FIRST Lego League Tournament

     A FIRST Lego League robotics tournament will be sponsored by BAE Bishop Brady High School Robotics Team 1517 on Saturday, November 21 at Bishop Brady High School in Concord, NH from 8:30am to 4:00pm. FIRST Lego League introduces elementary and middle-school students to real-world engineering challenges by building LEGO-based robots to complete tasks on a thematic playing surface. Members of the Bishop Brady High School robotics team volunteer their time and talents to stage the FIRST Lego League event annually for younger students. FLL teams competing in the event must pre-register but viewing the competition is free and open to the public. To learn more about FIRST Lego League and the Bishop Brady High School Robotics Team visit www.bbrobotics.org.

We're Not Done Yet...

      The Tuesday ship date is coming up very quickly and we are going to St. Paul's School today for a mini competition between local schools for practice. We are working on some finishing touches so we can be ready enough for the competition which is only three hours away. We hope that everything works well together from the programming to the design to the drivers. We need it all to work perfectly together, but then again that's why this is a practice competition. We hope and pray for the best. I will post again after for our results.

      -Sterling, Programming Team

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

On To Testing

      Today we have made our robot functional enough to go to St. Paul's School to test. We are a bit behind our schedule and this will cut down on valuable driver practice for the slippery surface and also on programming test time. We hope to still be functional and up to speed by next Thursday, the ship date. After the ship date we have to send away the robot and won't get another chance to work on it until the competition time. We are working hard and are hoping for success.

      Best of luck to all,
      -Sterling, Programming Team

Quotes From The Build Season

"I'm drowning my Windriver sorrows in Metallica and root beer." -Sterling

"I put my sweat and spit into making this." -Cody

"It's funny how many people it takes to drill a hole around here." -Jonny

"Well, I'm supposed to be doing the fun parts." -Matt (Brown Bear)

Sterling: "I wonder how much salsa I can get on one chip.."
Cody: "I can get more!"
Sterling: "Hah, I win!"

A New Start

      We have started the final robot. The final design has been decided upon and hopefully we will have a running robot by the time of the St. Paul's mini-competition coming up. We can't wait to see what other designs other teams have come up with for the competition. It appears from our research that most teams have stuck with the sweeper/screw idea that we have. We are working hard and should have the final robot up soon.

      -Sterling, Programming Team

Hard at Work

     The build season is still heavily underway and now that we're on our fourth straight day of robotics during this long weekend, some of us are really feeling the pressure. The build team is still working away in the basement trying to assemble the robot and upstairs programming team is getting frustrated just trying to get our laptops to connect to the robot. Some members show their fatigue a little more than others, but almost all of us need to take a break once and a while.


  Even the dogs look like they could use a nice nap.


  Cheers,
   - Lincoln

Here Are A Few Pics And Vids

These are some pics and vids of our team and some of our progress.

We're Getting There

      Today we have made slow but steady progress on our robot and hope to be in possession of a working, testable robot by tomorrow's end. We have almost completed a Solidworks image of our robot for visual planning of our also almost-complete Archimedes Screw ball lift design. One team member has dubbed it the "Artesian Screw."
      Hopefully tomorrow we can finally test the engineering and programming that we've been waiting to test. We are determining what to do about Safety Man because he graduated. We are planning on appointing a new one but don't know who yet. We are also almost done building a trailer for testing. Tomorrow should be full of things being complete and, if we have time, testing. Things are slower than anticipated but we should be as close to done as reasonable by the time of our competitions in Manchester, NH and Seattle, Washington.

      -Sterling, Programming Team

FIRST Team Update

     Today we have been working on the prototype of our robot's collector mechanism for the competition

this year, Lunacy. We have had the challenge of trying to figure out how to collect somewhat yielding 9-inch diameter orbit balls. They look almost like the stereotypical atom diagram electron paths. We have to collect them off of a slippery surface without expanding beyond the original size of our robot. We then have to deploy them into trailers attatched to the opponents' robots (for complete rules and explaination please see usfirst.org). We are using a sticky roller to attach to the balls and deploy them into our containment chamber to later deploy to score.
     On the programming front we have been working on getting the camera to recognize the green and pink above the trailers and then distinguish between our trailers and opponents' trailers. We have made it recognize the colors and are currently waiting for the build team to be ready for us to test our latest programming for distinguishing the patterns.
     So far we are on schedule and hoping to have a working robot to test drive on the slippery field soon.

     -Sterling, Programming Team

First Blog Post!

     Yay, the Blog is officially up! Yet another milestone on our journey to a new website is now complete!

    Until next time,
      - Lincoln