Bydlon Beard Off

The Bydlon Beard Off happened today. Check out the recap video here and the full picture gallery here.

Our head coach, Mr. Bydlon, shaved his beard into mutton chops. During lunch all week, we raised $300 from student and staff donations. When people donated, they put money into different beard design boxes. Mutton chops got the most money so that is what he did. It was a super fun day. Our local newspaper brought a photographer, team members took pictures and video, and the crowd was HUGE.

Thank you so much to the Jefferson High School community for it's support of our team. It means a lot to all of the team members.

Murphy 3.0

Some of the team members met today to work on a few different projects. You can see video of Murphy 3.0 here.

Bryce and the build team worked on upgrading Murphy for the 3rd and, most likely, final time. The upgrades came about after going to the Pack Expo and seeing designs we liked. It also came about because of the shooter wheel change we made at the Pack Expo. We changed the drive train again. This time we went SUPER SIMPLE. Just gear boxes chained very short to plaction wheels on the front. Omni wheels are in the back. That's it. The CIM motors were reduced to 3 (left wheel, right wheel, shooter wheel). The pneumatics were hooked up again. The programming was fixed so it all worked together. The conveyer was put back on a victor. Basically, we simplified everything and made it much cleaner.

Alicia, David, Carson, and others got stuff ready for the Bydlon Beard Off. David did an awesome job and made signs for each beard design. Carson got boxes for money. Alicia and David made a GREAT poster for the table we'll have set up at lunch.

Brandon worked on learning about AutoDesk. Bydlon emailed Solidworks to see if our team could get some copies.

The best part of the day was driving Murphy to the commons area and filming it. It drives SO NICE. Can't wait to use it the Minne-Regional on November 17!!

Packing for the Pack Expo

The team met again today. Our main goals for today were getting the tool boxes ready for our trip to Chicago, getting Murphy also set to travel, and working on some press items.

Bryce, Brandon, Tyler, and Bydlon are taking a very short trip to the Pack Expo in Chicago on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The Pack Expo is a very large convention at McCormick Place for packing manufacturing companies. Alexandria, MN has a wealth of packing machine manufacturing companies (including the PMMC, one of our biggest local sponsors). Due to their generosity, those 4 team members are being provided a van, gas money, hotel rooms, and a presentation booth for Monday. We are SO EXCITED to be able to share the values of FIRST, the evolution of our team, and the fantastic sponsors we have with the over 100,000 attendees of the Pack Expo.

In preparation for this awesome event, we did a lot of work today. Bydlon picked up the van from Massman (THANK YOU!) that will be driven down. Demian and Alex mounted a cylinder on Murphy just so we could demonstrate our ability to use pneumatics. Miranda and Alicia rewired some of the shooter and conveyor components so we had more shooter power. This was a big process because spike relays are really annoying and hard to get to work. We ended up using a Jag instead. Bryce did a total makeover organization of the toolbox so we bring the right amount of tools and supplies if (when) something goes wrong. Brandon helped with that and continued thinking about a bridge lowerer. Allen tested all the code and made sure we were all set to go at Pack Expo. He also uploaded the next Java Tutorial. At the end of the day, Brandon and Bryce took off the ears and shooter of Murphy so we can fit it into the van.

While all that robot work was going on, up in the computer lab, a lot of work was going on. Kacy worked on a press release about our fundraising experiences last Saturday. Carson made a new banner for this website using our new color scheme and revised logo. It looks great! Taylor and Hadley worked on thank you cards for Elden's and 3M. Tyler started working on making plans for a wooden practice field. This is a HUGE project that will take us all of November to complete.

So it was a big day for the team preparing and working but A LOT was accomplished. Great work! Pack Expo will be so much fun!

Keep your eyes on our Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and this blog for updates from Chicago!!

Goofing Off

Some of the team members met today after school. We did not have a ton to do.

The build team took off the back chains and tried moving around our crazy wheel arrangement. It didn't really help but at least we tried.

Allen from the programming team started making Java tutorials. You can view the first one here and the second video here.

Gabe worked on a script for the Chairman's Award. We made a presentation for our trip to Massman Automation Designs.

