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

Building robots

Here the videos of us testing our 2 robots.

A word from the mechanical side

hey everyone just throwin up an update from over here on the mechanical side. we now have two count em two operational robots for the 2010 FRC challenge!!!!!! we have one base custom made by jonny that i am pumped about. this robot runs on treads and is lookin good. it can climb the ramp forwards and backwards. it can turn on a dime and will beat anyone in a pushing match. the other robot is a modified kit bot on mechanum wheels. both robots also have a kicker mounted on em and by the saturday will each have an electronics board on them. dr slocum and i have been working on a lifting mechanism for the end of the game. we have three designs and one that is operational and will work. we have a double stage piston, a piston and motor combo, and a custom three stage telescoping piston. get ready for a fun weekend st pauls here we come!!!

Tom Sweeney
Mechanical

Fourth Weekend

It is the fourth weekend of the build season. We have our kicker running and the camera is up and finding the target. We have made progress in building. The programming team is all set to run the robot autonomously. We are able to sense the ball and target and kick during the autonomous period of the game. They are waiting for a robot to test . We have the target and goal built, so that we can practice kicking the soccer balls into the goal. We are now working on the tower for the use at St. Pauls practice field. Finally we are actually building two robots. A tread based robot is being constructed now that the parts have finished being machined. We are also building a four wheeled machanum robot and we are hopefully testing the robots next week to see which works better.

~Jena, Build 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