Updates

A few updates since the last post:

1) We have officially decided to stick with the tread-drive bot.

2) We have a kicker all set up.

3) The programming for driving, kicking, and the camera are all set.

4) We are working on driving practice at St. Paul's to get ready for the competition.

5) We are still working on the lifter for the endgame.

We will keep you all posted. Thanks for reading and wish us luck.

-Sterling, Programming Team

After many days of frustration and surfing Chief Delphi to find answers, we finally got the robot to send a camera feed to the dashboard. It took many days of confusion but after resetting almost everything in the entire system and finding a program that works on Chief Delphi it finally works. We on the programming team rejoiced.

On the build side of things things are progressing steadily. We have a design decided upon and are building the pieces for it as I type. This year has been going well and we have all been working hard to achieve our goal.

We can't wait to be done and at the competition.

-Sterling, Programming Team

A New Season

And yet another year for the FIRST Robotics team 1517 begins. As our resident pneumatics expert Tom said, "Gentlemen, today our lives end." It's called the Six Weeks of Death for a reason. Despite this we all thoroughly enjoy the season and couldn't wait to see the new competition game.

I personally was lucky enough to go to the actual kickoff at Southern New Hampshire University and honestly it looks much better on the webcast. I was honored to go but when you're there it looks much more like just a gymnasium than the major event you see on the webcam. After a few hours of waiting to find out what the game is they finally unveiled the event: Breakaway.

This new game seems quite a bit like soccer at first glance but upon closer inspection it becomes much deeper and I can tell immediately that there will be quite a few little things that we will need to keep in mind that may make or break a match. The bumps are the biggest obstacles both literally and figuratively. Getting over the bumps has become one of the biggest focuses strategy-wise. I am very happy with the competition this year and can't wait to see a match in action.

I will keep everyone informed. Thanks for reading and wish us luck.

-Sterling, Programming

After Day 1 @ St. Paul's

      Yesterday we visited St. Paul's School toward the end of the meeting and met up with the Pembroke Academy Team 134. Their robot seems to be running well. We got plenty of throwing practice for the payload specialists and then tried to get our robot running. As usual on our first St. Paul's trip, not much driving happened. We had a few kinks to work out and got quite a few of them fixed but still have a bit to go. Today we should be driving a bit at least. For the people who weren't frantically working on the robot we had fun playing board tennis, a game/tradition started a few years back. We play like normal tennis except with wooden boards instead of rackets. It started because the practice course is built in the St. Paul's tennis court building. We hope for the best today.

      -Sterling, Programming Team