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.

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.

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.

 

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.

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!

Dogs Days of Build Season

Three weeks from today the build season will be over. Hard to tell if that is a long way away or really, really, soon. The energy level of the team seemed a little lower today. After pushing SO HARD at the beginning of the season to do so many things, it is really hard to keep that energy level up for six consecutive weeks. Luckily, the high school does not have school tomorrow (water main broke). Hopefully everyone on the team can use that time to refresh their batteries. This is like mid July for the baseball season (even the weather felt that way today).

The team worked on a few different projects (as always). The big ones were finishing the horn, assembling our new electrical board, and painting the mascot body. Gabe did a great job taking pictures today.

Many students worked on finishing the horn prototype. We got all the pieces mounted including the arm and the catcher. The new developments were that we got the servo motor which will release the arm mounted. Really good work by Brandon and Tyler mostly. We should be able to fully test it tomorrow.

The other big project was assembling the electrical board. We decided to change it up because of the shooter being switched around. We are going to have all of our electronics mounted in the middle of the bot. The motor controllers, spike relays, power distribution, and side car will be on the bottom level. The modem, cRio, and circuit breaker will be on top. It is a compact design that will end up saving us weight. Bryce, Allen, Bydlon, Gabe, and a few other students worked on it. This will be completed tomorrow. All that's left is mounted the upper level on extrusion.

Jesse and Steph continued their work on the mascot. They started painting the body of the mascot with black spray paint. They also cut out the team's icon which will be painted blue.

Jenna worked on a bunch of different projects. One project was starting the process for going to our Regional at the U of M. This includes making transportation and hotel arrangements. The other project was editing the Business Plan. Jenna had the business teacher at our school read through it and make corrections. Thanks Mrs. Watts!

The team won't meet until 3pm tomorrow because of the school shut down. Hopefully (crossing my fingers and toes), we will finish the electrical board and wheels tomorrow. This will allow us to have a driving robot with added refinements. The rest of the week would then be making our prototypes out of Lexan. Only 21 more days!!

The Wheels on the Robot Go Round and Round

Today was not the best day ever. After working really hard the past three days and having a ton of success picking up balls and shooting them, we finally started to tackle our other issues. Those being: bringing down the bridge (so we can drive over it) and changing the wheels (so we can drive over the bump). The problem is that these issues are not as easily fixed. We also fixed some programming issues, worked on the mascot some more, and finished up getting ready for the Ice Fishing Tournament fundraiser.

Before we started working on the robot again, the team got together and had a meeting. During the meeting, we discussed some important upcoming dates. The dates included the ice fishing tournament, a team movie showing (Real Steel), the last day of build season, the Duluth regional visit, and the U of M Regional. We also discussed a media release form and, in general, how the team is doing. Good times and lots of laughs also occurred.

After that, we moved down to the robot room to start working. Our first task was the completely take apart the bot. This was necessary to fix our wheel situation. Initially, we just threw the kit wheels on but they have a 3" radius. The bump in the middle of the field is 4". This will not work. Our plan is to put 4" radius wheels on stilts and then have two of the 3" radius wheels at the very front of the robot. The small wheels will help the big wheels get a little bit off the ground and then the big wheels will push the rest of the way (that's the plan anyway.........). The mental fatigue of build season definitely showed. Bydlon and Bryce took off and put on the big wheels about 6 times because they kept forgetting to do something or how something would change. For example, the wheels got put on but then they had to make a new hole for the smaller wheels. Then they put the frame pieces on backwards. Then the frame was too low so that had to fixed. We think we finally have a plan that will work which will get done tomorrow.

Ryan and Brandon worked hard on getting an arm mechanism working for pushing down the bridge. We have called them "tusks" in the past but the new mechanism looks remarkably like the minibot arm deployer from last year. It's an arm that swings down with an angle on the front to slide the bridge down. We will test it tomorrow.

Colin and Megan worked their tails off fixing programming issues. We are learning as we go and the new thing we learned today was how to program in a spike relay so we can make a motor got forward and backward. Awesome work by them. 

Jesse and Gabe worked on the mascot some more. They finally an upper body piece that seems to work. Jenna worked on sending out emails to the PMMC and arranging the Ice Fishing Tournament. She also started editing the video for student profiles on the website. Sertoma Club in Alexandria puts on an Ice Fishing Tournament every winter. This year, they asked us to sell pizzas during the tournament. We are working with Dominos on this fundraiser. We get some of the profit for selling the pizzas. It is a really good opportunity for us to make some money and to get some more community exposure.

Tomorrow will be better after a good nights sleep.

Blast From The Past

As usual after such an awesome and amazing couple of days where we accomplished SO MUCH, today was a little bit of a thinking and figuring out what to do next sort of day. That doesn't mean we did not accomplish anything, just means we were a little more sluggish and a little less focused. The big accomplishment for today was that we made an angle adjuster mechanism for the shooter. We also continued work on the mascot.

When playing the game at the competition, we want to be able to shoot from different places on the field. To facilitate this, we wanted to adjust the angle of the shooter so we could shoot lower or higher depending on where we are and our battery life and many other factors. This post is titled this way because we ended up using one of the big components from last year: a lead screw and window motor. Last year, two lead screws and two window motors powered our scissor lift. This year, they are powering our angle adjuster. Tyler, Brandon, Bydlon, and Bryce worked on this mechanism. It works great. Colin almost finished the programming for it but had to leave. This will be totally operational tomorrow.

The other big build project was that we wanted to have a sweeper in front of the gatherer. Ryan worked hard on getting it all together. Unfortunately, when we got it all wired up, it kept blowing out fuses and the surgical tubing kept getting stuck in the conveyer belt. So, we decided to keep the sweeper off.

The big electrical project was wiring up the LED's for the driver station. We have a toggle switch so the driver station can light up red or blue depending on which alliance we are assigned.  Bryce and Demian worked on this aspect. The driver station is now complete.

Steph, Jesse, and Gabe kept working on the mascot. They finished the head yesterday and have moved on to the body. Making the dimensions right is a hard task. There are no measurements in what we found online about the mascot so they are basically guessing and checking as they go. This makes work slow. They are plowing ahead though.

Tomorrow will be a better day for work. We will be more rested and more focused. We will have a full team meeting, finish the angle adjuster, and our big goal is to start working on our "tusk" idea for bringing the bridge down. Thanks for reading. Go team 3313!

Pictures Are Worth A Thousand Words

So much excitement to be had today! We finished the practice hoop set up. We refined the gatherer and shooter. We made a bunch of baskets. We totally finished the mascot head. We built supports for the gatherer and electrical board. We got a story posted in the Echo Press Newspaper. Todd (Alex Tech professor) stopped by.  We finished the business plan draft. We got the camera to work. So super awesome. I'm too excited to type. I'll just post pictures instead. Click on any to see them bigger. Also remember to check out YouTube for videos from today.

Moustachioed.

SO AWESOME!

MAKING BASKETS!

We have a messy robot room...