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Just a few of the team members came today but actually led to quite a bit being accomplished. It was a good day.

First of all, Murphy programming upgrades occurred today. Alicia mounted the green LED light we bought and wired it up. Allen and Dalton, green LED light installed, finished the vision processing programming. They have it so, after pressing a button, Murphy automatically centers itself on a basketball hoop. IT IS SO COOL! Pretty great work by those two. There are still a few kinks to work out but overall, it will be really helpful during matches to not worry about that. The other programming upgrade is that we added autonomous. Funny moment: someone suggested we should add it in, Allen goes "Give me a minute". Literally a minute later, we had autonomous. Incredible. AND IT WORKS! WOOO!

Kacy and Miranda got to work on our Public Relations workshop for the Minne-Regional on Saturday. We volunteered ourselves to host a workshop on dealing with the public. It is a big deal for our team to get our name out there among other FRC teams as a major player. Over the weekend, Kacy and Bydlon worked on a general outline for the workshop. Today, Kacy worked on turning the outline into a slide show. Miranda worked on a booklet to hand out to teams when they attend the workshop. Both of them worked really hard. Carson also contributed by finishing our coloring book idea from last year. Each team in attendance will receive a "Mechatronics Coloring Book" as well. Should be a fun half hour or so!! (That's the plan anyway).

Bryce worked on numerous projects. Dalton, Bydlon, and Bryce got the robot weighed at UPS. It's only 110 lbs! WOOO! After adding pneumatics, we were all a little concerned about it being overweight. Luckily, it's not. Bryce also worked on getting extraneous pieces off of Murphy and switching some stuff around so it is optimized.

Kacy fixed some of the broken or beat up pieces on Mechatron, our mascot. After going to Chicago, Massman, lunches, and many other public appearances, it can look a little worse for wear. Kacy and the others have done a great job of keeping it looking great.

The rest of the day was spent by Bryce and Alicia practicing picking up balls and shooting baskets.

Tomorrow is another full team meeting. Lots more to accomplish!

Massman Automation Designs

Team 3313 Mechatronics went to Massman Automation Designs in Villard, MN today to do some presentations. We had two different presentation times, one in the morning and one in the evening.

Check out a video recap here.

In the morning, some of the team members met at the Robot Room when school started. We headed down to Massman to present to Minnewaska High School students that were touring. On Monday night, we brought down all the supplies so all we had to do on Tuesday was set them up. The presentation went ok. We did not know how much time we had to talk so that made the first presentation a little disjointed. We recovered for the second presentation however. The morning was a fun experience and Team 3313 welcomes the chance to excite other schools about STEM education and FIRST Robotics. It was a natural progression, talking about high school robotics and then all of the cool stuff Massman makes. The team members headed back to school for the afternoon.

After school was over, a bunch of team members headed back down to Massman for their Open House. Massman opened up its doors for the evening to community members, employee members, and our team. We had the same area set up. The team estimated that we presented to well over 200 people. It was a great experience. Just like the morning, the more presentations we did, the more comfortable we got and the better the experience was for everyone. The team members who came with did a great job of dividing up speaking responsibilities.

The highlight of the night though, was the tour of Massman Automation Designs. Basically, Massman manufactures assembly lines. The assembly lines they build often deal with food products being boxed up and packaged. We saw a line that takes ground turkey packages and boxes them. Then the machine puts the boxes on palates and shrink wraps the palates. It was awesome. Another machine takes 40 lb. blocks of cheese and puts them into packages. A microwave popcorn bag filler that was destined for the country of Hungary was also exciting. It can go up to 200 bags a minute!!! Woah! All the work, time, and care that goes into each machine was really impressive.

Massman is part of the PMMC, one of our major local sponsors. Obviously, we also appreciate the support Massman and the PMMC provide us. It was fun to finally get to see what they do and how it connects to our group. Can't wait to visit our other sponsors!!

Bagging Fun

The team spent all of today spreading the values of FIRST, raising money, talking about our team, and having fun (of course). We bagged groceries at Elden's Food Fair in Alexandria and worked at a Haunted Barn near Carlos, MN.

Make sure you check out the videos we made from this awesome day.
Bagging at Elden's
Haunted Barn Ad

The entire day was really fun. Obviously, the team sends a huge THANK YOU to Elden's for the opportunity to publicize our team and make some money. We lost count of all the people who gave us positive encouragement and donated to us. The Alexandria community is a fantastic collection of generous people and Team 3313 Mechatronics is really lucky to work in this area.

