Getting Better Fast

Today, we made quite a bit of progress. We got a new program for...programming, which is so much more efficient. In the few hours we've been here, the programming team has covered everything they've been working on for the past several weeks, and now are done programming until the robot's been built.

The mascot team has the head finished, and now are on to the body. According to them,  the body is a lot easier to do than the head, and they are doing really well on it. You know, measurements and such.

As far as the build team goes, today, we took apart the robot. Again. They need more space for the arm and brick. (The part that gets programmed) Someday, I'm sure we'll decide on a final size.

The  writing team updated the blog and new members page, and worked on the Engineering Notebook.

Well, bye for now. More soon!

More Members, Hooray!

Today, on the team of Autobotics, the build team  focused on getting power to the second DC Motor Controller, so they can pass the robot to the Programmers to make further progress on autonomous.

Over in the the programmers corner, they finished autonomous, and debugged everything! Round of applause to the students working on programming! They even managed to get TeleOp working! Everyone is excited to have made further progress on the robot.

The PR team worked hard on the engineering notebook and completed half of the meetings for it. Today, we have a new person on our team... Mathew! Mr. Bydlon brought cookies to share with everyone, and they were delicious! 

Halloween Too Early

Noah, new member

"It's not Halloween"

The build team put the electronics together so they could drive the robot again. They put a new motor on, because the previous one was no longer working. Allen's family decided to put a Halloween face mask on him before the meeting. He received many strange looks and we all told him that is wasn't Halloween.  We got a new member, Noah Huss, and he is adjusting to being on the team and finding his place quickly. 

The programmers then tested and debugged the autonomous program. The autonomous's original program was not written in the original draft  template so we had to re-download it. 

The PR team has been working hard on keeping the website updated and working on the Engineering Notebook. It's been a lot of work, but they are getting it down swiftly.

In-progress mascot head

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Heads Up!

Hi!! Today we got the mascot head assembled,

and we're working on getting the mouth attached right now.We did have to convince a couple people that mustaches were NOT gonna happen

On the teams actual robot, the build team attached a board to hook all of the sensors and other electric gadgets on. They also replaced  a nut on the robot because it was rubbing on the wheel that worked to helped to make the robot hang from the bar in the competitions.

 The programmers were making different variations of autonomous, and created a program to be able to hang the robot on the pull-up bar.

that's all for today :)

Coffee Time!

Today, the team discovered the coffee!! We made two pots, one was dark and delicious, made by the team's two girls, and one was weak and tasteless, made by someone who shall remain nameless, namely Hunter.

We have almost finished the assembly of the mascot's head, and now all that is left is the rest of the robot body and painting it. Yay?

The build team had to replace a hinge in the robots arm, because the past one made for the robots arm broke. They have been working hard on getting the robot to hang successfully from the bar, and they are getting close.

The programmers enabled the robot to drive up the ramp successfully. They think that they're doing pretty well, and are on track to get most of the programming done by the time the robot is finished being built.

Building, Programming, and Plywood, Oh My!

Today, we worked more on building the robot, and creating a rockin' mascot head for competitions.

There has been a lot to do, especially in the building aspect of the the robot. After fully building the base with tetrix parts, the build team took it all apart again to build it out of plywood. While this may have slowed us down at first, the team believes it will help us immensely in the long run, because then we would have more surface area on the robot to mount things.

Other members of the team started on a mascot that I personally think will be a truly great contribution to robot art everywhere. So far, we've only gotten the head started, but soon we'll have a life- sized robot dancing around with a probably very sweaty person controlling it.

The programming team is hard at work making programs for the soon-to-be made robot that's going to need to be able to move if we have any hope of getting a good spot at competitions. So far, we have a basic movement program, so that the robot can move back and forth, and turn. According to the group of kids working on programming, we should have a program enabling the robots arm to pick up and move blocks, despite the fact that our robot doesn't yet have an arm to move.

Continuing to Build

After a few hours of hard work, the programming team came close to finishing the programming for the dispenser, or for those that do not know much about robot parts, basically, the arm that lifts the blocks.

While the programming team was working hard, the build team finished remaking the electrical board to create more surface area. This now gives them more room to work with when completing the wiring for the robot.

The group working on the mascot went to Menard's to purchase a hard hat for the mascot helmet and a lot of glue sticks! They plan to start on the helmet in the next meeting.

The PR team worked on writing blog post and they took many pictures and videos.

Three Times the Charm

Today for our third meeting, the build team worked on assembling the dispenser, the arm, and the gripper for our robot. They even practiced driving the robot to adjust on how to drive it.

The programming team began learning LabView for the first time. We had a high school programmer help the students learn the new program.

A few other students began working on making a plan for our future mascot. They're still forming plans on the color, shape, and basic design of the mascot.

Building Our Robot

Our head coach, Mr. Bydlon was not expecting much from the meeting. He assumed it was going to be chaos meeting with both the FTC team and the FRC team. While he may have been correct, it was a learning experience for everyone.


This was the FTC team's first time meeting the high school robotics team. Although learning names has been a very difficult process we are making progress.

After the FTC teams were split into groups with the senior high school students they worked on learning programming, building our robot, and creating our blog, Twitter, and Youtube account.

The building and programming teams were very successful! We managed to get a robot moving on the very first day. We had Mike Gilberson, one of our FRC mentors help out us out.

The social media team had a fun time setting up the blog and twitter account. We worked hard writing blog posts and creating a team member page.

Thanks to all of the hard work from our team and the FRC team we had a successful second meeting!

Be sure to follow us on Twitter @FTC7799

Our First Team Meeting

We had our first team meeting. We picked out our logo, along with its color scheme and team name. We also went over team members names and got to know each other.

Our biggest challenge we faced was picking the team color. One of the team members insisted on hot pink, however, the other members gently turned him down. Most of us agreed that it would be--hideous. After much discussion we came to an agreement. For instance, red, purple, and teal were our other choices, and after several long minutes of debating we voted on the three colors. Purple was the majority vote.With the color decided, we moved on to the name.

Within the span of a few seconds, the room became a flurry of commotion. Ultimately, we came to an agreement of "Autobotics." A combination of autonomous and robots.

We had planned to start building our robot, but we ran out of time after discussing our team name and logo. We did, however, have time to watch the game video "Block Party." We discussed our needs and wants for our team and narrowed it down. This skill was one the middle school students learned from the high school robotics team. As we concluded our meeting me toured the Ag shop at the high school where future building of the robot would take place.