We Want YOU To Be On Our Team

FIRST Robotics Team 3313 Mechatronics did some major recruiting today! We visited 3 different classes of 9th graders at Discovery Middle School. It was incredibly fun to share our work and talk about FIRST Robotics and STEM. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be a 3313 event without some problems.

Our first presentation was for Mrs. Kalina's Principles of Engineering class. We brought the robot in and was all set to go. Except a gear box had come apart during transit.... Ugh. So Bryce and Brandon started working on it while we did the power point presentation. It was Robotics In Action! Or something like that... The presentation still went really well. The students were interested throughout. We ended up gettting 14 names and email addresses! That's great!

The next presentation was in Mr. Holmen's PLTW class. This class does a lot of CAD work. We were going to drive Rover around during passing time and get some good video for Chairman's award. As usual, Murphy's Law happened. Yet another gear box came apart. Bryce and Brandon got to work fixing it while the rest of the group (Gabe, Allen, Molly, Kacy, and Bydlon) did the presentation. Again, the students were really interested and it went well. Bryce and Brandon are awesome and got the gear box working. However, a cable was broken so Rover had a limp (one motor didn't work). We made due the best we could and still had fun.

We have a meeting tomorrow after school. It will be really fun because we received a bunch of our Murphy upgrade parts. Can't wait to start shooting basketballs again!!

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!!

Lighting the Flame

This has been mentioned many times before but one of our team's main goals for the year was to expand the awareness and knowledge of our team in the community. We have been doing this in a variety of ways this year. We had a video game tournament, visited classrooms, visited local area clubs, presented to our sponsors, created many social network opportunities, and performed at a halftime show. We continued our efforts on Friday when we visited Discovery Middle School and Voyager Elementary School. Click "see more" below to read about how the day went.

Mid-December Update

Hello again!

Just thought we should type a little summary of the things we have been working on the past few weeks since our mini-regional competition.

• We had another meeitng with the PMMC on December 7. We presented the group with our proposed budget for the season. They generously decided to donate a large sum of money to the team. THANK YOU PMMC!!! We also updated them with all of our contact information (Twitter:@team3313, youtube: search team 3313, facebook: search team 3313, this blog page, and our gmail address team3313mechatronics@gmail.com). The last news we presented them with was a mentor profile for them to share with their companies.
 
• The main business we have been working on recently is community outreach. The past two days have been CRAZY busy with presentations. Yesterday, we went to a meeting of the Sertoma Club in Alexandria. We presented our robot and a little bit about our club. Some of the members even got to drive the robot!
• Our other big community outreach piece was going to Discovery Middle School and talking to the Engineering classes over there. We are welcoming in ninth graders this year so hopefully a few will join. It was a lot of fun showing off our base robot and just sharing what we and FIRST are all about.
• Our next BIG EVENT is a Modern Warfare 3 competition at Jefferson on December 22 starting at 10am. Should be really fun and a lot of advertising for our team.

We learn the new game and rules on JANUARY 7th!!! We are all super pumped. We will be attending the Kick-Off at the U of M Twin Cities. Only 23 days!!!!!!