Many Hands For Lots Of Work

In all honesty, after presenting to the 9th graders yesterday, we expected to have maybe 2 or 3 show up today or in the future. It's a big time commitment and kind of scary to show up to a new thing. Boy, were we wrong. We had 6 show up!! WOAH! That's great! We needed all the help too. Soooo much going today.

The two main priorities for today for the Build Team were getting Murphy driving again and shooting a basketball. Both of these items were possible because we received our new parts from AndyMark (the main robot part distributor). With all of the people hanging out, the work went pretty fast and we got A TON accomplished. It was kind of incredible to watch actually.

The work started with Brandon and Tyler tackling the gearboxes for the drive train. Let's be honest, gearboxes are not the most fun thing to deal with. They require a lot of precision, the parts are really small and have to be put together in a very specific order. However, Brandon and Tyler got them put together and mounted on the robot in a pretty short amount of time. Unfortunately, we had a bunch of other stuff we were working on so we couldn't test the drive train right away.

The other big goal of the Build Team was to shoot a basketball. We wanted to switch out a CIM motor on the shooter for some smaller motors so we could use that CIM in our drive train. Luckily, mounting the new small motors was not that much of a problem. First, Bryce marked the new mounting holes on the wheel mount. Molly brought it over to Alex Tech and got them machined out. Then Bryce mounted the gear box and put it on the robot.

Another thing we are working on for Build Team was mounting the pneumatics components. Pneumatics is using air pressure to move pistons. Demian and David worked on mounting the compressor. It was a process because we had to get mounts made, then putting the mounts on and everything was a paint in the butt. Lots of putting things together and then taking them apart. But that's ok! It looks great and is extremely stable.

Programming team spent a lot of time today just kind of waiting for those upgrades to get finished. Once Murphy was up and driving, there was some time spent debugging and working on different small projects. Like getting the SMART Dashboard up and running and working on the semi-autonomous.

Carson spent pretty much all of today working on a poster for the Massman Open House. One of our awesome sponsors, Massman, is a packaging machine manufacturer. They are opening up their shop to the public on October 23 and we will be a part of it. We will have our robots out and showing them off both to Massman employees and the public.

Kacy had driver's training so she showed up late but still got a lot done. She emailed out our Elden's Grocery Bagging Poster. She also started an email for our Kick-Off workshops. This is a brand new experience for the team so we want the organization to go well at the beginning.

Jesse and some of the other team members made some fixes to the mascot. After all of our public appearances recently, Mechatron was a little worse for wear. Jesse and the others also started coming up with some ideas for how to remake the legs of Mechatron.

Taylor worked on cleaning up more of the Robot Room. With all the activities we have been up to, it got a little messy. That is definitely a goal to have for the year: keep the Robot Room clean and organized more.

Gabe showed up a little bit later. He partnered up with Jesse and started talking and working on some more Chairman's Award activities. They discussed a general layout for the video and some ideas about how to start shooting. They also watched some more examples on YouTube.

After getting everything put together, we tested out driving Murphy and shooting basketballs. It all worked!!! Yay! It was really fun to see Murphy moving around and picking up basketballs again. So proud of all the work and upgrades we have done so far.

There was crazy energy today because of all the newbies and pretty much everyone being in attendance. It was AWESOME!

After working so hard, some of the team members used a 12 sided die to decide where to eat dinner. THen played Rock Band for a while. What a great day.

All Of The Lights

The team met on a Wednesday today which was a slightly different routine than the past few weeks. The energy was really great from everyone as we met in Bydlon's room right after school. The team discussed upcoming important dates and the activities we would be working on.

The build team mostly worked on Murphy's electrical set up. The Victor stands and most of the big components had already been put down. The main thing left was wiring it all up. Alicia and Miranda were a huge help in this regard. Alicia did almost all of the wiring herself (with help from Bryce and Bydlon). The tricky parts were WAY less tricky with all of the room we allowed ourselves. It was no nice to be able to see where we were putting wires and keep all organized from the beginning. All of the victors spinning with their wire tags was pretty cool. The whole system looks great. The team decided to have the conveyor lights stay blue and the logo lights stay red. It looks awesome together!

