Week Zero Wrap-Up

This past sunday Team 3313 Mechatronics Once again met at Jefferson High School early in the morning to head to a Week-zero Invitational put on by: Blaze Robotics, Blue Twilight, RoboEagles, and the Blitz Team.

A video recap is below.



We met this time at around 7 AM (a lot better compared to our regular 5 AM schedule). It's amazing what two more hours of sleep can do to the life of a trip. The whole team's energy level was much better throughout the day! For this trip, we did not have as much storage space. We just used the trunks of our vehicles to transport everything. It was a tight squeeze but we made it work. Also, the sprinter van was having heater problems so Kacy had to scrap the inside windshield. It was funny!

We arrived at Jefferson High School in Bloomington and set up our pit. We had a little bit of time before organized games started so we thought why not help set up the Field Management System?















When we got up to the actual organized games our wireless connection seemed to have a kink in it. so we sat there for the first round. But then again, if it's week zero you'd expect these things to happen. We ended up just using the normal wireless connection the rest of the day.

For the next couple of matches we punted ball after countless ball and scored points beyond belief. In one of the matches, us and two other teams achieved the maximum score on a ball. The starting robot got the ball in the red zone passed it to the robot in the white zone, then this robot punted it over the trust and we caught it, turned around, and shot. It was awesome.

After many matches and our spirits were through the roof when we all of a sudden heard a loud CRACK. It turns out that we had accidentally dry fired our robot (shot with no ball). The hammer had so much force that it cracked the metal support in two. We needed to make a quick fix with the thriftiness of the materials at hand. Luckily, we were able to fashion a repair with two pieces of metal. We got the ok from the judges that it was safe and we were right out on the field doing just as well as we were before.

We're glad that we were able to get so many practice rounds in. It will definitely make us better before we compete at Duluth and the Twin Cities. Another highlight was dancing to the music and talking with so many other teams.

There was also an FTC scrimmage going on up the stairs at the event. The robots there were so good! Teams have definitely improved since our FTC team competed in November. We wish we would have brought our robot and team along too!

We stopped for dinner in Maple Grove and got back home to finish build season.