Everyone who was at the meeting went up into the computer at some point. We made a Gmail Chat and goofed off in there. Eventually, Gabe and Allen worked together to make this happen. Please click that link and laugh. That's our head coach's face repeated. So funny.

Sometimes it's good to just have a pseudo day off. We worked hard on Saturday at fundraisers and have a presentation on Tuesday.

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.

Air Power

The team met for the second straight day. It seemed that there wasn't much to do initially. Partly because no daily agenda was made. The reason for that was the Facebook group was very busy Wednesday night. Anyway, it seemed there wasn't much to do but we ended up accomplishing a lot!

The big accomplishment down in the shop was that we got pneumatics to work with the Java programming! You can see video here. It was a big moment. That moment started with Demian, Molly, and Hadley mounting the air compressor and air tank on Rover. Meanwhile, Alicia, Vincent, and Bydlon switched out the routers on the robots so that Murphy will have the regulation one. Brandon put down the pencil and paper got to work just throwing some pneumatics together. We hooked up all the wires and tubing just to try it out. Allen set up the programming. AND IT WORKED! Pneumatics are incredibly useful but we have never had the time or ability to make it all work. Luckily, all the lessons we have learned in the past helped put it all together today. FIRST Robotics is really awesome for days like today.


While we were blowing air in the shop, up in the computer lab some more work was being done. Kacy proofread through the website bios that Gabe created yesterday. She also started working on a power point presentation for our trip to Discovery Middle School on Tuesday morning. Carson made a more informational poster for the Bydlon Beard Off which is happening at the beginning of November. He also updated the team logo. It looks so awesome now. He made it symmetrical and changed the color to more of a darker blue. Love it.

Great day for the team. Adding pneumatics to our tool box of abilities is a HUGE assest. That cannot be overstated. Also, continuing the PR and logo work is really helpful for our team image. Fun day!!

Nothing Can Ever Be Easy...

Today was the homecoming parade, the event we had prepared for all week. The weather was beautiful (maybe a little cold), the float was ready, the team was enthusiastic. Check out this YouTube link for video. More photos are on our facebook. Everything was shaping up for a great parade. Then Murphy's Law struck...

For those who don't know, Murphy's Law says that anything that can go wrong, will. For whatever reason, our team has things go wrong at the last minute all the time. No matter how much we prepare, how much we plan, how hard we work, something always go wrong. Today that problem was the truck. Everyone arrived at JHS on time and we loaded up the trailer and cars to go to the beginning of the parade. We were all set to wow the crowd. The parade started and then the truck wouldn't shift into drive... UGH! We tried everything we could but it just wouldn't shift. That's when all the floats started leaving. We were freaking out. 

Luckily, the people of Alexandria are incredibly nice. Someone loaned us a truck for the parade. I didn't catch his name but he is the most awesome person ever. It would have been TERRIBLE to work that hard and then not use our awesome float. But good things happen to good people, and we finally got into the parade at the very nick of time. By very nick of time, I mean that we were the last float. 

They definitely saved the best for last though. Our float looked great. The tissue paper and streamers really popped out on the street. The flag was beautiful. The robots were showcased. Good planning leads to good execution (except the truck, oops).

Bryce was in the Mechatron suit and he did an amazing job getting the crowd hyped up. He bumped fists with a ton of little kids. Taylor and Carson passed out half sheet pieces of paper with all of our contact information. Alicia and Kacy handed out candy to the happy kids. Bydlon drove the truck and danced to Queen which we had blasting out of a stereo in the back of the truck. Brandon, Allen, Dalton, and Luke took care of pushed and operating Murphy, our basketball robot. Molly drove Rover on the trailer. 

It was a team effort to make the parade such a success. Everyone working together and doing their jobs made it so much fun. The smiles and "oohs" and "ahhs" from the crowd made all the stress and work worth it. BIG THANK YOU to Jody and Chad Niesen for borrowing us the trailer and donating to our team. Team 3313 really does enjoy presenting to the public and making everyone aware of how cool Robotics is. Great work team!

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!

Perfect Parade Preparation

The team spent the entire meeting time today working on different aspects of the Homecoming Parade which happens on SATURDAY at NOON in Alexandria. Be sure to come out and see our float and robots!

