC is usually a close fight, and while we got the upper hand in the Tawau Local competition, we did not make it to the national levels. The winning team from Kota Kinabalu had 10 points more than us. I would've gladly competed again with them, but (reportedly due to budget constraints) that year's competition format did not accommodate a state-level competition for our category. By points comparison, we won Silver in the state level.

That's all for now.

Robotics: Part 3

National Robotics Competition 2008 Open Category (State Level)

Theme: Save Our Planet!
Rules: 50% of the project MUST be Lego, Lego controllers only.
Team members: Chung Ngin Zhun, Abel Chai, Richmond Choong

In 2008, I was the president of the newly-formed Robotics Club, and the school contingent leader by default. I participated in the regular category of the National Robotics Competition, not the open category as it has less workload, making it more suitable for my final and busiest year in secondary school. However, I was the mentor for the team and was directly involved with this project. Many aspects of the design and building received direct input from my previous experience. This was the project:


MV Patrick is a multipurpose river-cleaning machine. It deepens rivers, cleans and collects surface rubbish and reduces the acidity of rivers autonomously without human operation. It can navigate through rivers on autopilot, without having the risk of crashing into riverbanks. The prefix “MV” denotes motor vessel, which is what it is. It is an actual floating robotic ‘ship’.

The main parts are denoted by numbers 1-5.:

Do note that the robot in the picture is not the final variant we built. This robot is similar, but not exactly identical to the final product, as we made numerous adjustments and improvements soon after the pictures above were taken. The final product may be seen in the video at the bottom of this post.

Parts 1-2: Dredging system

This is the heart of the whole ship. During the design phase of the project, the team members and me debated on the type of dredging mechanism to use. The first type was a grab dredger mechanism, basically a claw lowered into the riverbed to ‘grab’ material up to the surface.

The second was a bucket dredging system, based on the tin dredgers used in colonial Malaya for tin mining. This utilized a moving series of scooping buckets to ‘scoop’ sediment up:

We determined that for the claw dredging mechanism to be effective, we either need to submerge a motor underwater, or link a driveshaft from a motor mounted on the surface to the claw. Both were unpractical. The former meant the risk of a shot motor and the latter required a very delicate mechanism. Thus, the bucket dredging system was used. It came in 2 parts: Part number 1 (shown without metal buckets) was basically a motor driving a chain with buckets attached. The end of the part had lead weights attached, and was meant to sink to the riverbed. Part number 2 was another motor that lifted or lowered the dredger, which had to be brought up for the ship to sail freely.

Part 3: Propulsion system

These are basically paddles that allowed the ship to move in the water. We experimented with propellers, but they required additional parts and motors for rudders, meaning more weight that might cause the ship to sink. Paddles were good in the sense that they meant more effective steering (especially in a narrow waterway), and were simpler in design.

Part 4: Material collecting platform

This was basically a collecting area for the collected surface rubbish and riverbed material.

Part 5: Surface trash collector

These are lifting ‘filters’ that scoop rubbish from the river surface onto a conveyor belt. After this photo was taken we added wire mesh as filter material.

From the photos it can be seen that the distribution of parts on the ship is rather uniform, and the ship had a large surface area. That was to allow more floatation material to be attached on the bottom of the ship. We initially used plastic PET bottles, but they were difficult to attach and provided too much buoyancy for too small an area, which resulted in instability. In the end, we attached polystyrene foam to the bottom of the ship.

The ship also had a small dispensing mechanism that dispensed calcium carbonate at regular time intervals. Unfortunately I don’t have any detailed pictures.

Here is a video of the robot that was presented during the competition:

The video has pictures of the final variant of the robot. There were ultrasonic sensors mounted onto the sides of the ship to judge the distance from the riverbanks. If the ship drifted too close to the riverbank, the ultrasonic sensors (which detect distance) would sense it, and the information sent to the NXT controller would adjust for the paddles to steer away from the riverbank. To prevent water from getting into the NXT, they were put into solid Lego brick enclosures, with a waterproof lining. The ‘failure’ in the video was actually the ship on the bottom of a shallow artificial pond. Our initial tests using PET bottles weren’t successful, and resulted in quite a few minor disasters.

