2014 - Aerial Assist

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Season Overview

2014 Robots & Game Animation

Team 3847

Infrared

• 3events
• 21-11-0quals
• #5/55best rank
• 3awards

Season Hardware

• Woodie Flowers Finalist Award
• Regional Chairman's Award
• Creativity Award

• Code→
• Photos→
• Events & records→
• Reveal video→
• Design review→
• Highlight video→
• Impact video→

How Aerial Assist worked

FIRST's official game animation for the 2014 season.

January 5, 2014

Aerial Assist Day 1

Day 1 of Aerial Assist went very well. Here is the animation for anyone that missed it this morning.

We worked all day learning the rules and getting familiar with all the ways to play the game. Here is our document with some of our notes about the game.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kHHHsXS8f2SWvJ8VJz-R7RU8aVD7rU9ktbrGgyLCJ6Y/edit

After we got some quick mock ups of the field elements built, we headed to the gym for a brief little session of Human Aerial Assist. 

We tested low goal scoring as well, and it seems like all robots should be able to score in the low goal.

We started prototyping briefly, but not much to see yet. It's going to be the start of a ball launcher built using several pieces from the kit of parts.

Lots more to do before the first weekend is over.

- Spectrum

“I have nothing but applause for those brave enough to fail, and fail again.” - Seth Godin

January 6, 2014

Day 2: Prototyping really begins

Today we continued our prototyping in earnest. We had members working on several different launching and collection mechanisms.

Here is our most well developed ball pickup device. It's a simple over the top roller claw using VEXpro and Banebots parts.

Another of our prototypes is the ball puncher. It uses surgical tubing to pull back a shaft and punch the ball. The goal is to use a mechanism like this to punch the ball over the truss and also into the high goal.

As you you can see this isn't working exactly as we would like but we learned a lot from it. We'll be working on a more traditional catapult tomorrow afternoon.
Here is a sneak peak at another prototype that we should be finishing up tomorrow.

Hopefully everyone is watching all of the great content coming out of RobotIn3Days.com and BuildBlitz.com. They are putting out great content to help teams figure out what they want to build, but remember that watching videos and seeing pictures can't replace good hard prototyping, plus it's fun.
- Spectrum

“All great achievements require time.” - Maya Angelou

January 7, 2014

Day 3 of Aerial Assist

We continued our prototyping today.

The improved roller claw is working very nicely. We're not convinced that we will even use a roller on our final design but we are still working on improving it as much as possible. We are tuning it to find out as much about the different variables as we can. We want to know what is the optimal roller height, roller distance past the bumper, height of the back bar, downward force to press on the ball, etc. All of these little details will make the final design that much better.
We are pretty far along in CADing our drive train for this year. Here is a quick screenshot from our progress.

We have posted some of the details behind this design in our 2014 Design Notebook. Our goals is to make it pretty flexible. We believe that catching may turn into an important factor in this game and having the ability to move omni-directionally will make that task much simpler. We also know that there will be times that we need to stand our ground or attempt to move another robot for this reason we are planning to use an Octacanum drive train that can shift between mecanum and traction wheels. We are building in contingency for allowing us to switch from octacanum to a butterfly drive with standard omniwheels replacing the mecanum wheels and also a standard six wheel skid steer drive if we desire.
Several of our other prototypes are still under construction and not ready for even simple tests, hopefully by the end of the week we will have a solid idea of where we want to go with the robot.
- Spectrum
“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

January 7, 2014

Day 4: Inspiration From Other Teams

We have been putting in some serious hours CADing away at the drive train. It may look simple from the screenshot below but there is going to be a lot going on once it's all finished. The modules are heavily inspired by Aren Hill and Team Neutrino's Butterfly Drive from 2013. They were our pit neighbors at IRI and gave us an awesome tour of the robot.

