Bydlon Beard Off

The Bydlon Beard Off happened today. Check out the recap video here and the full picture gallery here.

Our head coach, Mr. Bydlon, shaved his beard into mutton chops. During lunch all week, we raised $300 from student and staff donations. When people donated, they put money into different beard design boxes. Mutton chops got the most money so that is what he did. It was a super fun day. Our local newspaper brought a photographer, team members took pictures and video, and the crowd was HUGE.

Thank you so much to the Jefferson High School community for it's support of our team. It means a lot to all of the team members.

Loving Chicago

Brandon, Bryce, Tyler, and Bydlon left for Chicago today to attend and present at Pack Expo 2012. Today was really the "tourist" day while Monday will be a big "work" day.


The four travelers met up at JHS to pack up the van at 5:30am. It was an early start but led to more time exploring later on in the day. It was a tight squeeze, but all of the stuff some how fit into the back of the van. The drive was very uneventful. Great weather, easy roads to drive, not too bad of construction. The 8 to 9 hours passed by very quickly given the circumstances.

It took a little bit of work but we found our way to the hotel. IT IS SO NICE. WOW. Big thank you to PMMI and Massman Automation Designs for setting up our stay and PackExpo tickets. This is for sure the nicest hotel any of us have stayed at. Everyone rested for a little bit before going out to do tourist activities.

Our original plan was to take the Elevated Train to the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower. Unfortunately, we couldn't figure out how to get a ticket for the train so we walked. The Willis Tower is amazing. We took an elevator to the top and even went out on The Ledge. The Ledge are some clear boxes that jut out of the top of the tower. It makes you feel like you are floating 103 stories in the air. Chicago looked amazing at night.

Then we ate some Chicago Style Pizza at Giordano's. It was incredibly delicious, especially after a long day of either sitting in the car or walking all over Chicago.

Tomorrow is the big day! We will present about FIRST Robotics and our team from 9am to 1pm in the Lakeside Center. We cannot wait!

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.

Robotics Carnival

The team has been meeting up every day this week to prepare for our Robotics Community Night. There is a lot to prepare for it. Just to get the plug out of the way from the beginning...

Robotics Community Night hosted by Team 3313 Mechatronics on Monday, April 30 from 7-9pm in the Jefferson High School gym in Alexandria, MN. Check out this article in the local newspaper, the Echo Press, for more information.

The team decided to basically change the entire format of the Community Night. Our big goal for the event was to show off all that we accomplished to our community while still making it fun and interactive. This coincides with our team mission statement, "build a robot, excite students about STEM education, and have fun". Returning members of the team enjoyed Community Night last year but it was really more like a banquet and very adult oriented. We are aiming for a more "all ages" crowd with our event this year.

The format we switched to is basically a science fair or school carnival. Team members will be spread out in the JHS gym at different exhibit stations. Each station will have a different theme that the students will talk about. The stations will also have an interactive aspect to them as well. For example, the field/competition station will talk about Rebound Rumble and have a half court shot contest similar to what Tyler did at the end of each game. Another example is the station with Murphy. Visitors will have the chance to drive the robot but will also learn about how we built it.

The team is really excited about the event and has been working hard to promote it. We have emailed countless community groups including: the City Council, School Board, sponsors, newspaper, tv, and radio. We also dropped off flyers at all of the places we have visited like schools and companies. We will continue our promotion by emailing schools tomorrow and writing announcements for our high school.

We want this event to be a fun learning experience for everyone that chooses to attend. If you're reading this and are from the Alexandria area, please plan to attend!