Ready. Aim. FIRE!

 

 Two new YouTube videos!

We finished the entire shooting and gathering system today. What a major accomplishment for the team (one week early!) and a real testament to how hard and dedicated each and every team member is. We also made major progress on the mascot, our practice bot, Kinect programming, and the halftime show which is on Friday night.

The team is really rounding into shape. Bydlon and other team members have started making daily assignments for people to work on which has GREATLY increased the team's productivity. Jenna's list is always the longest (oops) while Ryan's is typically the most tedious (sorry...). Jenna's main job today was advertising the halftime show for Friday night's basketball game. She emailed tv stations, newspapers, and radio stations a press release talking about the show. She also sent in a different article to the Echo Press. Jenna recruited one of her friends to help. They started working on posters to put up around school. They also continued working on the music mash-up for the halftime show.

Tyler worked on the bumpers. Yesterday, he got all the bumpers on except the back one. Today he completed that one. The back one took longer because he had to cut out a 10" section for the basketballs to enter into our conveyer system. They look great! Tyler spent the entire afternoon making sure they were the correct size and matched up.

Molly worked on the practice bot some more. She got all of the wheels correctly spaced out and mounted the great boxes. Electrical work starts tomorrow.

Bryce's big job for today was finishing the horn (it got messed up after putting on the bumpers). Jordan helped him finish this project. They made a new angle piece and attached it. It looks and works great! Bryce's other project was making the logo on the front of the robot. He around the logo using tape and then spray painted the rest so only the logo glows. IT LOOKS AWESOME!

Jesse, Steph, and Kacy continued working on the mascot. Bydlon bought them suspenders to hold up the chest piece so it did not rest on Jesse's shoulders. They spent a large about of time thinking about cod pieces (hilarious moment of the day). They also attached the low part of the upper body, made the arms, and started designing the legs.

Colin, Megan, and Gabe programmed in Kinect. They found the FRC LabView examples and used those to program in motion driving. The beginning of the game can use the Kinect and it will be awesome to tell our teammates that we can do it if they want us. 

The biggest advancement of the day (how does that seem possible after everything already talked about?) was on the conveyer and shooter. Demian made all of the plates to hold the bearings in. This took all afternoon and work and look amazing. Tedious but necessary work by Demian. Ryan took the plates and attached them to the conveyer. He also epoxyed the top bearing into the PVC pipe. So the conveyer was finally, totally, complete! Ryan moved on to mounting the shooter and angle adjuster. He had to cut down the sides of the shooter and then mount the screw, swivel piece, and hinge. Bydlon and Ryan ended up staying until 10:30pm. Weird Valentine's Day plans but a lot was accomplished.

All this work results in us being able to practice starting tomorrow!!! WOW!