The team started the meeting in Bydlon's room. We assigned jobs for the parade which is really good. Everyone has a job and knows what that job is. We will meet at the back of JHS on Saturday at 11am to load up the trailer.

Taylor, Alicia, Kacy, and Carson all went out and about to get decorations for the trailer. They visited a bunch of different stores to compare prices and find the exact decorations we need. They got streamers for the bottom of the trailer, tissue paper to decorate the chicken wire which will go on the sides, and duct tape to attach different other things.

Brandon and Bryce worked on getting Murphy (our basketball shooting robot) in working condition. They did some tune ups and made everything secure. Bydlon uploaded the code to the cRio so Murphy is all set to go for Saturday! We will be shooting basketballs the entire parade route.

Allen and Dalton continued working on fixing the bugs in the Rover code. They are rewriting the code in Java  which is a new language for the team but old hat for them. It was really awesome seeing them work together to fix everything and get Rover going. It works just like it used to (or better even). Really great job by those two. Next up, rewriting the Murphy code.

Eddie, Molly, and Tyler worked on getting the uneven, bad lifts off the robot cart. They made the cart drive weird. We are going to push the cart the entire parade route so we need the cart in top condition. The three of them did a great job.

Gabe wrote up a half sheet of information for people to hand out along the route. It lists some small details of the competition and all of our team contact information.

We will also meet Thursday and Friday after school to continue getting ready for the parade. It will be super fun! and we are soooo excited to continue spreading our community involvement!!

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. 

Finally

After a whirlwind past couple days doing last minute preparations, the day was finally here when 3313 could go down to the Twin Cities for our Regional, 10,000 Lakes at Williams Arena. Everyone signed and filled out permission forms and FIRST Consent and Release Forms. We printed the Business Plan, other Judge Handouts, and social media information.

Ryan's dad, Kevin, dropped off the trailer right after school and the team furiously packed it up. We also loaded up the two Sprinter Vans. Bydlon drove one and Mr. Nelson was awesome enough to drive the other down for the team. After spending the past two days packing and organizing and arranging, the actual loading of the robot was fairly simple. Everything had a place and everything was in that place. The drive down was uneventful except there was lots of singing along in Bydlon's van.

We got to Williams Arena and unloaded all of our things. However, the team had a panic attack that we left our safety glasses at the shop or lost them because we could not find them. Turns out, they were in Mr. Nelson's van which had to park somewhere else and wait because the robot unloading area is very small. Otherwise, unloading all of our stuff was uneventful.

We proceeded to our hotel, Best Western Plus in Bloomington. The team checked in and got settled then headed over to the Mall of America which is right across the street. Everyone got their assorted food choices. After that, people split up in small groups to go to the hotel hot tub, walk around Best Buy, go to the Microsoft store and other random places. By the end of the night, most people were hanging out and playing Rock Band or sleeping.

BIG DAY TOMORROW! We have to set up our pit, then replace the wheels and put our new fancy wheels on. The rest of the day will be spent anxiously awaiting and sitting through inspection (scary) and testing our robot and practicing.

Scouting Ahead

At one of the team's first meetings of the year, we all came together and decided on season goals. The big question: What did we want to accomplish this year? Some answers included:

• Make it to the elimination rounds of our Regional Competition(s)
• Go to two Regionals (Lake Superior and 10K Lakes)
• Recruit more team members (Have at least 15 people on the team)
• Expand our community awareness
• Compete in various awards (Entrepreneurship, Website, etc.)

We have worked really hard for almost 5 months straight now to complete all of those goals. Unfortunately, we did not fund-raise enough money to attend both the Lake Superior and 10K Lakes Regionals. It costs $5000 to register for one and an additional $4000 to attend another. We did not want to miss out on the opportunity to scout and research however. So the team attended the Lake Superior Regional as spectators. 

March-ing Along

Apologies for the lack of posts the past week. After six and a half weeks of INTENSE drilling, thinking, cutting, designing, and worrying, the team needed some time to catch back up. Quite a few developments from last week. The main ones being on our practice robot, Beckham (it will be able to play soccer), the flag, and the banner.

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.