The Tortoise and the Infrared Sensor

Bonjour! Today on our truly

awesome team, it's a pretty slow one. 

The robot's pretty much programmed, so that makes the programmers kind of useless. However, they are trying to keep busy by looking up ways to program infrared sensors for if we get one. Fun?

As far as the build team goes, they have even less to do. Wait, let me rephrase that, the have a lot to do, they just can't until a few of our mentors come from their engineering jobs, and give some advice on how to build the robot. We took the whole thing apart to change it to a metal base, though, so we have PLENTY to do.

PR's pretty slow too. Just blogging and the Engineering Notebook. The mascots done, and the Engineering Notebook close enough.

So, yeah. Not much today. I sincerely apologize if you got bored reading this. 

Live to See Another Day

Hullo peoples! Since we are going to state, our team continues. YAY! Right back to work we go, fixing the bugs and other problems we found. The build team has taken our robot apart and is working on painting the base.

Over in programming they are seeing what will happen if they adjust the time of the autonomous, Hope it goes well...

The PR peeps are describing our victory at regionals, Writing in the engineering notebook, And just being super happy that we are going to state.

Moral is high, Crabbiness is down, And we are still excited for State.... Did I mention we are going to STATE!?

We are the Champions!

Hey, hey, guess what?? WE"RE GOING TO STATE!!!! I know it's hard to believe, but I swear it's the truth. We didn't win the competition, but we got pretty darn close. We were picked by Fish in the Boat, the best team in Minnesota, and the current World champions. Our team  made it to semi-finals, however, got out on the third round of that. After that, we all knew our fate. We had lost, and that was that. No one had ever expected that we would win. Not until the awards ceremony, anyways.

The awards ceremony was interesting. We won the 'Judges Award' which is, basically, an award the judges give to the team they feel most embodies the concept of FIRST, the sponsors of FTC. We were also nominated for the 'Inspire Award', the 'Think Award' and the 'Motive Award'. I know. A lot to                                                           take in.

The team was exploding with energy the entire time through, and we were all pretty pooped by the end of it. I asked the team members how they felt about winning, and were mostly  excited, surprised, exhilarated, ( That was a fun one to spell), and sore, Except for one who wasn't able to make it, due to health problems. He said he was confused and doped up on medicine. Poor boy.

Well, that's it for now, but don't worry, we'll still be updating every meeting, and have a report on the State Competition, which is February 22.

The Last Day! (unless we win)

Okay!!!! So lets see... We've got today to get all our stuff done that we don't have done so lets hop to it...

The build team has officially brought the robot to the carpet square, I'd tell what that is 'cept i don't know what that is... I think its where they put it to prepare for the showdown- I mean the competition, So that is awesome.Okay so I asked and it turns out a carpet square is just you know, well, a square of carpet. In the hallway.

The mascot is getting some ink, Well okay so its technically paint and paper, But it still looks freakin' awesome, And then it will be perfect.  Do You Hear? PERFECT

Well passing over my little maniac moment... the programmers are still just chill-axing, then we go to the competition Yay!!! But then if we don't place, we have to stop....   ):

The End is Near

Okay, so we are really close to competitions and we are just scurrying to get all of the finishing touches on the team's branches of work.

Build Team is going all out to finish what we started,And here is the game plan. We have got to;

• Fix the left wheel running at all times issue, 
• Get the stencil on the robots body, 
• Raise the front wheels,
• fix the hook that enables them to hang, so that it is legal
• And, Logan Fillipiak and Luke Tollefson are going to practice driving the bot.

Mascot Workers are;

• Painting helmet accents, 
• And adding finishing touches to the front of the torso

Programmers are:

•  taking a nice little break because they got their work load complete, Yay! go us (-:

• And there are the people on the team that just kinda hang out to keep us mostly sane, and they're job will never be complete.

 peace, we out

Manic Monday

With our first ever competition looming over us, the whole team is in a mini freak-out mode. The robot needs tweaking, the Engineering Notebook needs writing, the blog needs updating, and the programs need to be...programmed.

Th build team today made a support beam to keep the robot from being so, as the describe it, "woogiddy," according to Mike Gilbertson, one of our parent mentors. They are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the new motor, so they can replace the one that blew.

Its was another slow day as far as the programming team was concerned. The uploaded a few programs and... Oh yeah! THEY TEST DROVE THE ROBOT FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!!!! Which is a GREAT achievement for our team, and about time, too!

As for PR, we were cooped back up in our little computer cave, updating the blog and Engineering Notebook, and adding pictures to both.

 The mascot is coming along great. Te head is painted, and the body is close. Its a dark purple color (The camera lies!) With a black base and silver highlighting.  Soon, we're gonna have a walking robot! (and hopefully a driving one too! ;)
Buh-bye for now, but more soon to come!

Long Weekends are the Best

hi, right to the point today...

we've got the body of our mascot painted now, except for the shoulders, and its going well on the head. Its practically done, actually. We have the head and body painted black where needed, which is the main color, so, yay!

the programming guys are working on autonomous, but are having a goof off moment right now, since there really isn't much to do.

the build team is done they get to just relax for a day, since there isn't much to do. All I have to say about that is no fair!  >:(

 just kidding... Mostly  :) 

So all in all just kind of a nice easy end of the week, and a great beginning of a three day weekend that everyone's looking forward to.

Hibernation

Today was a pretty slow day for team 7799. With the competition so soon, the entire team rushed to get everything done. Apparently, a little too fast.

With the robot practically done, the build teams day consisted of  tweaking the little problems of the robot , such as a loose wheel to pull the robot up the bar.

The programmers are pretty much done, too, so they spent the day playing video games and pretending to be productive.

The PR team updated the blog and engineering notebook, and continued painting the mascot.

Kind of a boring day, but its better                                                      than rushing to get done.

autonomus

hiya hows it goin'? so today in the wide wide world of robotics the autobotics team is being pure awesomeness, per usual. lets see what all is going to happen today...

The programmers got done programming and are on to experimenting with our adorable robot.... never mind adorable is Not what would be used to describe our...unique robot.

They are actually getting ready to test autonomous on our robot and then adjusting the values on the program.

the mascot makers are doing some body work... literally, right now they are working on the torso. the mascot is going to be awesome, and were off to an awesome start :) 

the build team is working on getting side walls so that we can put our team numbers on the robot. in other news, the are working on trying to get the pull up bar to snap up, so that it can actually do some pull ups ;P