Week 9: The Last Link

Hi readers, welcome back to my blog!

Before we start, my website is fully up and taking responses! Please give me data: https://thunderrhombus.github.io/4DVisualizerQuiz

This week has somehow managed to be more chaotic than the last, with my final push to finalize the code portion of my project coinciding with my flight out to Texas for visiting colleges and the Robotics World Championships!

Unfortunately, this was not the simple task I thought it was. I ran into a linking error I’ve never heard of before preventing my code from interacting with Google Sheets. In order to read from Sheets to equalize my sample group, I had to learn new syntax for making a Google App Script. Additionally, to link Forms together, I needed to learn a lot about console logs and entry IDs.

Here’s what went down:

Google has an anti-bot measure of some sort preventing websites like GitHub from directly accessing systems like Google Sheets. Working around this requires an App Script, which acts as your Google account, running code to perform actions mimicking your account’s credentials. I’m not sure if it’s something to do with being the Sheet’s creator or not, but it works.

I also had to figure out quite a bit more about Google Forms formatting, as I realized I needed sections to actually remember my randomized shapes and questions (some shapes are much harder than others). I’ve been randomizing correct answers within a few difficulty groups by applying inversions and offsets to create incorrect options. Since the 1-5 options themselves wouldn’t be the most useful, I had to research the proper formatting for Short Answers.

I’ve sent my form for posting after finalizing it on Thursday, so now I’m just awaiting results. Through further exploration reading of my sources, I might try adding a few features for our upcoming final Symposium showcase.

For now though, please click the link and give me data, it’s just 10-15 minutes!

Thanks for reading, and see you all next week!