Our team competed and did well. We ended up ranking 33 out of 40. Being that we had no practice, a lot of things broke down during the competition. The whole team worked really hard and fixed problem after problem.

In our last match we competed against the best team in the competition and our robot was smashed. The pistons, used to raise the robot to the second level, were pushed into the wheels and bent a sharp piece of aluminum frame. This scraped the wheels up and we couldn’t move throughout the rest of the match.

Looking ahead, our drivers now have a lot of driving practice and will be even more ready for the London Tournament. There are a few things that will need fixing up after all this on the actual robot. We will also need some more practice on our second level climb.

Here are some photos of our robot in action.

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And here is our team photo with our robot. You may notice Woodie Flowers in the photo. He founded FRC, and he even kissed our robot! 🙂

This was a really great tournament, and everyone was very supportive and helpful when something broke. For now will all get some much needed rest!

We had a problem with the robot arm on bagging day. We took the arm and elevator attachment off before bagging. The old arm bent the bracket that the motor lifting the arm was on.

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In an attempt to make a simpler and lighter arm design, we used the durable, light, but not too cheap lexan, a poly carbonate. With the new arm almost complete, everyone can breathe easier being that the competition is coming up soon. The team has put in a lot of work over March break. We can’t wait for the competition.

During our last night of building, we discovered our SPARK MAX motor controllers weren’t connecting to the software on our laptop. While initially concerning, we were able to debug through reading user support forums and trial and error. We discovered that if the mode button was held while plugged into the laptop then unplugged and re-plugged back in, it would be recognized.

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We worked hard all the way to the bagging date, even while experiencing some difficulties. While everything is functionally ready, some touch-ups will need to be completed when the first tournament rolls around. The whole team is happy though, and we are looking forward to the upcoming tournaments.

We are in the last few weeks of robot building. Our plan is to finish the robot in the next few days. Then we will have a week or so to test drive the robot around. This period of time is meant to break anything that may break during the main competition, so we can fix it and make it better.

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The robot is almost complete, and we are using a elevator with an arm on it to complete tasks in game. Overall the robot seems pretty solid and shouldn’t present any problems.

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The last main things that need done are the wiring up of the motors to the main control unit, and the programming of the robot. It may take some more work than usual to get the robot programmed, because we are using a different type of speed controller this year. There is still a lot of work to do, but we are all looking forward to being done, and competing.

We finished stripping last years robot down to the chassis, and the robotics room has been cleaned up, and organized.

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We started working on this years robot, and are prototyping some parts out of wood. Some metal was cut for our robot’s elevator, and steel rivets were used to hold it in place.