Other work in the shop included Brandon with pneumatics, Molly gets some parts made over at Alex Tech, and the programmers doing their thing. Brandon continued tinkering and thinking about pneumatics. He worked on some formulas and math to figure out where to place pistons for a potential bridge lowerer. Molly, Demian, and Miranda ran over to Alex Tech to get some parts made for the battery holder at the front of the robot. It works exactly as we envisioned. The programmers (Dan, Luke, Dalton, and Allen) continued to messing with vision processing. They got the computer to pick up a red rectangle once which was exciting!

Up in the computer lab, Gabe started typing up little paragraphs about each team member. This will be better and easier than the team member video interviews we did last year. Also, if there are team member shake-ups, these are incredibly easy to replace, add to, and change. Carson worked on creating a poster for out Grocery Bagging Fundraiser on Saturday, October 20. It looks fantastic! Kacy wrote a few emails to ninth grade teachers asking if we could come into their class and present. She also got a lesson on how to use this website.

Overall, it was a great day for the team. Seeing Murphy glowing again (if only for a little bit) was a promising and reassuring sight. We are making great strides forward and meet again tomorrow!

Electrifying Results

The team worked on lots of different projects today. Bryce, Bydlon, and Miranda worked on Murphy's electrical board. Brandon and Tyler worked on Rover's pneumatics. Carson created more posters. Taylor worked on apparel. Kacy researched more PR activities. Allen and Dalton worked on image processing for the camera. Our overriding goal for October and November is to get everyone (especially new people) around to each different mini-team so they can make an informed decision about what they would like to do.

Bryce, Bydlon, and Miranda worked on the Electrical Board on Murphy. When we originally designed the electrical board, we decided to do a "stack" which turned out to be a really poor decision. It left us no room to work and was always a complete mess. But you learn from your mistakes, and this time we are making a really wide open, spread out electrical board. We made a stand for the cRio near the back of the robot, next to the conveyor. The victors were put on stands above the wheels to side of where the original electrical board was. Miranda, Molly, and Hadley went to Alex Tech to make the stands for the victors and cRio which was a huge help. We twisted the wires for the Victor fans which looks really cool and clean. Now, the only items in the actually middle of the robot are the Power Board and Digital Side Car. It looks much cleaner. All that's left to finish it is wiring all the victors up, mounting the router, and the battery. Then we're done! We should finish by next week.

Brandon and our college mentor, Tyler, worked on pneumatics. Pneumatics is using air pressure to control cylinders. Our team does not have a ton of experience in this area so having a mentor like Tyler around to help is a really great thing. Our plan is to put pneumatics on Rover for the time being. We just want to give everyone experience with programming, wiring up, and mounting pneumatics equipment. Brandon and Tyler got an idea on what to do the next steps are turning that idea in a reality.

Up in the computer lab by the shop, lots of activity was happening. Kacy made task lists for everyone so they knew what they needed to accomplish. She also looked through some presentations by other teams. Taylor researched some new "swag" items or apparel for the team. During the Regional, teams pass out items to other teams to advertise. We could also use the swag items to advertise in our community as well. Carson made another really nice poster for the Bydlon Beard Off, our team fundraiser in November. Gabe watched a bunch of Chairman's Award videos and took notes on what he liked and didn't like from each video. He also made a list of shots and other things he will need to do.

Allen and Dalton worked on the vision processing component of the programming. Eventually, we want our robot to automatically adjust depending on how far away it is from the hoops. They can do this with our camera and Java programming. They also worked on Kinect programming as well.

Fair Play

As usual with our team, we never have just one event in a day. It has to be two or three... The team always stands up to all the excitement though and provides a great experience at each event. The team presented at the Club Fair, visited our big sponsor group, the PMMC, and had a team meeting.

