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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!

All Of The Lights

The team met on a Wednesday today which was a slightly different routine than the past few weeks. The energy was really great from everyone as we met in Bydlon's room right after school. The team discussed upcoming important dates and the activities we would be working on.

The build team mostly worked on Murphy's electrical set up. The Victor stands and most of the big components had already been put down. The main thing left was wiring it all up. Alicia and Miranda were a huge help in this regard. Alicia did almost all of the wiring herself (with help from Bryce and Bydlon). The tricky parts were WAY less tricky with all of the room we allowed ourselves. It was no nice to be able to see where we were putting wires and keep all organized from the beginning. All of the victors spinning with their wire tags was pretty cool. The whole system looks great. The team decided to have the conveyor lights stay blue and the logo lights stay red. It looks awesome together!

Other work in the shop included Brandon with pneumatics, Molly gets some parts made over at Alex Tech, and the programmers doing their thing. Brandon continued tinkering and thinking about pneumatics. He worked on some formulas and math to figure out where to place pistons for a potential bridge lowerer. Molly, Demian, and Miranda ran over to Alex Tech to get some parts made for the battery holder at the front of the robot. It works exactly as we envisioned. The programmers (Dan, Luke, Dalton, and Allen) continued to messing with vision processing. They got the computer to pick up a red rectangle once which was exciting!

Up in the computer lab, Gabe started typing up little paragraphs about each team member. This will be better and easier than the team member video interviews we did last year. Also, if there are team member shake-ups, these are incredibly easy to replace, add to, and change. Carson worked on creating a poster for out Grocery Bagging Fundraiser on Saturday, October 20. It looks fantastic! Kacy wrote a few emails to ninth grade teachers asking if we could come into their class and present. She also got a lesson on how to use this website.

Overall, it was a great day for the team. Seeing Murphy glowing again (if only for a little bit) was a promising and reassuring sight. We are making great strides forward and meet again tomorrow!

Electrifying Results

The team worked on lots of different projects today. Bryce, Bydlon, and Miranda worked on Murphy's electrical board. Brandon and Tyler worked on Rover's pneumatics. Carson created more posters. Taylor worked on apparel. Kacy researched more PR activities. Allen and Dalton worked on image processing for the camera. Our overriding goal for October and November is to get everyone (especially new people) around to each different mini-team so they can make an informed decision about what they would like to do.

Bryce, Bydlon, and Miranda worked on the Electrical Board on Murphy. When we originally designed the electrical board, we decided to do a "stack" which turned out to be a really poor decision. It left us no room to work and was always a complete mess. But you learn from your mistakes, and this time we are making a really wide open, spread out electrical board. We made a stand for the cRio near the back of the robot, next to the conveyor. The victors were put on stands above the wheels to side of where the original electrical board was. Miranda, Molly, and Hadley went to Alex Tech to make the stands for the victors and cRio which was a huge help. We twisted the wires for the Victor fans which looks really cool and clean. Now, the only items in the actually middle of the robot are the Power Board and Digital Side Car. It looks much cleaner. All that's left to finish it is wiring all the victors up, mounting the router, and the battery. Then we're done! We should finish by next week.

Brandon and our college mentor, Tyler, worked on pneumatics. Pneumatics is using air pressure to control cylinders. Our team does not have a ton of experience in this area so having a mentor like Tyler around to help is a really great thing. Our plan is to put pneumatics on Rover for the time being. We just want to give everyone experience with programming, wiring up, and mounting pneumatics equipment. Brandon and Tyler got an idea on what to do the next steps are turning that idea in a reality.

Up in the computer lab by the shop, lots of activity was happening. Kacy made task lists for everyone so they knew what they needed to accomplish. She also looked through some presentations by other teams. Taylor researched some new "swag" items or apparel for the team. During the Regional, teams pass out items to other teams to advertise. We could also use the swag items to advertise in our community as well. Carson made another really nice poster for the Bydlon Beard Off, our team fundraiser in November. Gabe watched a bunch of Chairman's Award videos and took notes on what he liked and didn't like from each video. He also made a list of shots and other things he will need to do.

Allen and Dalton worked on the vision processing component of the programming. Eventually, we want our robot to automatically adjust depending on how far away it is from the hoops. They can do this with our camera and Java programming. They also worked on Kinect programming as well.