Working for Tomorrow

It's kind of hard to believe it's only the third official day of the build season. It feels like it was a loooong time ago that we learned what this season's game was (turns out it was just five days ago). As mentioned at the end of yesterday's post, the team is still experiencing growing pains. We are working hard to fix them however. The team set up an account at Menard's so it will be MUCH easier to access parts to keep building in the future. Thanks goes out to Connie Nelson, Mr. D., and Laurie Cook for setting that up for us. That was one of the major issues of today and last year. We had a lot of ideas but it was hard to get parts.

In general, most of the things we worked on today will be finished tomorrow. That makes today a little unsatisfying but tomorrow will be awesome. 

Tyler did a great job getting everything ready to start making the bump and bridge set up. Hopefully our account will be ready tomorrow and we will be able to get the materials. This will be very crucial once we start building our actual robot. Testing the robot driving over the bump and balancing on the bridge will be very important.

The build and electrical team worked on two separate projects. The first project was starting on a shooter prototype. The shooter we are envisioning will be a wheel spinning on a CIM motor. The ball will pass through an alley similar to the gatherer prototype we built yesterday. The wheel will be spinning at a high speed and push the ball out. Hopefully we will have video of it tomorrow. Brandon (picture 1) and Chandler worked hard on setting it up. Bryce worked on it a little more later on. Jimmy gave us a bunch of pointers which is awesome.

The other big project for the team today was getting a KitBot built so that the programming team has something to test on. A KitBot just means taking the materials given to us in the Kit of Parts and making a test robot out of it. It also helps us get a better visual clue on where our gatherer and shooter will go and how our bot will drive. Much easier to envision these things on an actual bot instead of in our heads. Bryce started by getting together the electrical board (picture 2). We are trying a new drive system this year, tank drive (picture 3). The only thing left on this project is mounting the motors (picture 4). Colin fought through illness to get the drive computer all set up (Go Colin!). Bryce, Spencer, Chandler, and Allen worked on the KitBot.

Tomorrow we have a lot of things to work on and will be able to get the materials for them too. A bunch of YouTube videos (hopefully) will be posted. Thanks for reading!

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.