Nothing Can Ever Be Easy...

Today was the homecoming parade, the event we had prepared for all week. The weather was beautiful (maybe a little cold), the float was ready, the team was enthusiastic. Check out this YouTube link for video. More photos are on our facebook. Everything was shaping up for a great parade. Then Murphy's Law struck...

For those who don't know, Murphy's Law says that anything that can go wrong, will. For whatever reason, our team has things go wrong at the last minute all the time. No matter how much we prepare, how much we plan, how hard we work, something always go wrong. Today that problem was the truck. Everyone arrived at JHS on time and we loaded up the trailer and cars to go to the beginning of the parade. We were all set to wow the crowd. The parade started and then the truck wouldn't shift into drive... UGH! We tried everything we could but it just wouldn't shift. That's when all the floats started leaving. We were freaking out. 

Luckily, the people of Alexandria are incredibly nice. Someone loaned us a truck for the parade. I didn't catch his name but he is the most awesome person ever. It would have been TERRIBLE to work that hard and then not use our awesome float. But good things happen to good people, and we finally got into the parade at the very nick of time. By very nick of time, I mean that we were the last float. 

They definitely saved the best for last though. Our float looked great. The tissue paper and streamers really popped out on the street. The flag was beautiful. The robots were showcased. Good planning leads to good execution (except the truck, oops).

Bryce was in the Mechatron suit and he did an amazing job getting the crowd hyped up. He bumped fists with a ton of little kids. Taylor and Carson passed out half sheet pieces of paper with all of our contact information. Alicia and Kacy handed out candy to the happy kids. Bydlon drove the truck and danced to Queen which we had blasting out of a stereo in the back of the truck. Brandon, Allen, Dalton, and Luke took care of pushed and operating Murphy, our basketball robot. Molly drove Rover on the trailer. 

It was a team effort to make the parade such a success. Everyone working together and doing their jobs made it so much fun. The smiles and "oohs" and "ahhs" from the crowd made all the stress and work worth it. BIG THANK YOU to Jody and Chad Niesen for borrowing us the trailer and donating to our team. Team 3313 really does enjoy presenting to the public and making everyone aware of how cool Robotics is. Great work team!

Lighting the Flame

This has been mentioned many times before but one of our team's main goals for the year was to expand the awareness and knowledge of our team in the community. We have been doing this in a variety of ways this year. We had a video game tournament, visited classrooms, visited local area clubs, presented to our sponsors, created many social network opportunities, and performed at a halftime show. We continued our efforts on Friday when we visited Discovery Middle School and Voyager Elementary School. Click "see more" below to read about how the day went.

Speaking Tour

It has a long time since a blog post update! Wow! Sorry about that. With the regional over, the team's activity and meetings have kind of slowed down or dwindled. That's ok. We have been pushing ahead with our Community Outreach agenda throughout April. We have presented two of the Alexandria elementary schools along with an area club.

 You really need to check out the video from our presentation at Woodland Elementary School. The excitement of the students was truly amazing. Seriously, stop reading for a minute and watch it. Awesome.

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.

Final Push

Today was the FINAL PUSH before a lot of really exciting things happen this weekend:

• We are going to be visited by the local TV station tomorrow morning. 
• We are performing as the halftime show of the girls bball game tomorrow night. 
• We are going to a scrimmage on Saturday at Eagan High School. 
• Lastly, the robot has to be boxed up next Tuesday. 

SO! There were a lot of things to do today!

Ready. Aim. FIRE!

 

 Two new YouTube videos!

We finished the entire shooting and gathering system today. What a major accomplishment for the team (one week early!) and a real testament to how hard and dedicated each and every team member is. We also made major progress on the mascot, our practice bot, Kinect programming, and the halftime show which is on Friday night.

It's So Cold!