The Haunted Barn was fun too! Some of the team members dressed as monsters and scared people who walked through. Kacy especially was very creepy. Team 3313 is very happy to help out with the Haunted Barn. If you live in the Alexandria area, make sure you check it out at http://www.facebook.com/frightmarefarmhauntedbarn!

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!!

Nothing Can Ever Be Easy...

Today was the homecoming parade, the event we had prepared for all week. The weather was beautiful (maybe a little cold), the float was ready, the team was enthusiastic. Check out this YouTube link for video. More photos are on our facebook. Everything was shaping up for a great parade. Then Murphy's Law struck...

For those who don't know, Murphy's Law says that anything that can go wrong, will. For whatever reason, our team has things go wrong at the last minute all the time. No matter how much we prepare, how much we plan, how hard we work, something always go wrong. Today that problem was the truck. Everyone arrived at JHS on time and we loaded up the trailer and cars to go to the beginning of the parade. We were all set to wow the crowd. The parade started and then the truck wouldn't shift into drive... UGH! We tried everything we could but it just wouldn't shift. That's when all the floats started leaving. We were freaking out. 

Luckily, the people of Alexandria are incredibly nice. Someone loaned us a truck for the parade. I didn't catch his name but he is the most awesome person ever. It would have been TERRIBLE to work that hard and then not use our awesome float. But good things happen to good people, and we finally got into the parade at the very nick of time. By very nick of time, I mean that we were the last float. 

They definitely saved the best for last though. Our float looked great. The tissue paper and streamers really popped out on the street. The flag was beautiful. The robots were showcased. Good planning leads to good execution (except the truck, oops).

Bryce was in the Mechatron suit and he did an amazing job getting the crowd hyped up. He bumped fists with a ton of little kids. Taylor and Carson passed out half sheet pieces of paper with all of our contact information. Alicia and Kacy handed out candy to the happy kids. Bydlon drove the truck and danced to Queen which we had blasting out of a stereo in the back of the truck. Brandon, Allen, Dalton, and Luke took care of pushed and operating Murphy, our basketball robot. Molly drove Rover on the trailer. 

It was a team effort to make the parade such a success. Everyone working together and doing their jobs made it so much fun. The smiles and "oohs" and "ahhs" from the crowd made all the stress and work worth it. BIG THANK YOU to Jody and Chad Niesen for borrowing us the trailer and donating to our team. Team 3313 really does enjoy presenting to the public and making everyone aware of how cool Robotics is. Great work team!

March-ing Along

Apologies for the lack of posts the past week. After six and a half weeks of INTENSE drilling, thinking, cutting, designing, and worrying, the team needed some time to catch back up. Quite a few developments from last week. The main ones being on our practice robot, Beckham (it will be able to play soccer), the flag, and the banner.

Days Like These Are Awesome

Saturday was a GREAT day! The team was able to test their robot in a real environment, they got some awesome help, and they had a ton of fun! Especially after the trouble we had on Friday, Saturday meant a lot. Check out YouTube videos of our performance!

Nothing Ever Goes As Planned

Today was one of the busiest days that Team 3313 has ever had. We had the local TV station come in and video tape us, we performed a halftime show for the public, and we packed up for a competition (until 12:30am). All this after being at school working until about 11:30pm on Thursday night.

Final Push

Today was the FINAL PUSH before a lot of really exciting things happen this weekend:

• We are going to be visited by the local TV station tomorrow morning. 
• We are performing as the halftime show of the girls bball game tomorrow night. 
• We are going to a scrimmage on Saturday at Eagan High School. 
• Lastly, the robot has to be boxed up next Tuesday. 

SO! There were a lot of things to do today!

Too Excited to Type

OUR ROBOT WORKS! WOW! Check out YouTube (tab above or this link). I wish I was a better writer so I could describe the feeling of accomplishment and pride that the team members felt when they watched the robot shoot and make baskets. So much hard work and dedication went into it. All of the same goes for the mascot. Both huge project that are so close to being done. We still have some work to do though.

 

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...