We broke off into a few groups to design some new prototypes today. Started working on a CAM powered launcher. We wanted a CAM profile and weren't sure where to get a quick one to test with, but then we remembered our friends 148 used  CAM on their 2010 robot, Armadillo. The CAD for that robot can be found on FRCDesigns.com. We printed out a 1:1 version of it and cut it out of plywood on the bandsaw. Hopefully we will get something going in the next day or two.

While looking for other collector options to test in parallel with our roller claw development, we worked on a version of 118's Ballacuda pickup system from their 2008 robot.

We don't plan to use any of these systems verbatim, but starting from where someone else has already been allows us to develop solutions much faster. Everything still has to be tested, modified, and tuned for this years game requirements.

- Spectrum

“Stop waiting for something to happen or for someone to give you permission to do things.” - Kate Kendall

January 8, 2014

Day 5: Prototyping doesn't stop & Square Kit Chassis

Quick update today, we still have a lot of things to prototype before we finalize a design. We're hoping to have a chassis built by next week.

We have a Bootcamp Build day for some of the young teams in the area on Sunday. While working on the CAD files for the AM14U, we mocked up a version that is square 27.5 x 27.5. This was mentioned on Chiefdelphi, but we weren't sure how easy it would be for teams to make. We think it's pretty simple--it's really just making a half-wide/half-narrow robot.

Here is a quick PDF that shows the cut frame rails.

The front and back pieces  are both cut to 20.25".

This square version has a non-symmetrical wheel base but it should still work very well. It also allows the 25" ball to easily fit inside of it. Add a plywood base to the inside and you'll have a very nice chassis for Aerial Assist.

- Spectrum

"My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never". - Duke Ellington

January 10, 2014

Day 6: Need, Want, Wish...

Today was our first design review. We have seen the 72 hour builds, prototyped a little, and  played a human version of Aerial Assist. We think we have a good understanding of the game. Here is how we break it down.

Need:

• Drive
• Speed
• Roll ball out of robot on ground or into low goal
• Sturdy/Rugged
• Catch from inbounder / Collect from Human Player / Receive Inbound
• Hold the ball - securely enough to drive around

Want

• Pushing Power / Torque
• Agility
• Bouncing Ball Control (rebound)
• Catch well from other robots
• Shoot a Pass/Lob Shot
• Variable Power Shooter
• Ground pickup
• Lob to Human Player
• High Goal Score

Wish

• Strafe
• Shoot across a zone (lob from back over truss)
• Shoot from zone line (18' shot)
• Shoot from the wall
• 2 ball auton
• Eject ball on power off

Why bother?

• Brake (mechanical)
• >5' extension...
• Jump
• Turret
• Scissor lift...
• Ground pickup from sides
• 3 ball auton...

There might be more aspects to the game but these are all the ones we covered. We'll be dealing with the programming side of things a bit later.

Today's update is a picture of the current state of our CAD Model. It's still rough, but the drive train is coming along very nicely. We are working on the electronics layout, as well as fitting everything else into the robot. (All the CIMs are just place holders, there will only be 6 on the real robot.)

- Spectrum

"Start by doing what's necessary, then what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible." – St. Francis of Assisi

January 10, 2014

Day 7: It's been a week

We continued improving our prototypes today after our design meeting yesterday. We modified our collector prototype to a version inspired by one of our VEX robots from this year.

          We also continued to improve our shooter/thrower prototypes. Lately we have been working on a thrower that runs off two mini CIMs and throws the ball over the back of our robot. So far we have been trying to improve the range.

-Spectrum
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill

January 13, 2014

Day 10: Back to Blogging

Sorry we missed a couple days. We had a Bootcamp build day yesterday where we helped 5 teams get their AM14U up and working.
We were back to work today, we have several prototypes still in development and we haven’t finalized our robot design.
We worked through the electrical and pneumatic design, and we should be laser cutting on Wednesday after we do all the drawings tomorrow night.

• Spectrum
  “Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.” - Henry Ford

January 14, 2014

Day 11: Drive Train CAD Complete

We finalized the CAD for the drive train today. We are cutting a heavy version for our practice bot that doesn't have a lot of holes that will be in the real version, which will save us some time. Here is the belly pan. It has mounting point for 16 victors/talons, and although we won't be using all of them, it's nice to know we have them.