The Club Fair at Jefferson High School is a nice place to show off the work we do and recruit new members. It was nice that so many of the current team members were so eager to help out and hang out at the table. We had Rover out and about driving around. Potential recruits were able to drive the robot and talk to current members about the work we do, how often we meet, and how awesome we are. We got around 10 potential names and contact information which is a good start.

The PMMC meeting went well. First, the team talked about the Homecoming Parade. Most of the rest of the meeting was spent discussing the team budget and fundraising opportunities for the rest of the year. One of our biggest events coming up is an Open House at Massman, LLC who is part of the PMMC. We are looking forward tomeeting potential mentors and showing off all of our hard work.

Lastly, the team met up after school to continue our off season work. Kacy and her crew worked on purchase orders for new parts, posters for the Bydlon Beard Off, and emails to prospective new sponsors. Bryce and his team worked on the electrical board for Murphy. Molly got some parts made over at Alex Tech. Allen and his "students" spent their time continuing to learn Java while also programming Kinect. Finally, the team reminisced about memories from last year.

Bydlon... well he was weird like always.

Float-ing On Air

Today was, yet again, spent preparing for the Homecoming Parade. The parade is Saturday at Noon on Broadway in Alexandria, MN. Come check it out!! The team accomplished so much today!! Wow! Click on any picture to see a large version.

As usual, the team met in Bydlon's room to begin. We discussed our ideas for a West Central MN FRC Get Together. We would like to host many of our other regional teams to gain more knowledge and make some bonds with teams close by. Then everyone learned their jobs for the day.

Molly and Bryce went to Menard's to buy plywood for the "stage" on our float. Rover will be on the float with Molly and we want everyone to see Rover so we made a stage out of chip board and palettes. Brandon and Bryce worked on making the whole stage. It looks great! Molly and Bryce also picked up some steel rod to make a harness for our drive station. Molly took it over to Alex Tech and they made the steel rods into mounting brackets. Look Ma, NO HANDS!

Allen was alone today programming but made a TON of progress. Gabe brought in an XBox controller for Allen to start programming with. It will replace the joysticks we have used in the past. Allen also worked on the programming for Murphy (Rover programming is complete in JAVA). He got the drive train working and the fly wheel. Spike relays were causing problems so Bydlon switched the conveyor into a Victor controller. And it worked! Allen even got the fly wheel and conveyor speed to be adjustable. WOW! Great job Allen!

Kacy, Alicia, Taylor, Gabe, Vincent, and Carson worked insanely hard on getting the trailer transformed into a float for the parade. THEY DID SUCH AN AWESOME JOB! It is incredibly tedious work putting all the tissue paper into the chicken wire and streamers on the trailer. But they had a positive attitude and worked hard. Bydlon tried to help with the tissue paper but didn't do a very good job. Oops. The decorations look soooo good! All that's left is the other side of the trailer and we are done. Kacy worked on the back ramp part of the trailer. It looks great too!

Eddie and Jesse worked on making Rover all pretty. They hid the nasty wires that were cluttered all over the top of it. Black wire covers are awesome.

The team worked so hard today and did such a fantastic job. Our float is going to kick everyone else's float out of the water!

AAEDC Small Business Luncheon

During our monthly meetings with the PMMC (our awesome, main local sponsor), they threw out the idea of having our team be the star of a Area Small Business Luncheon. Of course, we jumped at the idea.

Bryce, Molly, Kacy, and Bydlon brought over all the Robotics Team promotional items to advertise the team. They each did a speech about what the does, what FIRST is, and how it has changed their lives. It was a great experience and even more community exposure (one of our main team goals). Plus, as an added bonus, the team raised quite a bit of money. Some pictures are included. 

The Wheels On The Robot Go Round And Round

The team met again after a long weekend away from each other. There was quite a bit of progress made on our practice bot (nicknamed Beckham because it will play soccer) and gearing up for Regionals. The big developments were with the drive train, the flag, the banner, and transportation.