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!

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...

Fasten Your Safety Belts

Sorry for the late post tonight. The three big projects for today were putting the robot parts all together, building the hoop apparatus, and continuing to make the mascot head. A couple new videos on YouTube to check out as well.


Bydlon bought more belts (thus the title) for the gatherer last night so Ryan spent most of the early part of the afternoon fixing the gatherer dowels to work with the added belts. The added surface area of the additional belts really helped catch the balls and propel them up from the ground. Then Bryce, Bydlon, and Ryan worked on attaching the shooter to the top of the gatherer. The big advancement here was that we decided to switch the shooter around so it shoots over the electrical box. Kind of a big change but it makes mounting it and getting the balls to the shooter wheel much easier. HUGE MOMENT watching the balls be picked up and shot all in one motion from the driver station. Colin and Megan worked hard on fixing the programming issues with the shooter and gatherer. Now it's refining the process including (hopefully) a lazy susan (for turning the shooter), adjusting the angle (for shooting from different distances), and attaching the camera (for vision targeting). So not much to do... Not.

Another project that Damien, Spencer, and Jordan worked on was putting all of the wood together to form the base of the hoop apparatus. This will be key for refining and fixing the shooting mechanism. All that's left is buying the hoops and attaching those to the backboards. The robot room is completely full with the hoop apparatus, the bridge, the bump plus all of our other robotics pieces. It's kind of a mess right now.

Jesse and Steph continued their diligent work on the mascot helmet. They are really close to getting done with it though. They are even at the point where they tested spray paint on different test surfaces (cardboard, duct tape, and hot glue) to see how it looks. It looks fantastic.

Other small projects included:

• More people proofreading the Business Plan by Jenna.
• Bringing some pieces over to Alex Tech for prototyping the sweeper in front of the gatherer. (done by Brandon and Tyler)
• Finishing up team member interviews

Another productive day with lots of rewards. Bydlon is going to a programming class in the Cities tomorrow but will be back in time to open the shop for work. Hopefully we will have a smoother transition from the gatherer to the shooter and made some progress on a lazy susan prototype. We also want to finish the helmet (other than painting) and get the camera working. Thanks for reading!

Balancing Act

We finished so many projects yesterday that today was a restarting day. Some of the projects we started on were prototyping ideas for lowering the bridge, prototyping a roller for the front of the robot, making the body for the mascot, and practicing balancing.

The biggest excitement was that we got the robot driving. Colin came and did a really nice job fixing the programming for the robot. It was a very proud moment to see what we have so far driving around the shop. Bryce spent some time getting use to the new tank drive system (last year we had mecanum wheels). He balanced the robot on the bridge a few times too.

The big build projects involved scraping the gate concept. Originally, we made a gate that would hopefully stop balls from coming in to our robot and lower the bridge. We got a lot of comments on our youtube page advising us in a different direction and we saw some other ideas so we decided to scrap it. Instead, we are going to have these things we call tusks that bring the bridge down and a pvc pipe with surgical tubing acting as a sweeper pulling balls in. We are half way there on both ideas. These should be finished by Monday or Tuesday.

The PR team started working on the body of the mascot. The other big project for the PR team was making interview videos to put on a member profile page on this blog. These should be very interesting.

After an awesome day like yesterday where we finished so many things and had so much progress, inevitably there will be a little bit of a let down. The team still worked hard and started some big new projects today. We are meeting on Saturday to work some more and then hang out with some Rock Band and pizza.

Don't Worry, It's Just A Prototype

The title for this post is our team's motto so far this year. Whenever we're building anything and someone raises a concern, we jokingly say that line. Then we brainstorm ways to fix it. Today was another really awesome day for the team. So many things started and finished. So many laughs and positive energy. One of those days that makes FIRST Robotics awesome. Everybody was on their game as far as keeping busy but still having fun. Our projects included: mounting the electrical board, mounting the gatherer and shooter, finishing the bridge, starting the mascot helmet and beginning out team member profiles.

Remember to check YouTube for 4 (!!!!) new videos.


We finished the bridge!! That's two out of three game pieces completed. The only one left is the hoop aparatus. Brandon, Molly, Tyler, Connor, and some others really worked hard on getting the bridge done and it looks awesome. We put it through its paces by having some people walk and balance on it. Pretty soon (tomorrow) we will be able to drive our robot over it. We finished the other piece of the middle of the game field, the bump, on Monday. These two elements will be crucial for testing our design next week.

Another huge project for today was completely mounting the prototype robot. We finished the electrical board box by adding a bottom and a side. The box looks great already (go wire management and zip ties!!) but will look even more awesome when we make it out of lexan and put the red and blue LEDs in it. Our first step was putting the gear boxes back on the frame. Then, we mounted the electrical board and battery. Our last step was to mount the gatherer and shooter. Tyler had a great idea for mounting the gatherer and many others on the team helped out with this process. We finished by mounting the gate mechanism and testing it out. SO COOL WITH IT ALL TOGETHER! The feeling you get when a group has an idea and finally sees that idea in a real life way is impossible to describe. So proud of the team so far. This is MILES ahead of where we were last year. Still a lot to accomplish, however.