The team went out to the Ice Fishing Challenge on Lake Le Homme Dieu today. We did it as a fundraiser for the team. We presented to the Sertoma Club last fall. Usually, the nordic ski team does this fundraiser but opted not to this year. So Sertoma Club offered the position to us which was awesome!! Dominos Pizza came up with an arrangement where we split the profits 50/50. Also really awesome of them to give that help to the team. Of course, one of the coldest and windiest days of the winter was today. The team powered through though and worked together to sell the pizzas. We sold a ton and there were points where we didn't even leave the area around Jenna's dad's car. We had a line of people when the pizzas got there. Other times, we split up into teams and walked around the pizzas to all of the ice fishers. Two really big outcomes of this event. More community awareness of the team and fundraising. Both of these things are big goals of the team so, again, thanks go out to Sertoma Club and Domino's for setting up this arrangement.

After the tournament, we took the leftover pizzas and hung out at school. We played Rock Band and relaxed after a tiring and extremely cold day. We did do some work. We tested the horn on the bridge and shot some baskets. It is so exciting to see the robot make baskets, even when just testing. A huge accomplishment for all of the team members. We can't wait to really finish the robot and show it off to the community at the girls basketball game on Friday night!

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.

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...

The Gate Keeper

Stupid chain...

Today was yet another prototyping day. We kept working on the prototype robot base and built a prototype gate. There were a lot of things going on for people so we did not have the full team today. Jenna and Megan were not there and, luckily, the sky did not come crashing down. The joke(?) around the shop is that they, not Bydlon, are the brains behind the operation. Todd, an instructor from Alex Tech, stopped by to check on our progress. It was great to see him and the Tech College's continued support and help with the team. Speaking of which, we brought the motor mount for the shooter prototype over to the Tech and they are machining a bracket for us. When that is finished, we will be able to test our shooter (finally!).

Claire, Jesse, and Steph kept working on researching items to give away at competition. They researched buttons and wristbands. They also researched more items to commemorate the season for the team which included headbands, wristbands, and dog tags. The big development is that we found an AWESOME mascot costume. Like completely and utterly cool. So excited to see it come together.

Almost there!!

One of our big goals today was completing the KitBot. Tyler and Ryan worked on getting the electrical board mounted to the frame. He also got the motors mounted on to the frame. This is where we hit a snag. We bought the wrong chain breaker so getting the chains on the motors was a long and, ultimately, unsuccessful endeavor. We got one of the chains on the bot but still have one to go. Bryce borrowed a chain breaker from his dad which helped a little. We have one more to go then we should be able to drive tomorrow (this was said yesterday too but this time it will happen). Colin also worked hard to get all the computer aspects ready to drive. We had to format our drive computer, re-image the cRio, and upload all the programming. 

Only need to add the pulley.

Brandon worked on the other big project today which was a gate prototype. There's a video of our idea on YouTube. We have three reasons for making a gate. One: rules say we can only hold 3 basketballs so we need a way to stop extras from coming into our bot. Two: We want to force the basketballs into our gatherer so we want to keep them in the bot once we collect them. Three: We need a mechanism to bring the bridge in the middle of the field down. The idea is a spring on the front of the gate keeps it up whenever we need it. A window motor connected to a pulley will close the gate or bring the bridge down with our gate. Smart idea and the prototype will be finished tomorrow. All we need to do is add the pulley and we are done.

Chandler and students.

A shout-out is required for the presence of Jimmy (Bryce's brother-in-law) and Chandler (Alex Tech Student) for their continued assistance with the team. That's one of the biggest parts about FIRST Robotics, people with expertise working with and teaching the younger students. Really great to see.



Overall, a good day of work for the team. So many exciting things should (key word: should) come together tomorrow. The shooter and gate prototypes will be finished, we will have a moving practice bot and we will get the materials for the practice bump and bridge. That's a lot of goals but the team has shown so far how many things can get done they set their mind to it.

Like A Boss

The title is a quote by Bryce about the gatherer prototype we built. For those who don't know, that quote means "it's awesome."

The beginning of today was spent taking our team picture for the yearbook. Luckily, a lot of the team was there to be in the picture. Most of today was spent doing more brainstorming while we finished the gatherer prototype. The gatherer will be able to pick balls up off the ground and bring them up to some kind of hopper which will then dispense them into our shooter. That's the idea any way... To finish the prototype, we drilled the rest of the holes so we could get the wooden dowels in. We also added a belt to make sure it all worked. There's a video of it up above. The video is also on our YouTube Channel which has a link at the top of this blog.

