3-4-08

As they say, there's never enough time, and there's never enough money. At this point we've pretty much run out of time to prepare for the San Diego Regional - which starts in ... TWO DAYS! Even though we didn't manage to build a complete practice robot, we did finish the chassis. For the past couple of days Andrew, Alex and some others have been practicing down in the band room where there's a carpeted floor. They're both doing pretty well; so far they've managed not to damage any of the drums or xylophones or other instruments sitting around. Maybe after San Diego we'll have time to complete the arm and get some practice on that before Los Angeles. In other Team 2102 news, Julian and the PR crew are putting the finishing touches on our mascot costume, and it is going to be awesome!

-Matt

2/21/08

Sunday was the Pre-Ship Expo at Madison High School. As we were loading up to go down there, the belt that runs the arm broke. So the robot wasn't working when we got there but it did look good, and it was fun to see what other teams did. After that we worked almost non-stop until about 3:30 am on ship day, redesigning the arm mechanism and making a new control panel.

Now that the robot's gone, we're making an exact duplicate so our drivers can practice driving between now and our first regional.

Today was also Scooter Day at school, so yesterday Asa and I converted my old Razor into a motorized scooter using one of the CIM's from last year's kit. Our plan was to use it to attract recruits for next year's team. Although it didn't attract any immediate recruits, there were mumbles around the school of robotics and scooters for awhile.

- Matt

2/13/08

The six weeks of building is winding down. It looks like it will be down to the wire, but I'm confident we'll make it.  The chassis and drive train are looking excellent, with only a few minor adjustments needed.  The arm and gripper are being finished and should be fully assembled and remounted in one to two days.  The pneumatics and electronics are almost finished and mounted in their final places and should be fully functioning with the robot components with a day or two as well.  The last thing to be done will be fabricating and mounting of the cover.  Everyone on team and the mentors are scrambling and working long, hard hours to get everything finished so that we can have enough time to fully test everything.  AS a whole, the robot is looking and working very good this year and we have high hopes at the competitions in March.

- Ross

2/11/08

The programming team has met the majority of it's goals. Under mostly my jurisdiction, the autonomous mode program is more or less complete, requiring only minimal tweaking to reach competition readiness. The Infrared transmit/receive function is fully operational, and the robot is completely drivable with the IR remote. Also, the robot is capable of driving on its own within the confines of the field, and requires just minor tuning in terms of speed and turn radius. On the Operator Control side, headed by Alex, the program is in a similar state of completion. All functions in the arm are coded and complete; we are waiting to test the arm raise/lower code and are ready to begin coding the steering wheel once that part arrives. Overall, we are doing quite well and hope to be done by mid-week!

- Bryan

2/4/08

We've gotten behind schedule with the robot so we're all a little tense now. We worked long hours in the shop over the weekend, with success on some things and frustration with others. Bryan and Alex have been working with Mr. Stimson to program the autonomous mode, but the couple of chances we've had to test how it drives we've had problems. Back to the drawing board. Mr. Berend finally figured out how to make the CNC work and he came in on Saturday to give us a lesson. It's very cool - we can make a part on Solidworks, plug the design into this machine and it cuts it out perfectly to specs. (Except when it doesn't, and then it's just obnoxious.)

- Matt

1/31/08

Good news! Mr. Berend and his wife Clare have a baby boy! His name is Gabriel and he was born on Sunday, January 27 at UCSD Medical Center. There was some concern at first about his heart, but today the news is that it has fixed itself naturally. Gabe and his mom are both home from the hospital and doing fine. I guess we won't be seeing Mr. Berend as much now.

- Denise

1/27/08

Thanks to our new PR mentors, Rachael and Chris, the PR team is making good progress. For starters, a couple weeks ago we voted on a mascot. The winner was the parrot-ox get it? Yes, the Team Paradox Parrot-Ox, with the head of a parrot and the body of an ox. That gave us the idea for alliance gifts (you'll find out at the Los Angeles and San Diego Regionals), and also for our t-shirt design, flag, and almost everything else. It has also marked the creation of a new page on this site, the Fan Art page. Things are falling into place now - all we need is that unlimited budget...

