Vex Online Challenge: TI Challenge 918D

For our teams challenge, we broke apart an alarm clock and looked at all the parts inside. We first unscrewed the bottom screws to the alarm clock. Our team then separated the bottom from the top of the clock to take out the electronics. We did the alarm clock since we did have very many old pieces of technology. We also did not want to do a calculator since that is what we thought most teams would do.

 Vexmen Team 80N

Texas Instruments Vex Online Challenge

            Our team, 80N, took part in the Vex EDR Texas Instruments Challenge over the 2015 summer. We took apart an HP pavilion DV7 laptop, because we wanted to explore a device with many parts. We thought we could learn even more than we would with a smaller device, like a phone. Throughout this challenge we learned about where many parts can be found, such as a processor, fan, battery, and many more.

When we took apart the laptop, we found...

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Please click on the file "Computer Tower" to see my entry. V/R, Jason

The device I selected is the VEXnet Key 2.0 which is the device used for radio communication between the VEX ARM® Cortex®-based Microcontroller and the VEXnet Joystick. I selected this because of its crucial part in VEX Robotics competitions and because of previous knowledge of how the system worked. The main component of the key is a CC2544 SoC (System on Chip) from Texas Instruments, a microprocessor with 32kb of RAM, USB, SPI, UART and includes a 2.4Ghz radio. The second to largest chip is a CC2591 range extender from Texas Instruments which boosts the range of the wireless...

Team 183

         Team 183 had a treasure hunt in an electrician’s discard pile.  What is the function of this blue box?   The electrician said it is an inverter or a VFD.  Our team dismantled the box (refer to photo for labeling of parts) and continued the treasure hunt.  What is a VFD?

         A VFD is a Variable Frequency Drive which is an electronic device used to control the speed of an electric motor.  Electricity comes into the terminal block and...

 Hexbug Nano

      I decided to take apart the Hexbug Nano because I really enjoy playing with all of the Hexbug components. I also thought it would be pretty hard to take apart and then name the parts afterward. Once I fully took apart the Hexbug  I realized that the Hexbug  is not a Texas Instrument product. I was pleased to finish because I worked  hard to take the Hexbug apart, after I took it apart I managed to put it together and have it still working.

      The parts in the Hexbug Nano...

The basics of our online challenge is the discovery of the TI SN74LS08 and the research of AND gates and it's function on the Parallax Boe-bot.

(Attached as document)

         I chose an IBM Thinkpad T41 computer which runs Windows XP. It was manufactured in 2000. This electronic device was chosen because computer have many parts from many producers. It also was sitting around gaining dust. This challenge was a good way to put it out of business.

         Parts I Found:

• Processor: Intel Pentium M
• Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon 7500
• Battery: Lithium Ion
• Memory: 64-bit DDR...
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As a group, we decided to take apart a Macintosh PowerBook 150 because not only was it interesting, but it shows the evolution of technology. The most surprising thing we discovered when taking apart the PowerBook was the lack of specifications existed for the computer. The Powerbook had only 4 MB of Memory. The next surprising thing about the computer was the hard drive. The computer had the still standard 2.5” drive, yet the amount of storage was only 120 MB. To put that into perspective, the iPhone 6s has over 1000X more storage. With only 120 MB, you could only store about 15...

I chose a LM158N ozone collecting chip. I was always fascinated with the chip has circuits that consist of two independent, high gain, internally frequency compensated which were designed specifically to operate from a single power supply over a wide range of voltages. The low power supply drain is independent of the magnitude of the power supply voltage. Application areas include transducer amplifiers, dc gain blocks and all the conventional op-amp circuits which now can be more easily implemented in single power supply systems. For example, these circuits can be directly supplied with...

I chose a LM158N ozone collecting chip. I was always fascinated that the special chip has two circuits that are independent, high gain, internally frequency compensated which were designed specifically to operate from a single power supply over a wide range of voltages. The low power supply drain is independent to the magnitude of the power supply voltage. Application areas include transducer amplifiers, DC gain blocks and all the conventional op-amp circuits which now can be more easily implemented in single power supply systems. For example, these circuits can be directly supplied with...

Introduction:

             For the Texas Instruments Electronics Challenge, I choose to take apart and analyze the electronic components of an old HP mouse. I choose it because it wasn’t functional and I’ve always wanted to see the inside of a mouse. 

Electronic Components Found:

           One of the electronic components that I found in the mouse were capacitors. The job of the capacitors is to store electric charges which...

We documented our process on our website. The link to it is below. We learned a lot from this assignment and had a lot of fun! 

https://rubberbandrobotics.wordpress.com/challenges-2/challenges/

Also here is the link to our main website.

https://rubberbandrobotics.wordpress.com/

2.4G Optical Wireless Mouse is one of most of common wireless mouse, which is a plug and play device. Wireless transmission is achieved by using 2.4GHz Wireless spread spectrum communication for wireless mouse. The longest sensing distance is 10-14 meters where transmission isn’t interfered from obstacle. Therefore, the wireless transmission model can be used for programming wireless downloading for VEX IQ.

More details is discribed in Word file

VEX Team 8390 Texas Instruments Online Challenge

One teacher's trash is a robotics student's treasure! We acquired a 1990's-style boombox — an Emerson Model PD6810 Portable CD Player with scratched Nirvana CD inside — out of e-waste and disassembled it. Rather than taking a broad survey of all the electronics, we identified and learned about the functions of components on the main PCB since it is the control hub of the CD player.

The one-sided circuit board contained three integrated circuits, a doughnut-shaped (aka toroidal)...

We deconstructed a 2010 Apple MacBook Unibody A1342 because we wanted to examine a product that plays a crucial role in everyday life. The computer didn't contain TI components. We identified: Airport and Bluetooth card and cables, optical disk drive, hard disk drive, cooling fan, track pad and serial cable, heat sink and logic board, battery, RAM chip, MagSafe board, and speakers. The Apple AirPort/Bluetooth cable and the Broadcom Airport/Bluetooth card (BCM943224PCIEBT) establish wireless network connections. The Panasonic Super 8A8A Optical Drive (UJ8A8) reads optical disk...