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.

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!!

Robotics Carnival

The team has been meeting up every day this week to prepare for our Robotics Community Night. There is a lot to prepare for it. Just to get the plug out of the way from the beginning...

Robotics Community Night hosted by Team 3313 Mechatronics on Monday, April 30 from 7-9pm in the Jefferson High School gym in Alexandria, MN. Check out this article in the local newspaper, the Echo Press, for more information.

The team decided to basically change the entire format of the Community Night. Our big goal for the event was to show off all that we accomplished to our community while still making it fun and interactive. This coincides with our team mission statement, "build a robot, excite students about STEM education, and have fun". Returning members of the team enjoyed Community Night last year but it was really more like a banquet and very adult oriented. We are aiming for a more "all ages" crowd with our event this year.

The format we switched to is basically a science fair or school carnival. Team members will be spread out in the JHS gym at different exhibit stations. Each station will have a different theme that the students will talk about. The stations will also have an interactive aspect to them as well. For example, the field/competition station will talk about Rebound Rumble and have a half court shot contest similar to what Tyler did at the end of each game. Another example is the station with Murphy. Visitors will have the chance to drive the robot but will also learn about how we built it.

The team is really excited about the event and has been working hard to promote it. We have emailed countless community groups including: the City Council, School Board, sponsors, newspaper, tv, and radio. We also dropped off flyers at all of the places we have visited like schools and companies. We will continue our promotion by emailing schools tomorrow and writing announcements for our high school.

We want this event to be a fun learning experience for everyone that chooses to attend. If you're reading this and are from the Alexandria area, please plan to attend!

Ready. Aim. FIRE!

 

 Two new YouTube videos!

We finished the entire shooting and gathering system today. What a major accomplishment for the team (one week early!) and a real testament to how hard and dedicated each and every team member is. We also made major progress on the mascot, our practice bot, Kinect programming, and the halftime show which is on Friday night.

Conveying Our Excitement!

 WE GOT SO MUCH DONE TODAY! The day off on Sunday seemed to really invigorate the team. That or the fact that we only have one week left to finish...

 

Pictures Are Worth A Thousand Words

So much excitement to be had today! We finished the practice hoop set up. We refined the gatherer and shooter. We made a bunch of baskets. We totally finished the mascot head. We built supports for the gatherer and electrical board. We got a story posted in the Echo Press Newspaper. Todd (Alex Tech professor) stopped by.  We finished the business plan draft. We got the camera to work. So super awesome. I'm too excited to type. I'll just post pictures instead. Click on any to see them bigger. Also remember to check out YouTube for videos from today.

Moustachioed.

SO AWESOME!

MAKING BASKETS!

We have a messy robot room...

Like A Boss

The title is a quote by Bryce about the gatherer prototype we built. For those who don't know, that quote means "it's awesome."

The beginning of today was spent taking our team picture for the yearbook. Luckily, a lot of the team was there to be in the picture. Most of today was spent doing more brainstorming while we finished the gatherer prototype. The gatherer will be able to pick balls up off the ground and bring them up to some kind of hopper which will then dispense them into our shooter. That's the idea any way... To finish the prototype, we drilled the rest of the holes so we could get the wooden dowels in. We also added a belt to make sure it all worked. There's a video of it up above. The video is also on our YouTube Channel which has a link at the top of this blog.

The brainstorming we were doing while working had a bunch of different tangents.

• How do we get our robot over the 4" bump in the middle of the field? Lots of ideas were thrown out: tank treads, some kind of ramp in front of wheels, bigger wheels, more wheels, hovercraft (just kidding).
• What kind of shooter to use? Spring catapult, pneumatic catapult, one wheel shooter. 
• What should the hopper look like? Vertical, ramp, do we need one.
• Do we need a gate in front of the gatherer? What should that look like?

While we didn't come up with many answers, just talking through the problems and throwing out ideas is an invaluable experience. Luckily, Bryce's brother-in-law, Jimmy was able to help us out today. Chandler, a student from Alex Tech, also came over to help. It is great to have their expertise available to the team.

Tyler started working on making the schematics for a trial bump and bridge to test our future robot on.

The PR team worked on getting the Echo Press article all set up. They also sent an email to the PMMC (one of our major sponsors, check our sponsors page!) thanking them again for their support and updating them on our progress. The big PR development is that we are going to get our t-shirts ordered. They are going to look so awesome!!! There is a big surprise for the shirts which is going to be amazing. The team is super pumped.

In general, the team is having a little bit of growing pains. There are more students than in the past which is a GREAT thing. It just makes getting organized and keeping everyone on task a little more difficult. Not impossible, just more difficult. This will come together though. Overall, yet another great day with lots of progress. We already have some good plans for tomorrow. We'll leave you with this picture of Bryce and Bydlon.