Light as Air

The team met today to work on some random projects. The most exciting development was that we put the camera on Murphy and drove it around. You can check out the video here.

Build Team worked on putting pneumatics onto Murphy. After getting pneumatics to work on Rover, we transferred them over to Murphy so we can use them to lower the bridge. Pneumatics is just like hydraulics but with air as the fluid.

We also sent out an email for the Fargo Kickoff. We will host and set up some workshops after the Kickoff.

Allen taught Bydlon and Bryce some basic Java programming ideas.

The rest of the day was spent playing around with weird picture techniques. Not a very productive day but Wednesday was super awesome so it was ok that we sort of took a day off. 

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.

Hunting and Gathering

*To see a bigger version of any picture on the right, just click on it.

Today was the first day of "officially" meeting. It was a really productive day. Right when the meeting started today, everyone gathered around the smart board in Bydlon's room and watched some more YouTube videos as a refresher for people at the Kick-Off and as new information for people who had not seen the game videos before. The energy in the room was extremely contagious. The team made some decisions on mechanisms to try and prototype. Build/Electrical teams split up to start on the shooter and gathering mechanisms.

Our shooting mechanism will be similar to a ball going up a vent but there will be a wheel spinning underneath the ball to provide the lift. We need more parts to continue working on it and that will start tomorrow (picture 1).

The big project for build/electrical was the gathering mechanism. The best way to see what we did is watch the first four videos posted on our YouTube page at this link. Basically, we have an alley on three sides. On the front side will be two motors and a set of belts that will propel the balls up from the floor to our shooter at the top. It is just a prototype at the moment and hopefully we will finish it. tomorrow.

Programming worked more on getting the Kinect to recognize and target each of the rectangular areas behind the hoops (picture 2). Justifiably so, they are itching for a test robot to work on. That will be the build/electrical team's priority at the end of this week.

PR team worked on numerous projects. They sent a summary of the Kick-Off to the Echo Press (local newspaper) to hopefully publish next week. They also worked on a grant from Pete's County Market for addition funding. The team also used their FIRST Choice credits to fill up our Kit of Parts. FRC does not want to give everything to every team because that's not cost effective. Instead, they give every team some things, then give you credits to go online and pick what other items you want. Really great idea. 

Have to say, it was our first official meeting day and we already had our first pizza and late work night. A group of people stayed until 9:30pm... Great start to build season!!

Our new robot design. Haha.

If you didn't see the link above, make sure you check out our YouTube feed which has new videos.

YouTube is Our Friend

Research

We went to the GO FIRST post kick-off event yesterday. During the presentation, they told us that the best way to design is five steps:

1. Make a requirement/objective list. We did this at the post kick-off. This is a list of what we need our robot to do and then what we want it to do. 
2. Do historical research. This is what we focused on today. 
3. Conceptualizing. This is what we will focus on tomorrow. Each team member will use the information we learned today and then create a design.
4. Critical Design Review. We take all the designs we created and then pick one or two that will like based on the R/O list we created at post kick-off.
5. Prototype. We build pieces of the final design(s) and make sure they work. 

Programming Team in Robot Room

This seems like a long process and it is. However, this part of the build season is probably more important than any other part. If we start building and some part of the robot just CANNOT work, then we are out a lot of time and effort. It is much better to focus on getting it right first, then building it.

So, like the title says, today was spent looking up previous games and robots that worked really well at those games on YouTube.

• 2001 had a speed bump sort of thing and a bridge so we looked at robots that could go over the bump and how robots got the bridge to come down. 
• 2006 had a shooting game but the hole was vertical and 30" as opposed to our 18" wide horizontal basketball hoops. Still some good shooter designs.
• 2009 had ball collection from the ground, storing of balls and then dispensing them. The big difference here is that we can only 3 balls, in 2009 there was no limit. 

While the electrical and mechanical teams were working on YouTube, the programming team started setting up the programming. Apparently, if we actually had a robot to drive, the programming is all done for driving. That's awesome.They also started setting up the Kinect to be our eyes on the field.

Colin says "Hi"

Last but not least, the PR team focused on the Kit of Parts. They got it all out, inventoried it and then organized it back in the robot room. They also did more research on getting a video camera for the team to use. That way we can also post more videos on YouTube and create a video blog as well.

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!

Preparing For the Onslaught

The major theme of this past week was preparing for the Kick-Off event along with preparing ourselves and the robot room for the most awesome, crazy, stressful, rewarding 6 weeks of the school year (the build season).

On Wednesday, the team split up into sub teams. Everyone went to the media center and watched videos pertaining to their area (Publicity, Electrical, Mechanical, and Programming). The videos are Webinars from the MN FIRST Robotics Splash event. The event is put on by some of the more veteran teams in MN. Those teams presented extremely valuable information on all aspects of the FIRST experience and then posted the videos of their presentations on the MN FIRST website. Each of the sub-teams learned a lot and had some really good discussions. The collaboration within the sub teams was surprising (and awesome) since they had just formed. While that was going on, Jenna emailed all of the PMMC suppliers to try and get more funding.

Thursday and Friday were spent working on a bunch of different areas.

• The mechanical and electrical teams spent it working on disassembling the drive train and electrical board. We did not have any information on what this season's game was going to be so we wanted a fresh start. Also, we are going to make major changes to both systems. The electrical board is going to be completely redone. We ordered Victor motor controllers to replace our more unreliable Jaguar controllers.The Robot Room was also organized (for the umpteenth time) in preparation for Kick-Off.
• While that was going on, the programming team started working on taking apart the drive station so we can accommodate more joy sticks and switches. They also discussed ideas on how each person was going to work on the programming during the season.
• The publicity/public relations team worked on two big projects. They got the ball running on creating t-shirts. They went to Cowing Robards and presented our designs (THEY ARE GOING TO BE SO SWEET). We will know the final designs and order the shirts next week. When we get the final designs, they will be posted. Their other big project was organizing our trip down for the Kick-Off on Saturday. We had some travel arrangement snafus. Also, every team member had to bring paperwork so that is always a hassle to get together. The team did a great job adjusting on the fly.

KICK-OFF IS TOMORROW!!!! This is the equivalent to Christmas Eve for FIRST Robotics Teams.

Team Forming

Yesterday the team met for the first time after Holiday Break. The main reason for meeting was to establish a organized team structure. We broke into four idea-based mini teams: Programming, Electrical/Pneumatics, Mechanical/Build & Advertising/Public Relations. We have many more members than previous years which required us to distribute our man (and woman) power. Pre-season planning is in full swing and we are excited for the season kick-off on Saturday down at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.

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!!!!!!