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!

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.

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!!

Around the Horn

The biggest excitement for the team today turned out to not really be that exciting after all. The dead line for paying for your second Regional Event (Duluth for us) was Friday but we got it extended to today. We had a bunch of discussions on whether we wanted to go or not. The pros were: more opportunities for advancing to Nationals, another trip to hang out as a team, and another chance to improve the robot before the U of M. The cons were: it costs a lot of money (for individuals and the team), we probably wouldn't be able to bring everyone, it would leave us in a pretty sad state next year and this off season financially, and there would be more school missed. Ultimately we decided against it. The cons really outweighed the pros. We are trying to build something great in our school and community and we want to keep that going rather than take the selfish route and go to Duluth. The U of M is still really awesome and we are doing everything we can during the build season to make a great robot for it.


As far as actual build advancement today, we got quite a bit done. We finished the prototype of the "horn" on the front of the robot. This will allow us to push down the bridge to go to the other side of field or balance on the bridge at the end of the game. Ryan, Tyler, Brandon, and Bydlon worked hard on designing, machining, and mounting the components. Bryce explains in this YouTube video how the mechanism will work. We can't test it quite yet but the concept and execution looks great.

Bryce worked on re-making the electronics board. Our original idea was to have the board vertical connected to the gatherer. Our plans changed last week when we turned the shooter around. So we needed to re-think the board. Our new idea is to mount the electronics in the middle of the bot right in front of the gatherer. We will have two levels of electronics. Bryce made quite a bit of progress. All we have to do is re-mount the components and build the second level. This will be completed tomorrow.

Ryan re-worked the shooter and gatherer connection so the basketball will not get stuck in between. 

Jenna's projects for today included many things. She made a handout about the U of M competition reminding team members we are asking for some monetary contribution to help pay for hotels. She also made some photo collages for new posters (example below). Jenna, Megan, and Colin worked on budgeting out hotels and transportation for the U of M regional. Lots more to do tomorrow.

It was a good day where the team accomplished quite a bit. The sense of accomplishment was back and the energy level was definitely better. Crazy what a day off can do. More excitement tomorrow.

Stumbling Blocks

After so much success with prototypes and so many things working out with the team, it was inevitable some challenges would happen for the team soon. Unfortunately on Saturday, we ran into (literally) a big challenge: the bump in the middle of the field. We spent the past two days working on a wheel system that would get us over the bump and it didn't work. We also started working on vision processing (for finding the hoops) and an arm to push the bridge down so we can drive over it. Luckily, those went a little bit better.

First off, there are a couple visual changes to the blog. You probably noticed the new header visual (thanks Jenna). We will also be adding the Team Members page and a page describing our team and the mission of FIRST in the coming week or so. So look out for those.

In case you didn't know, the field for our competition is divided into two halves. Dividing these halves is a 4" tall by 6" wide bump and 3 bridges. Traversing these obstacles is essential to playing the game. Brandon, Ryan, and Tyler worked their butts off making a system to lower the bridge the past two days. It is really sweet! It's an arm with an angle piece coming down. It will rest on a platform with an L shaped plastic piece that is connected to a spring. At the beginning of the match, we will drop the arm and the spring loaded L shaped piece will keep the arm down during the match. I will upload some pictures on Monday which will make it easier to see. We haven't tested it yet (gulp) but we will do that on Monday. It looks awesome and it follows the big rule of KISS (keep it simple stupid).

The major project we worked on though was the wheel system. On Friday, we took the whole bot apart and started changing the wheels. We had to drop our wheels down so that the frame could fit over the bump. This is a much bigger task than it sounds. It requires cutting and drilling new axle holes in 12 pieces of extrusion. Then we had to put new chains on each gearbox and make new spacers for each wheel. This is a LONG process that we spent literally 9 hours on Saturday working on. Bryce's dad came and helped get the chains and spacers ready which was really nice. So we were feeling really good after getting the entire robot back together and the wheels on and working. Until... we tested it. There is a YouTube video up of the test. We were all so tired that you can't really tell how disappointing it was. However, the team is resilient and will think of another mechanism to go over the bump. No worries.

Colin and Megan worked on getting the image processing for the camera going. The LabView programming has the power to recognize shapes and colors including the metal rectangles behind the hoops. This will allow us to program the robot to find the hoops and aim for us. 





Our energy was still really low after working for so long during the week. Plus, the team members are still students and involved in many other things (including work and church and speech and homework). They're commitment is incredible and inspiring. We are half done! That's both awesome and scary. The challenges presented to us will be overcome though.We ended the night by playing some Rock Band to relieve stress.

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...

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!