The prototype shooters still need some work but we have started designing the final version of our intake. It's heavily based on the intake rollers from VEX robots. We also will be able to outtake the ball from its stored position using only the rollers so we can score in the one point goal.
We started construction on our bumpers yesterday. This year we are going to make our bumpers early and we are spending time to make sure they are done very well. Last year we had some issues with the pool noodles sagging a bit after a few competitions, but we don't think that will be a problem this year.
- Spectrum
“Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we are not perfect. ” - Fred Rogers

January 15, 2014

Day 12: Trussing

Tonight we finally started having success with one of our shooting mechanisms. We were able to score in the high goal and truss with this shooter.

This shooter is heavily inspired by Dr. Joe Johnson and the Boom Done Robot in 3 Days team. It currently is running 3 CIM motors in a VEX single speed (5.33:1), a 15t to 30t sprocket reduction, and a final 12t to 22t sprocket reduction. These are just the items we had on hand, and we will hopefully be optimizing this over the coming weeks.

We have been working on this for over a week now, and we strongly believe that having a shooter with multiple shot trajectories will be key to making good clean passes over the truss.
Our chassis is going to be laser cut and bent tomorrow. Our sponsors had a big project that they had to get finished tonight so we couldn't get any time on the laser, so tomorrow one of our students will go to Solarcraft and run the laser and press brake to make all of our parts.
We are finalizing the "Sipping Bird" collector. It's based off this version, but now all of the motors will be contained inside the robot and both roller assemblies are independent.
We still have a few other shooter prototypes to test before we make our final decision.
- Spectrum
"It's always too early to quit." - Norman Vincent Peale

January 16, 2014

Day 13: Sheet Metal

We finished the CAD for our chassis and a few other parts yesterday and one of our seniors who interned with our sponsor Solarcraft was able to go to their facility and cut and bend our chassis tonight.

Collin with the chassis he just cut and bent

We worked on a few more prototypes including a pneumatic catapult and a wheeled shooter. The motor-driven catapult is still the most promising but we have some ideas for the others that may make them win out in the end.

We will have most of the items we need to make our drive train tomorrow afternoon except for a few pieces from VEXpro. This weekend should be full of assembly and more prototype testing; we are working on gathering as much information about the prototypes as we can so that when we build the real version we can know it will work well.

- Spectrum

“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson

January 18, 2014

Day 14: Two Weeks Down

After the sheet metal came in today, we started construction on the practice robot.
We set up a test version of our octocanum modules.

The drive train will hopefully be finished early next week once our Mecanum wheels and hex bearings come in from VEXpro.

This weekend will be a big weekend for us. We should finalize our collector CAD and also get much closer to a final design for our launcher.
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- Spectrum
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“You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.” - Albert Einstein

January 19, 2014

Day 15: Robots and Rookies

 We put together as much of the chassis as we could. This one ways about 50lbs as shown here. The real one will be lighter as some of the main components will be .09 aluminum instead of .125 and we will have more lightening holes.
We pressed in PEM nuts using a hammer and a punch. We’re not sure how long these will hold but we’re hoping for minor things like speed controllers this should be enough.

Today we hosted team 5287 from Community Christian School in Orange, TX. We helped them put together a model of Ri3D Boom Done's El Toro Collector using scrap material that we had. There students will be able to build their own version now that they've better seen how it's done.

We talked a lot more about our launcher mechanism and how we should build supports for it. We're pretty happy with the concept we have going and should be able to get CAD versions of it put together pretty quickly.
- Spectrum
“The thing I remember best about successful people I've met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they're doing and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what they're doing, and they love it in front of others.”  - Fred Rogers

January 20, 2014

Day 16: Mechanism CADing

We worked more on CADing up the game specific mechanism for our robot. Most of it is still in draft form but we’re pretty happy with the direction it is going.

