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.

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!

Taking Apart Just To Put It Back Together

The team met again this week to start on some new upgrading projects. Our two main robot projects will be putting pneumatics onto Rover and upgrading the electrical board on Murphy.

So we took a couple last pictures of the mess that was "the electrical stack". Let's be honest, it won't be missed. The other big project for Murphy is putting the 4 CIM motors into the drive train and switching out the fly wheel motor for a gear box.

Molly and Brandon T fixed the wheels on the robot cart which really helps it drive in a straight line.

Rebooting

It was an organizing and rebooting day today for the team. Many team members were busy so attendance was low. That's ok after a big event like the parade last Saturday.

Molly and Bydlon met with a 4H representative today. She had a curriculum for mini robots that she wanted to share with the team. Basically, the team would use the curriculum in area classrooms to spread the word of FIRST Robotics and 4H at the same time. The team is always looking for ways to help make Robotics cool for younger students and we are definitely interested in making this happen.

Kacy worked on getting a bunch of contact information for fundraising activities. The team would like to expand our sponsorship base with all of the local manufacturing companies. She also sent out emails to the 9th grade engineering teachers to help recruit some younger students for the team.

Bryce and Bydlon planned out a new electrical board for Murphy. It will be good practice for new members and returning members. Besides, Murphy's electrical board is kind of a mess. All the examples the team saw at the Regionals have really influenced our design. We will put the Victor motor controllers on the side, above the wheels. The middle of the bot will then be more open and hold all of the other components. Bryce made part of the board in AutoCad.

Allen and Dalton made some real progress with the programming. They got autonomous started on Rover. It can now spin and drive on its own. Murphy's autonomous also made progress, it can almost shoot a basket. We are so excited to show off our new drive controller once it's all finished!

Another meeting on Thursday this week. Lots of October planning coming then. Fundraisers, events, and meetings to plan!

Float-ing On Air

Today was, yet again, spent preparing for the Homecoming Parade. The parade is Saturday at Noon on Broadway in Alexandria, MN. Come check it out!! The team accomplished so much today!! Wow! Click on any picture to see a large version.

As usual, the team met in Bydlon's room to begin. We discussed our ideas for a West Central MN FRC Get Together. We would like to host many of our other regional teams to gain more knowledge and make some bonds with teams close by. Then everyone learned their jobs for the day.

Molly and Bryce went to Menard's to buy plywood for the "stage" on our float. Rover will be on the float with Molly and we want everyone to see Rover so we made a stage out of chip board and palettes. Brandon and Bryce worked on making the whole stage. It looks great! Molly and Bryce also picked up some steel rod to make a harness for our drive station. Molly took it over to Alex Tech and they made the steel rods into mounting brackets. Look Ma, NO HANDS!

Allen was alone today programming but made a TON of progress. Gabe brought in an XBox controller for Allen to start programming with. It will replace the joysticks we have used in the past. Allen also worked on the programming for Murphy (Rover programming is complete in JAVA). He got the drive train working and the fly wheel. Spike relays were causing problems so Bydlon switched the conveyor into a Victor controller. And it worked! Allen even got the fly wheel and conveyor speed to be adjustable. WOW! Great job Allen!

Kacy, Alicia, Taylor, Gabe, Vincent, and Carson worked insanely hard on getting the trailer transformed into a float for the parade. THEY DID SUCH AN AWESOME JOB! It is incredibly tedious work putting all the tissue paper into the chicken wire and streamers on the trailer. But they had a positive attitude and worked hard. Bydlon tried to help with the tissue paper but didn't do a very good job. Oops. The decorations look soooo good! All that's left is the other side of the trailer and we are done. Kacy worked on the back ramp part of the trailer. It looks great too!

Eddie and Jesse worked on making Rover all pretty. They hid the nasty wires that were cluttered all over the top of it. Black wire covers are awesome.

The team worked so hard today and did such a fantastic job. Our float is going to kick everyone else's float out of the water!

Starting Over Is Hard To Do

The team decided to make a new robot for a myriad of reasons. Those reasons being:

• We need something to show at the Discovery Student Showcase on March 15. 
• We wanted more practice building and wanted to use pneumatics.
• We like being around each other and any excuse for that to happen will do. 