The brainstorming we were doing while working had a bunch of different tangents.

• How do we get our robot over the 4" bump in the middle of the field? Lots of ideas were thrown out: tank treads, some kind of ramp in front of wheels, bigger wheels, more wheels, hovercraft (just kidding).
• What kind of shooter to use? Spring catapult, pneumatic catapult, one wheel shooter. 
• What should the hopper look like? Vertical, ramp, do we need one.
• Do we need a gate in front of the gatherer? What should that look like?

While we didn't come up with many answers, just talking through the problems and throwing out ideas is an invaluable experience. Luckily, Bryce's brother-in-law, Jimmy was able to help us out today. Chandler, a student from Alex Tech, also came over to help. It is great to have their expertise available to the team.

Tyler started working on making the schematics for a trial bump and bridge to test our future robot on.

The PR team worked on getting the Echo Press article all set up. They also sent an email to the PMMC (one of our major sponsors, check our sponsors page!) thanking them again for their support and updating them on our progress. The big PR development is that we are going to get our t-shirts ordered. They are going to look so awesome!!! There is a big surprise for the shirts which is going to be amazing. The team is super pumped.

In general, the team is having a little bit of growing pains. There are more students than in the past which is a GREAT thing. It just makes getting organized and keeping everyone on task a little more difficult. Not impossible, just more difficult. This will come together though. Overall, yet another great day with lots of progress. We already have some good plans for tomorrow. We'll leave you with this picture of Bryce and Bydlon.

Rage Cage

The Team 3313 MW3 Tournament happened yesterday. Because of our preperation on Wednesday, most of the day went off without a hitch. We only had one match going at a time but based on the number of teams that came, that was not a big deal. We ended up having 5 teams of 4 people competing in the competition. It was a double elimination tournament. Each team had to pay an entry fee. We had another room with Rock Band going. The robot was out and about as well for more publicity. Someone (Jenna? Claire?) had the brilliant idea to sell concessions during the tournament which is where we made most of our money. We had pop, candy, and chips available. We also had a swear policy where anyone that swore had to donate $1. This was another great idea and a place where we made some profit. The winner was "Rage Cage," a group of seniors. There were quite a few matches that were close and exciting. We have had discussions about having another one in April once things slow down. Something like this wouldn't have been possible without a lot of help so thanks to Mr. D (principal), Mathew (network admin), and Sheree (activities secretary).

TWO WEEKS TO KICK OFF!

Fund (and Fun) Raising

The team met two times this week, on Tuesday and Wednesday. Our main goal for this week was fundraising. We worked on accomplishing this goal in a number of ways.

1. We bought a lot of team wristbands about a month ago and finally received them last week. They are electric blue with our team name and number ink injected in black. They glow in the dark and look really sweet. We decided to sell them this year to students during lunch. To advertise the wristbands and our team, we brought the robot out during both lunches and let students drive it around. It was exhilerating seeing all the students surrounding the robot and asking questions about it. Awesome.

2. Our other big action for fundraising is a Modern Warfare 3 tournament that is occuring tomorrow. The tournament will happen at Jefferson High School from 10am to 2pm. The fundraising aspect is that teams of 4 pay $15 to register. The team that wins the tournament will then face off against each other in free for all. The winner of the tournament will receive a GameStop gift card. There will also be runners up prizes. It should be fun.
3. The last thing we are working on is emailing more groups and area companies for sponsorship. We greatly appreciate the sponsors we have now but to accomplish our main goal of attending Duluth and U of M Regionals, we need to raise more funds.

Our meetings this week were a little hectic. Each day was hectic for a different reason. Tuesday was hectic for good reasons. There were a bunch of new students for the meeting because of our presentations at Discovery Middle School. The team is really excited about the influx of younger students. Wednesday was hectic because of the icy roads. School was happening, then delayed, then cancelled within about an hour. This threw a wrench in our plans of preparing for the MW3 tournament. Luckily, many of the team members are very dedicated and still showed up later in the day to prepare. Update on how the tournament went tomorrow.

Roll out.