Note: The flappy things have changed drastically in the last few days, and will continue to change. 

Note 2: There is also a second collector pole, it is just not shown in the picture.

We still have some prototype work to do on both the collector and launcher before we are comfortable sending them to the laser, but we think we are getting pretty close.

We're building this with the possibility of up to 14-16 motors. There aren't that many functions, but since the current rules allow for so much power, if you build it in it allows your motors to work in a much more efficient part of their power curve.

Hopefully we will be driving our practice chassis by this weekend.

- Spectrum

“One option is to struggle to be heard whenever you're in the room... Another is to be the sort of person who is missed when you're not. The first involves making noise. The second involves making a difference.” - Seth Godin

January 21, 2014

Day 17: Another Long Work Day

We were off from school for MLK so we had another long work day.
We improved our pneumatic launcher to where it give a nice chest pass. We aren’t trying to make this prototype score in the goal or go over the truss, we are going for extremely compact.

Along with that we continued the CAD for our launcher and pickup mechanism and continued development of the prototype launcher to better fine tune it.

We heard from VEX that our items should be shipping this week so hopefully we will be driving this weekend.

- Spectrum

“Action expresses priorities.” - Mahatma Gandhi

January 22, 2014

Day 18: Parts Arrive

After the long weekend we got many of our orders from week two. We had a large amounts of screws, bolts, and nuts from McMaster-Carr and Bolt Depot. We received our encoders and IMU from Sparkfun, and we also got an AndyMark order which contained part of our PDV–it consisted of Talons and stealth wheels.
We also received several VEXpro packages. We finally received our hex bearings that we have been waiting on, and we also received our VEXpro PDV items along with two 2x1 VersaFrame rails. The biggest surprise was the VEXpro order that we placed late Sunday night arrived today; we ordered parts for the real robot already since we expected a week or long lead time, but they got them to us in well under 48 hours. VEX is really stepping up to make everything right with their customers. We’re still waiting on 4“ Mecanum wheels, but that’s our last back ordered item.

This might look like the same picture from yesterday but several hours have gone into improving it since then. Many of the items are very subtle but will make a huge difference when we actually start assembling it. We started the process of changing our CAD model for the drive train from .125 to .09, it takes some time to make sure all the spacing stays the same. We also worked on the second revision of our collector, which hasn’t been produced yet, but we are already finding ways to improve it.
The launcher had a very successful test and we should have more to post after we get some video during tomorrow’s meeting. (Hint: 2 CIMs and 2 BB775s is 1200W)

• Spectrum
  

"We are all salesmen every day of our lives. We are selling our ideas, our plans, our enthusiasms to those with whom we come in contact." - Charles Schwab

January 23, 2014

Day 19: Launcher Video and More CAD

We finally have some good video of our launcher prototype. It's performing as we expected, with a wide range of potential shots, some of them we didn't even think about as we were designing it. Again this was inspired by Boom Done and we want to thank them for such a great idea.

Our original chassis that will be used for our practice bot weighed in at 19.84lbs. It was made from 1/8" aluminum and didn't have much weight reduction.

The new chassis will be made from .09" thick Aluminum and will weight in at 11.84lbs, It is sliced and diced to cut weight. We know this will add a lot of chassis flex but since we are using Mecanum wheels we're alright with that.

We're also working on the lightening pattern for the back of the robot. Put your opinion in the comments.

 Option 1: Standard Diamond Cutouts

 Option 2: Spectrum Cutouts Standard

Option 3: Spectrum Cutouts with Reverse
We should be driving this weekend, with or without Mecanum wheels, as the practice robot is just about finished being wired. Our goal is to finish the CAD for all the mechanisms over the next two days and have drawings ready to go to Solarcraft to be cut and bent early next week.
- Spectrum
"Whenever I tackled the impossible or the miraculous, I remembered the magician Rene Lavand, who had only one arm. Poet and extraordinary card manipulator, he baffled fellow illusionists by concluding his brilliant demonstrations with, "What I just showed you can also be done with two hands!" - Philippe Petit, Man on Wire, 2002, p. 236.