- Matt

1/23/08

On Friday we got a surprise invitation from Team San Diego to the Solidworks Conference happening Jan. 20-23. We're big Solidworks fans, so Kelsey and Julian and I stayed up late putting together an exhibit and went down Saturday morning to set it up. We hung out at our booth talking to people Sunday evening and Monday after school, and today Kelsey and I got permission to ditch classes so we could go back and hear Dean Kamen. After all the speakers we were hanging around the exhibit hall with some of the other teams when Dean himself came in to talk to us! He posed with everyone for pictures, and gave us a Vex robot to take back to the team.

- Matt

1/18/08

What a productive week! We advanced on many aspects of the robot. We moved forward on the chassis, figured out how to use many of the electronic parts. Nick & Asa have been modeling a lot of the parts on Solidworks.  Next week we'll do more experimentation and building on the gripper and the arm for the robot. Our mentors are working really hard with us helping to solve problems and teaching us new things.

- Ben B

1/6/08

The build season has started! The new competition is exciting and challenging. On Saturday, we all watched the video of the challenge one way or another. Some students went to High Tech High for the official presentation, others stayed at the school and watched the kickoff online. This year's game, Overdrive, is going to be tricky, but fun. It involves throwing or shuttling a huge ball around a track, earning points for both.

Our mentors gave us the assignment to come up with as many ideas as possible when we broke Saturday. On Sunday we went into an intense brainstorming session that lasted from noon to around five thirty in the evening. We spent much of the time in small groups creating ideas from the rules. We identified what we want our robot to do and started thinking about how to build it.

Tomorrow's Monday, and we have a lot of cool things to do. We are going to experiment with new parts and continue coming up with ideas.

See pictures of the track on http://www.thebluealliance.net/kickoff08/

Also, the rules and other information are on the FIRST website, www.usfirst.org

- Ben B

12/15/07

This week, our main event was visiting our sponsors at Bottlerocket, a game making company. It was an exciting trip, as Bottlerocket does work that we all are interested in. When we got there, first we had a guided tour through the offices, game testing rooms, and drawing places on the campus. All the people working there seem to enjoy their work. After this, we gathered in the conference room, where all of our questions were answered and we learned what it takes to be successful in the game making industry. They told us that it took a lot of hard work, and I believe it! We are all very grateful to Bottlerocket, both for their sponsorship and their guided tour of their workplace. Thanks a lot!
- Ben B

12/06/07

We mostly finished up the solidworks class this week. This time we learned more about engineering drawings. The skills required are much different from creating the part. It is important to get these drawings done right or you'll confuse the machinists trying to build your part! We learned terms such as first and third angles, which are directions by which to rotate the part on a drawing. We also learned how to dimension our drawings. Making these numbers and symbols legible is also a large part of the job.

We had to finish up our dovetails so we could work more efficiently when Michael and Shea are here. They are doing a great job teaching us!
- Ben B

12/02/07

The new website is finally out!

Although it is a bit late, it's finally here and it's entirely worth it! The new site boasts a more competent navigation, no irritating splash page, more information for the masses, and a slight redesign from the old appearance. If you have any comments about the new site, feel free to email me at WebMaster@sdarobotics.org, or just talk to me if you see me around class.
- Matt

11/29/07

This was our second week of Solidworks classes. We finished designing a simple flashlight on this CAD program. We learned how to use new tools, such as the hole wizard and the drawing tool. We also sketched a dovetail latch design. This incorporated many of the tools and techniques we've learned and was a bit of a challenge to some of us. We learned that designing parts needs much patience and problem solving, as the part never comes out right the first time.

Meanwhile, other people were working on designing the practice chassis and preparation for the next season. The practice chassis will be used to train drivers for next year, as that was one of our major weaknesses in the 2007 competition.

The model of the new chassis design is taking shape. Transmissions were added to the model and they look nice. I'm eager to see the improved design on the field!
- Ben B

11/19/07

Today we worked on the chassis for this year's practice robot, and on a plate to hold the transmission and motors to it. The transmissions we will use this year are a major improvement over last year. With them, we will be able to change gears using a servo, and they will be much more reliable than before.

Last week, some members of the team started a class in Solidworks, a computer-aided design program. Our instructors are Michael and Shea from our sponsor Asymtek. We enjoyed learning how to turn flat objects on screen into extruded 3-D parts - this was so cool! We're looking forward to the next session and the build season to come!
- Ben B