The PR team started working on the mascot. They first step is creating the helmet. Already looks pretty cool. Jesse and Bryce modeled the helmet throughout the afternoon. Hopefully, the helmet will be finished by tomorrow or Saturday. They also came up with a name for our mascot... Mechatron. PERFECT!

Megan, Jenna, and Allen came up with some questions to ask team members for youtube videos and member profiles for the blog. There are some really funny questions and the profiles should be entertaining. Check back some time in the next week or so for those.

We finished the day with a clean-up/dance party to LMFAO. Great times. 

Having a prototype together makes troubleshooting and brainstorming much easier in the coming weeks. Our big goal for tomorrow or Saturday is to drive the prototype and pick up a ball and shoot it all in one motion. This is ambitious but the team can definitely do it. Fantastic feeling leaving the robot room and seeing all the checks on our weekly goals.

It's Allllive!!

Braaaaaaaains

Another great day of work for Team 3313 Mechatronics. The team worked on a bunch of different projects including: brainstorming the connection of the gatherer and shooter, making the vertical electrical board, putting together the bridge, making the robot drive, and writing the business plan.

The biggest excitement of the day was that we FINALLY got our KitBot to drive. Hard to explain how exciting this development is. As our team tweeted, "I wonder if this is how Dr. Frankenstein felt." Getting the robot to drive was a big undertaking by the programming team (kudos to Colin and Megan) along with the electrical team (among them, Bryce, Spencer, and Jordan). Getting the robot to drive allows the programming team to test out how their code works and also leads the electrical team to fix problems like gear boxes not working or chains being too loose. One funny moment while trying to accomplish this was that we lost a key for a gear box (a very small piece of metal that allows the motor to connect to the sprocket which turns the wheel). The team walked around and dragged their feet like zombies to find it.

Vertical electrical board almost done

Once we got the robot to drive, we were able to take some of it apart. This may seem strange but some of the pieces from the KitBot need to go on our new vertical electrical board so we had to take those off once we knew they worked. Bryce and Bydlon ran power cables to all of the components on the board and all that is left for tomorrow is putting on the walls and running data cables. The layout is very compact and the team did a nice job of wire management (not a strong suit of Mechatronics in the past).

The other big project for today was putting together the bridge that we can practice on. Brandon and Tyler did an awesome job of getting started. All of the wood was cut last night but they still had to organize it and figure out where each piece fits. It should be finished tomorrow which will be a great asset to use once we have our actual robot together in a week or so.

Tyler and Brandon working on bridge

We started to think about how the shooter and gatherer will connect. We facilitated the brainstorming by shortening the shooter and gatherer so they actually fit together. We had to bring a couple parts over to Alex Tech to get shortened. Not much progress on this other than putting them on top of each other and staring at it. Still good to get started.

Lastly, Jenna kept up her work on the team Business Plan for the Entrepreneurship Award. Her perseverance on such an arduous and tedious piece is amazing.

More excitement tomorrow when we have a vertical electrical board and a bridge to stand on. Thank for reading!

Bumps In The Road

Our finished bump.

The team got together today after taking a break the past two days. There was A LOT of progress made. The biggest advancements were with the field elements, the programming, and our business plan.

The team finally got the account at Menard's set up. This will help immensely with obtaining supplies to work on. One of the big reasons so many people were frustrated last week was that we did not have the materials necessary to work on other projects. The account at Menard's allows us to allocate money there we can use during our six week build season. After the season is over, the money that wasn't used gets put back into our account. So we were finally able to use this account today. Bryce, Bydlon, and Tyler got a bunch of supplies needed to build the bump and bridge that will be in the middle of the playing field. Having examples of these will allow us to test our designs before the real competition. They also bought some tools and materials the team needed.

Megan and Colin crossing their fingers that the cRio will work.

After returning with the build materials, Bryce and Jordan got to work cutting down all of the wood. Ryan worked on putting the bump together and got it finished which is awesome. All the parts for the bridge were also cut which will keep people busy the next day or two. Great work and focus by the team to get these done.

Another big development for the team was fixing the cRio. This is the brains of the robot. It is how the robot knows what to do during the competition. With this not working, we would not have a functioning robot, so getting the cRio fixed was a HUGE priority for the team. Colin worked hard this weekend to try and get it fixed but had no luck. After reading Chief Delphi (a robotics forum), Megan and Colin tried using the official netbook the team was given two years ago.... AND IT WORKED! Woo hoo! As stated above, this is a huge development. Colin and Megan said we will have a driving robot tomorrow which is awesome! Great work and perseverance.

Lastly, Jenna and Jesse went around to a bunch of local businesses to pick up cardboard to start making the mascot costume. If you haven't seen our costume design, check out Friday's post. Jenna also worked on getting our business plan together to submit for the Entrepreneurship Award. Great start to a big project.

Before we all left, we set some goals for the second week and posted them on the door to the robot room. They are ambitious but we are already off to a great start. Personal favorite is "shop closes at 9". Awesome that we need to set a goal to stop working. Good work today team!