January 23, 2014

Day 20: Strategy and Tactics

Lots of CAD work today and we worked out some dimensions for our wings that will help us catch the ball and also maintain position of the ball. Not to much to show but instead we wrote down some of the strategy and tactical ideas that the team has been kicking around the past couple weeks.
Questions we’re asking ourselves

What percentage of teams will be able to catch a pass over the truss?

How can we make it easier for teams to catch our passes?

How can we avoid defense on our passes?

How can we speed up the truss/catch process?

What killer features will the best robots have?

How can we be better at rebounding? / How can our alliance be better at rebounding?

How can we play smart defense when we don't have the ball?

How can our alliance best utilize its time?

What's the best way to communicate within our alliance?

Some possible alliances in Aerial Assist

Standard FMI
Forward/Attacker/Striker - Last with the ball. Scores in the high goal. Possess in the alliance colored zone. Hopefully can catch a pass from the midfielder.

Midfielder - The ball handler. Takes the ball from the inbounder and is normally the robot that trusses. Should have consistent and accurate passing options and the ability to quickly acquire the ball from another robot. Possess the ball in the white zone.

Inbounder/Defender/Back - Takes the inbound pass from the human player. Hopefully can catch the pass directly but also could take the ball off the carpet. Extremely important to cycle times, must be able to secure the ball quickly and get it to the next robot as fast as possible. Should play smart defense against the opposing teams. Forward once they don't have the ball. Possess the ball in the opposing alliances zone.

This alliance would play the game in a very smooth motion, with all three robots playing critical roles in amassing the most points possible for the team. These positions are possibly playable by many of the same robots so teams can be flexible in which position they play in a given match. The midfielder robot has a lot of options in this alliance; once they pass the ball they can either help the Forward by playing Full Back or retreat and help the Back slow up the opposition alliance.

Super Goalie + 2 Forwards

Super Goalie - This goalie robot is able to play lock down defense against the opposing alliance while also taking the inbound passes and goalie kicking them over the truss to one of its two alliance forwards. 

This requires a very unique robot, but it could give a big advantage the alliance that can pull off this formation. The super goalie is able to move the ball half way down the field in the air and has the potential to throw to two different robots making it much harder for the defending alliance to predict the location of the throw. The forwards will have to learn to pass to each other if they want to maximize their cycle points. 

A similar system could be played by the standard alliance if their Back robot has the ability to truss the ball at all.

Super Star + Double Back

Super Star- Take the inbounder's pass, throws to itself over the truss, & scores in the high goal.

This alliance will definitely exist at events, especially in matches where alliances might be shorthanded and only playing with two robots. If the Super Star robot can truss and high goal 3 times as fast as the opposing alliance can cycle they are guaranteed to at least keep pace with the other alliance. That's no easy task but when the other alliance has to deal with two defending robots it might be possible.

There will be plenty of other alliance structures, post your ideas in the comments.

- Spectrum

"Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have." - Saul Alinsky

January 25, 2014

Day 21: Ice Day low of 28 degrees in Houston

We had an ice day today so no school. Many of the Houston overpasses were iced over this morning. This only happens every 2 or 3 years, but when it does we overreact a bit, especially compared to what most people from the northern half of the country deal with for several months out of the year. We still met after school since by then the roads had thawed out and much of the traffic had gone down.
We learned that our Mecanum wheels wouldn’t be getting to us till Monday so we decided to put the drive train together using Omni wheels instead for a Butterfly type drive train. We definitively understand why some of the powerhouse teams (148, 217, etc) have used this drive train in the past. It is so smooth and practically anyone can drive it well. Hopefully when we get drive centric control working with the mecanum wheels we will like that even more.
We’ll have video up tomorrow of the robot driving around. Here’s the latest CAD file, and you can see the collection mechanism CAD is coming along nicely.