Check The PWM Cables!

Today was the last day of build season. For a lot of the team members it was bittersweet. It is kind of nice to have the time off again so we can all catch up on homework but at the same time, it is sad to say goodbye to our robot for a while. Of course, with Team 3313 Mechatronics, even boxing up a robot cannot be easy...

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!

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.

Kinect-ing People

Three big developments today. The new (and hopefully final) electrical board is complete, the mascot head is fully painted black (only touch ups left), and we started programming with the Kinect.

The electrical board was fully completed. We took the final step and made the board out of lexan. The extrusion pieces were brought over to the Tech and cut and tapped. All the cords are plugged in and it is ready to go. The only missing part on the front half of the robot is the metal piece to hold the horn for the bridge down. This piece is being manufactured at the Tech and will be ready tomorrow. Their help has been invaluable to the team this year. Cannot thank them enough. The only build aspects left are finding lexan and making the shooter and gatherer out of it. Other than that, we are basically done with initial design. After that, it's testing, testing, testing and refining, refining, refining.

Colin and Megan started fiddling around with the Kinect. Colin got the program (FAAST) to work last night and showed off today. He could use his hands and arms to guide the mouse on his computer which is sweet. The next step is transferring that information over to LabView (the software we do our programming in). One of the team's big goals is to be well rounded and be able to do as many aspects of the competition as possible. This includes, balancing on the bridge, Kinect driving, autonomous mode, picking up basketballs, shooting basketballs accurately, etc.


The other big development is that the helmet of the mascot is pretty much complete. Jesse and Steph finished spray painting both the helmet and the body today. The next step is adding the other color elements.

I said this yesterday but tomorrow we will drive again!! I promise. We will also get plexiglass and start making the gatherer and shooter final parts. The team will start making the bumpers, keep Kinect programming, and post the team member videos.

The Chains That Bind You

The high school team members did not have school today so the energy level and focus was really good. There was a lot accomplished on the bot and in other areas. There is a new addition to the blog, we got the wheels chained onto the bot, and we are juuuuuust about done with our new electrical board. We also continued work on the mascot and started fiddling around with Kinect driving.

The big advancements on the robot were chaining the wheels and being very close to finishing the electrical board. Damien and Tyler worked hard on finishing the spacers for the wheels. This is a tedious and annoying process but they did a great job finishing it. Bryce then finished the job off by doing the chain. Again, this is a really annoying process but Bryce powered through and finished them up (hopefully for the last time). The biggest annoyance with the chain is how many times we have had to re-do them. I believe we are on our third or fourth chain attempt. However, it was a huge relief having the robot on all six wheels again. The other big advancement was with the new electrical board. Jordan, Allen and Tyler worked on this aspect. We mounted and wired all of the controllers. Jordan cut the extrusion pieces for mounting the top layer. All that's left is bringing those extrusion pieces over to the Tech to get them tapped (we broke our tap set). We will be driving the robot again tomorrow. YES!

Jenna worked on the blog some more. The team would really like to win a Website Award at our Regional competition. There are tons and tons of criteria to do this including a summary of what FIRST Robotics is about and a team summary. Jenna is working on both of these things. The FIRST Robotics summary is up. Click on the page at the top of the blog to check it out. The team summary will be up tomorrow and on Friday we will upload some Team member interviews so you can better get to know the team.

Jesse and Bryce continued painting the mascot body with black spray paint. Mechatron is going to look awesome! Colin, Megan, and Gabe spent some time today organizing the robot room which was SORELY needed. Great work by them. Cleaning and organizing is an important and thankless job. Colin and Megan started fiddling around with the Kinect driving software while they wait to test new code on the robot. Every FIRST team got a Kinect this year which can be used to drive the robot for the first 15 seconds of the match. It will also be cool to use when we are demonstrating the robot out in the community.


 Nice work and focus by the team today. Hopefully, we are all back on track to make the second half of the build season the best it can be. We will have a driving robot again tomorrow. That will be awesome. Thanks for reading! ROLL OUT!