Don't Worry, It's Just A Prototype

The title for this post is our team's motto so far this year. Whenever we're building anything and someone raises a concern, we jokingly say that line. Then we brainstorm ways to fix it. Today was another really awesome day for the team. So many things started and finished. So many laughs and positive energy. One of those days that makes FIRST Robotics awesome. Everybody was on their game as far as keeping busy but still having fun. Our projects included: mounting the electrical board, mounting the gatherer and shooter, finishing the bridge, starting the mascot helmet and beginning out team member profiles.

Remember to check YouTube for 4 (!!!!) new videos.


We finished the bridge!! That's two out of three game pieces completed. The only one left is the hoop aparatus. Brandon, Molly, Tyler, Connor, and some others really worked hard on getting the bridge done and it looks awesome. We put it through its paces by having some people walk and balance on it. Pretty soon (tomorrow) we will be able to drive our robot over it. We finished the other piece of the middle of the game field, the bump, on Monday. These two elements will be crucial for testing our design next week.

Another huge project for today was completely mounting the prototype robot. We finished the electrical board box by adding a bottom and a side. The box looks great already (go wire management and zip ties!!) but will look even more awesome when we make it out of lexan and put the red and blue LEDs in it. Our first step was putting the gear boxes back on the frame. Then, we mounted the electrical board and battery. Our last step was to mount the gatherer and shooter. Tyler had a great idea for mounting the gatherer and many others on the team helped out with this process. We finished by mounting the gate mechanism and testing it out. SO COOL WITH IT ALL TOGETHER! The feeling you get when a group has an idea and finally sees that idea in a real life way is impossible to describe. So proud of the team so far. This is MILES ahead of where we were last year. Still a lot to accomplish, however.

The PR team started working on the mascot. They first step is creating the helmet. Already looks pretty cool. Jesse and Bryce modeled the helmet throughout the afternoon. Hopefully, the helmet will be finished by tomorrow or Saturday. They also came up with a name for our mascot... Mechatron. PERFECT!

Megan, Jenna, and Allen came up with some questions to ask team members for youtube videos and member profiles for the blog. There are some really funny questions and the profiles should be entertaining. Check back some time in the next week or so for those.

We finished the day with a clean-up/dance party to LMFAO. Great times. 

Having a prototype together makes troubleshooting and brainstorming much easier in the coming weeks. Our big goal for tomorrow or Saturday is to drive the prototype and pick up a ball and shoot it all in one motion. This is ambitious but the team can definitely do it. Fantastic feeling leaving the robot room and seeing all the checks on our weekly goals.

It's Allllive!!

Braaaaaaaains

Another great day of work for Team 3313 Mechatronics. The team worked on a bunch of different projects including: brainstorming the connection of the gatherer and shooter, making the vertical electrical board, putting together the bridge, making the robot drive, and writing the business plan.

The biggest excitement of the day was that we FINALLY got our KitBot to drive. Hard to explain how exciting this development is. As our team tweeted, "I wonder if this is how Dr. Frankenstein felt." Getting the robot to drive was a big undertaking by the programming team (kudos to Colin and Megan) along with the electrical team (among them, Bryce, Spencer, and Jordan). Getting the robot to drive allows the programming team to test out how their code works and also leads the electrical team to fix problems like gear boxes not working or chains being too loose. One funny moment while trying to accomplish this was that we lost a key for a gear box (a very small piece of metal that allows the motor to connect to the sprocket which turns the wheel). The team walked around and dragged their feet like zombies to find it.

Vertical electrical board almost done

Once we got the robot to drive, we were able to take some of it apart. This may seem strange but some of the pieces from the KitBot need to go on our new vertical electrical board so we had to take those off once we knew they worked. Bryce and Bydlon ran power cables to all of the components on the board and all that is left for tomorrow is putting on the walls and running data cables. The layout is very compact and the team did a nice job of wire management (not a strong suit of Mechatronics in the past).

The other big project for today was putting together the bridge that we can practice on. Brandon and Tyler did an awesome job of getting started. All of the wood was cut last night but they still had to organize it and figure out where each piece fits. It should be finished tomorrow which will be a great asset to use once we have our actual robot together in a week or so.

Tyler and Brandon working on bridge

We started to think about how the shooter and gatherer will connect. We facilitated the brainstorming by shortening the shooter and gatherer so they actually fit together. We had to bring a couple parts over to Alex Tech to get shortened. Not much progress on this other than putting them on top of each other and staring at it. Still good to get started.

Lastly, Jenna kept up her work on the team Business Plan for the Entrepreneurship Award. Her perseverance on such an arduous and tedious piece is amazing.

More excitement tomorrow when we have a vertical electrical board and a bridge to stand on. Thank for reading!

Rebound Rumble

The wait is over!! It has been 4 months since our first robotics meeting of the year and we FINALLY learned what this year's game will be. It is called Rebound Rumble and, as you can guess, the game is based on basketball. More on that later...

In an unusual twist of fate, not much went wrong today. Our Kick-Off Event was at the U of M Twin Cities. Some of the team members met up at Perkins for breakfast together at 5 am. Everyone got to JHS by 6am and we left on time (!!!!!). Big shoutout to Allan's mom for driving a couple students down to the event. Really great of her to take the time to help out the team and allow everyone a chance to experience Kick-Off. THANK YOU! The drive down was uneventful. There was a little trouble finding a parking space for the behemoth of a Sprinter van (Bydlon told everyone that it was a tour of the U of M campus). Eventually we decided on using metered parking. The metered parking led to a funny story which included our team exchanging one dollar bills for stranger's quarters.

Mock up of Basketball Hoops

The team decided to attend the Post Kick-Off Event along with the video presentation so we watched the live stream with all of the teams participating in PoKo (picture 1 and 2). We live-tweeted the event so check out the side bar on this blog's main page or go to this link. The anticipation was incredible. The video was star-studded. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Stephen Colbert, and Will.I.Am all made an appearance. Each, in their own way, acknowledged all the great things FIRST Robotics does for students, mentors, communities and our US culture as a whole. Colbert especially was really funny. Best line of his was "I have experience in robotics too. My toaster and Roomba battled to the death. Needless to say, my Roomba is now in charge of making my toast." Other parts of the presentation talked about the major sponsors (JC Penney and Coca-Cola) and last year's Chairman's Award winner from Hawaii. Dean Kamen, the head honcho of this crazy business, also did his "State of FIRST Robotics" speech.

Mock up of Balance Boards

It took about an hour but eventually we got to the juicy details. As already stated, the game is called Rebound Rumble. You can check out the video here. It really is worth a watch. In case you didn't watch it or are confused, the two basic tasks each robot needs to complete are shooting mini basketballs into hoops and then balancing on a board either by themselves or with other robots. Each of these tasks are similar to previous years. Basketballs were used in 2006 and the balance boards were used in 2001. This will make research and designing much easier.

Collaboration!

Post Kick-Off was a rewarding experience. The team was able to start talking through the design process and received a printed out rule book and Encyclopedia Robotica. Thanks GO FIRST! Along the way, the team had a bunch of laughs and build more camaraderie (including a Sprinter van dance party). All in all, it was a great day.

OMG ROBOTS!