- Spectrum
"When given a choice, choose the thing that scares you a little. If it's 100% safe, it is holding you back." - Jeff Atwood

January 26, 2014

Day 22: Zoom Zoom

Here is the the video from our Butterfly drive test. This looks really good and is just a lot of fun to drive. If the omnidirectional drive doesn’t work out we will very quickly switch back to butterfly.

We finished up the drawings for our launcher and our collector. Every part that we cut at Solarcraft has to have a drawing that goes with it so that you know how to bend the part after it has been cut. Here is what one of the drawings looks like. They outline how long the flanges are on the sheet metal so that we can program the press to bend the part at exactly the right spot.

Another very important system was prototyped today: handles. We got this idea from team 610 in this CD post. All it takes is some steel cable, a couple cable crimps, and pneumatic tubing. A lot teams probably already have this stuff in their shop. Crimp a loop in the cable then slide over the tubing and crimp a loop in the other end. Rivet/bolt this to your chassis and now you have convenient light handles that can just fold into your frame perimeter. This should work really well on the AM14U Chassis, put one bolt on the outside plate and one on the inside plate. Make one for each corner of your robot. Your drive team will thank you a lot for having handles, and you lower the risk of someone doping your robot.

Speaking of team 610, one of their students, Ryan Tam, put together an awesome design tutorial and parts library. If you ever wondered how the World Champions train their team to design high-quality, reliable robots, now's your chance to find out. We highly recommend taking some time to read over this; our team will be using this to help train new members in the future.

- Spectrum
“You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”  - Maya Angelou

January 27, 2014

Day 24: Octocanum on the ground

Sorry for not having a post yesterday, we were hanging out with a few young teams at the Houston Bootcamp build day round 2.We were working on getting their electrical systems worked out and finalizing their build plan for the last half of the season. We’ll have some of them over to our shop this weekend to work on bumpers and to continue improving their robots.
The Mecanum wheels finally came in today. We were able to get them on our chassis and we had them driving around.  The code still isn’t 100 percent and we don’t have driver/field-centric control yet, but once we do we think this drive train is going to be very fun to drive.

We also had one of our senior students, Collin, working on laser cutting and bending our next round of parts. Here is a video of him bending one of the pieces for our collector.

Tomorrow we should have parts back, and we have already talked to our powder coat sponsor about getting the parts in to them this week. If all goes to plan we might have two running robots at the end of week 5. (Though by saying that out aloud we've all but guaranteed that everything will not go to plan.)

- Spectrum

“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.” - E.M. Forster

January 29, 2014

Day 25: Sheetmetal Everywhere

We just got our second run of laser cut parts back from our sponsor’s facility. One of our students was there till almost midnight getting everything cut and bent for the team. In total of 125 individual parts were produced last night.

We had another “ice” day today so there was no school, but since the roads were clear and the storm advisory was over at noon we decided to have an optional meeting.
We were able to get a lot accomplished since we got the sheet metal back and had things to assemble.

Above are pictures of our right collector and our launcher + back panel for our robot. These were both completely CADed and have a lot of details in them.
The collector is mounted on the practice robot and we were able to do a few stationary tests, but the real test will be tomorrow when we can drive and collect at the same time into our launcher. The launcher isn't complete because we are missing a few parts that will be in later this week and a few 3D printed parts that we need to make, but it is in a state that we can test fire it and we should have some video of it mounted and firing tomorrow.
We cut all the parts for the competition robot yesterday as well, and we are confident in the launcher design and we know that we can make adjustments to the collector quickly. We will be taking all the competition parts to Royalty Metal on Thursday for powder coating.
- Spectrum

“True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery”

January 29, 2014

Day 26: It looks like a robot

Lots of robot pictures today. We got the back panel mostly constructed and the collector mounted. The robot in this configuration weights 117lbs with the battery. That means we should still have weight for MiniCIMs and the catching wings on the competition robot.

We did get a little bit of testing done on the collector and shooter but nothing really video-worthy. Hopefully over the next few days we'll have full system integration and testing video to upload. We also got the competition parts cleaned up and ready to be taken of to Royalty Metals for powder coat tomorrow.