The ‘river’ and ‘riverbanks’ were made from plywood pieces hammered together. A plastic sheet lining was used to prevent the water from leaking out. The riverbanks were made with play-doh, and the river bottom sediment was actual river sand and soil, resulting in a murky river that is all too common nowadays in some parts of Malaysia.

The sad thing was, during the competition, the project and presentation by the team failed to impress the judges. I would say we went for a less risky design, one that presented few winning points to the judges. However, one of the winning teams in the national levels of the National Robotics Competition that year had a robot that was very similar to ours (it was a floating river cleaner as well). It was however, more refined and possibly more complex in its design.

So much for failures. On the next installment in this series of blog entries, the mood will be better, I promise!

Robotics: Part 2

It's quite weird to talk about failure, because it is human nature to avoid failure at all costs, and failures are regarded as something negative. However, failure is the key element that makes success rewarding. Parts 2 and 3 of the robotics blog entries will be about robotics projects that are breakthroughs in their own rights, in terms of innovations, ideas and concepts, but are somehow unsuccessful in arena of competition. They may have failed to earn awards, but they deserve a full mention, because such projects paved the way for the experience and knowledge we have today, and the successes that followed after.

National Robotics Competition 2007 Open Category (National Level)
Theme: Science Fiction Story
Rules: 50% of the project MUST be Lego, Lego controllers only.

This is the follow-through project from the state level project featured in the previous blog entry. It is listed here not because it is lousily built, or badly designed, but because it simply did not win, due to various circumstances experienced before and during the competition.

Anyway, this is the centerpiece of the project, a new and improved transformer:


After the state level competition, we decided to stick to the 'transformers' theme, but because the stakes are higher, we decided on a complete rebuild, rather than a simple improvement on our existing project. Furthermore, since the regular category teams were no longer participating (none of them made it to the national levels), we had nearly all NXT and RCX controllers, along with about 20-30 motors and about 40 sensors at our disposal. Our hands were basically itching to try out something bigger and better, without the flaws of its predecessor.

One of the flaws of the original transformer is the ability to transform. From the previous article, you can see that the folding mechanism is rather impractical, as it is quite difficult for the motors on the base to push the heavy robot body up. We did not want that, and threw out the idea of extension mechanisms, opting for a fixed body height and fixed base. That simplified matters. Our strong robot base this time is very strong and reliable, with 8 caterpillar tracks driven by 4 separate motors through a set of reduction gears.

The body and arms, however, were built by a lot of trial and error. This was the original configuration of the body:


As you can see, 3 seperate NXT controllers are mounted on top of the body, and the arms are basically built to fold out, with an NXT on it. There is a vertical rack (bar with gear teeth) on the center of the body, as we initally wanted a small head module to climb up and mount on top of the robot body. This design had many flaws. First off, 3 NXT modules and 8 motors meant that the top of the body is VERY heavy, and the centre of gravity of the robot is raised significantly, causing instability. Secondly, the middle section is much too fragile to withstand the weight imposed by the top body. It was difficult to reinforce the middle body as any brackets would directly interfere with the climbing module.

Arms:


Each arm had 3 motors and an NXT controller. The motor (marked 'A') is designed to fold the arms out, for the building (dormant robot) to transform into a city protector (activated robot). Folding out wasn't too much of a problem for motor 'A', but once the arms moved, all hell broke loose. The plastic shaft connecting the motor 'A' to the NXT and arms simply broke when the arm moved too fast, or changed direction too quickly.

2 weeks before the competition, Kenneth, the robotics trainer in charge of Sabah paid us a visit, and told us something that we didn't know beforehand. First off, open category is not just about the robot, how the mechanisms are or whether there are any innovations in design etc. It's also about aesthetics. It is a whole project, with a set up, a scene, a poster, basically something that attracts attention. This was something we didn't really realise. Another thing was that we were far behind schedule. Other schools, with support from teachers, members of the public and paid engineers were already completing their projects, nearly ready for the competition. We were quite far from that stage. Upon hearing this, we went back to the drawing board. The complicated body, with climbing module, heavy body and arms were dismantled. In its place was a more refined, but less radical design. No climbing module, just arms that fold out.