 

Ride The Roller Coaster

Tons of excitement today! The biggest development of the day is that OUR ROBOT WORKS AGAIN! YES! We also got our new shirts in! They look sweet! We have a new drive station laptop! We got more pulleys in so the whole bottom level of the conveyer works! Exclamation points!

Recharge Our Batteries

The title of this post is a double entendre. We stopped early tonight because we accomplished pretty much all that we could. This allows us to kind of take a break after three straight late nights. Also, we had to charge our batteries for the robot. More mascot progress was made along with more poster work.

Pulleys and Bearings

Apologies for the kind of lame blog title and post tonight. It was a late night of working. The main projects for today were the conveyer, cleaning the robot room, and the mascot feet. A slightly frustrating day because we did not get the parts that we needed to really continue our work. So there was kind of a lot of time spent looking around for something to do.

Golden Horn

A full day of robotics for some of the team members. They had a PMMC meeting, then robotics after school. After school, we worked on tricking out the gatherer, making a new horn, working on the mascot's feet, and the pulleys for the gatherer.

Ghost Robot

The robot is really coming together now! We got all the Lexan we need and constructed the shooter and conveyer out of the Lexan. We also made a new blog page, kept working on programming the servo, and started on the mascot feet.

One of the team's big season goals was to build a robot that not only functioned well, but also looks pretty sweet. To that end, Bryce wired in LEDs to the electrical board today. Our bot now glows blue or red at the flip of a switch! Bydlon and Brandon got the last pieces of Lexan we needed for the conveyer. With those pieces bought, Ryan went to work putting the conveyer together. We are using big aluminum extrusion as reinforcement instead of c-channel because the Lexan is less rigid than chipboard or plywood. Ryan did an AWESOME job and it looks great. Meanwhile, Tyler went to work tidying up the shooter. We put all the pieces together and just have to mount the wheel and motor to the case. The team spent some time discussing how we are going to decorate all the Lexan we are using (sponsors, logos, colors, etc.). The goal is get everything put together by Thursday. A lofty goal but Team 3313 has come through in the clutch before.

Jenna finished compiling all of the team member interviews into sub team compilations. Be sure to check them out on the new tab at the top of the page or click here, Team Members. Great work by her. The Queen songs at the beginning of each are an homage to our constant Queen playlist in the shop (and love of Queen in Rock Band). The team's constant recruitment push is still going on (we had a new potential member hang out with Jenna today).

Megan and Colin kept working on programming in the servo motor to drop the bridge arm. This is being a real pain because no one on the team has ever programmed one before. Lots of research has yielded nothing so far.

Jesse, Spencer, and some other members started working on the feet of the mascot. The base of the feet is carpet and cardboard with shoes screwed into this. Then you build the cardboard around this. Lots of problem solving to figure out how to do this.Gabe took some great pictures today as well.

Another awesome day of build season. It is so fantastic seeing all of the robot pieces come together to form our finished project. It's slow going because we need to be really precise and make sure it all works. ONLY 15 DAYS LEFT!

Working For The Weekend

 NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO OF ROBOT DRIVING!

Sorry about the late posting. The team played Rock Band for about 5 hours on Friday evening and then a busy Saturday and Sunday led to a post being written during the Super Bowl. Anyway, Friday was an incredibly exciting day for the team. We finally got the robot driving and shooting basketballs again! We also made a ton of progress on the mascot.

Jesse and Steph have been working their butts off on the mascot. You can really see the progress that they have made so far. Unebelievably awesome. We are for sure going to have the best mascot at our Regional. There is still a lot of work to do but they are doing great.

As far as robot progress, we finished the new electrical board. It looks great and really saves space and weight. Bryce, Bydlon, Tyler, and many other students worked on this project. Bryce worked on Sunday for a couple hours cleaning up the wiring so it looks good and is efficient. The other project holding up driving was the chains on our wheels which we finished as well. Thanks to Zach from last year, we finally found a place to buy Lexan. Ryan and Brandon started making the final shooter and conveyer out of the plexiglass. We are joking that we are going to be called the "ghost robot" because our bot is basically going to be lexan with some aluminum braces.

It was so exciting to see the robot driving around again with the updated electrical board and horn for the bridge. Speaking of which, we brought the holder for the horn over to the Tech who are manufacturing it for us. Also, Spencer brought part of our angle adjuster to his dad to try and make out of metal.

Jenna continued editing team member profiles which will be done very soon.

Only two weeks left.... So awesome.