The new arms were 2 motors each, and each motor's is connected to the moving part via reduction gear. This produced a slower but more steady movement which, according to Kenneth looks much better compared with an acute, quick movement. It also puts less strain on the attachment between the arms and the body.

With the climbing module idea abandoned, the structure of the body was beefed up heavily. After building for so many months, the 6 of us had lots of experience on how to strengthen structures, and we made the body rigid and strong. We used a lot of “L” bars and so-called “lambs” (these are the names we used for certain commonly used parts), and we nearly finished the whole stockpile of these parts. In the next few projects we were involved in, the usage of such parts to form strong structures became almost a recognizable feature in all our robots. Anyway, this is what the whole body and base looks like:

Port View:

Starboard View:

Kenneth said something about aesthetics. That meant scenery. For our robot that is rigid and doesn’t extend up, that meant the robot was a building, and the scenery was urban scenery. We had only a week left, and because the school never embarked on such a large school project, they did not give us any money to buy materials, and we didn’t know how much they can reimburse us. Thus, we had to improvise. For some reason we had a rather large piece of thin plywood at my backyard, so that was sprayed using a spray can (self bought), and used as a base. The buildings were plain grey cardboard, obtained from my father’s friend who runs a printing press. At this point we were a little worried about the ‘50% lego parts’ rule, so we made building frames out of Lego, and covered the frames with cardboard. Poster paints provided street markings and plasticine provided roundabouts.

Today this looks like rubbish compared to the latest open category works of the school. But remember, all this was done with minimal cost. The latest robotics projects easily cost RM100+ in terms of materials. Our materials cost less than RM10.

Now comes the sad part. Why we lost. After 3 years, I can more or less explain the whole mess objectively, but the blame does not lie in a single person, or any group of people. In fact, there should not be any blame, as all of this provided a valuable lesson or organizing and planning in the future. However, this story obeys Murphy’s Law, possibly to the last word, making it an interesting story.

The usual procedure for competition teams representing Sabah was that the air tickets and itinerary would be booked and organized by the Sabah State Ministry of Education. Possibly due to an overly lax Government officer or miscommunication, our tickets weren’t booked, and we didn’t know that till the last possible moment. Fortunately they did tell us 45 minutes before AirAsia shut its booking window, and we were able to book 2 separate connecting flights to the competition venue, Kuala Terengganu, via a stopover in Kuala Lumpur, albeit arriving just in time for the competition, while everyone else arrived a day beforehand to relax and prepare. This meant 2 things. We won’t have as much time to prepare our booth compared to the other teams, and the night before the competition will be spent resting on the cold marble floor of Kuala Lumpur International Airport Low Cost Carrier Terminal. You might call it ‘resting’ but the end result was that none of us got as much as a wink of sleep. We arrived at the competition venue like a bunch of swollen-eyed zombies, and by that time, almost everyone else was set and ready.

Our project utilized Bluetooth connections between NXT controllers so that the whole demonstration could be synchronized. The connections kept failing for some reason (possibly due to dozens of other Bluetooth devices trying to connect into our system). Time was running out, and basically our tired minds failed to come out with a solution. This was the scene as we were frantically making our project presentable:

The presentation broke apart, as we had to control the robot manually by switching them on and off at intervals. That failed to impress the judges, and so it was hello, failure.

“Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.” – Edward A. Murphy, Jr.

Looking back, there were many things which we could have done to avert disaster: we could have assumed that the state ministry is awfully inefficient, and pestered them to book our tickets days ahead; we could have had many solutions to solve the Bluetooth connection problem; we could have lobbied for more funds and support from the school for the aesthetics of the project. But bygones are bygones.

For the next few projects, we arranged for project timelines to have more time allowances for contingencies. We arranged for artistic volunteer groups to help out in scenery making. We made sure all our travel arrangements are fixed and ready, and developed techniques that allow NXT-to-NXT communications without Bluetooth, lest the connection fails. We also made sure that funds were sufficient in future projects.

That's all for now.