- Spectrum

“I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it” - Thomas Jefferson

January 31, 2014

Day 27: More Power + Collection Testing

We received our 4 MiniCIMs from West Coast Products today. VexPro was out of stock but R.C. over at WCP was able to get us what we needed. They also have great calculators on their resources page to help you figure out belt and gear spacing or calculate your drive trains final speed.
We mounted the 4 MiniCIMs and added 4 talons to our practice bot so we now have 8 motors on our drive train. We didn’t do much driving, but from the little testing we did the acceleration is much nicer now and feels a lot more like our 6 CIM drive from last season.
Our collector testing is still underway; we found some bugs last night that needed to be corrected and we worked on that for most of the day. Here are some clips from tonight’s tests. We still don’t have all the variables right but it’s collecting much better now.

We found a problem with our pneumatic wheel switching at the end of the meeting. For some reason the modules aren't keeping themselves off the ground like they should be in traction mode. We're using 4 1.0625" bore pneumatic cylinders at 60psi, that should be enough to hold up to about 200lbs but that math doesn't seem to be fitting reality. It probably means we didn't account for something in our math. We'll investigate more tomorrow.
Parts were dropped off at Royalty Metal to be powder coated and should be back sometime next week.
We have also been working on getting an IMU setup to give us orientation of robot at all times. We had the first successful serial transfer today of quality orientation data. The IMU has 9 axis of measurement so it is able to reduce the amount of error that you would see from just using a standard gyro.
- Spectrum
“It's not what you don't know that kills you, it's what you know for sure that ain't true." - Mark Twain

February 1, 2014

Day 28: Full Robot Demo for FLL Team Visit

We started the day off with a visit from one of our local FLL teams, from The St. Thomas More School. These students were all 5th through 7th grades and they were all very interested in the robot. Surprisingly some of the questions took a very technical turn and we started talking about the difference between an FPGA and a general purpose CPU. One of the students even told us about his favorite Linux distribution and was pleased to hear that we would be switching to developing in Eclipse next year.

Here is some video of the robot collecting and shooting for the students. Our practice area only has 10ft ceilings so we couldn’t shoot very hard but you can get an idea of what the competition robot will hopefully be able to do.

After the demo we started investigating the problem we found yesterday with the pneumatics on our octocanum modules.  We believe we didn't account for the lever action of the module and the amount of force we put on each cylinder. Our plan is to move to 1.5" bore cylinders but that will take a bit of rework on the mounting, though not too much. Luckily we have a working robot this early so we can catch major and minor problems before we get to competition.
We worked on adding our wings to the robot, which will help us secure the ball while driving, prevent it from slipping out while collecting, and allow us to catch passes. The current wings are made of hardboard but we are planning to move to corrugated polycarbonate. The corrugated polycarbonate was suggested to us by our friends James Tonthat and Scott Rippetoe from Texas Torque FRC#1477. It's apparently used very often in greenhouses but you can get it at a variety of plastic distributors. It's rigid like 1/4" Lexan but much lighter.
We are working on an extremely cool way to hook up an IMU to the cRIO to get an accurate heading. When it's all said and done it should only take a single PWM cable hooked up to a digital input pin on the cRIO. We'll have more on this later.
The last thing we did for the day was work on improving our collector more. We found that it had a lot of wobble because the CAD model had the wrong size holes for the bushing we were going to use. We ended up drilling out the holes for bearings and then packing them with a little bit of electrical tape to stop the wiggle. This fix will not be on the real robot but sometimes you have to do things like that to get your prototypes testable. There is still a very long list of variables that we don't have solved for our collector, here is just a sample.

• Wheel type & diameter (we might move to a roller system instead of wheels)
• Number of wheels and spacing
• Speed
• Angle to deploy down
• Angle to hard stop the rotation in and out

There are plenty more too, all of this will get tested and iterated until we find the setup that collects best. We will probably keep changing some of these throughout the entire season.

Week 4 has come and gone and we're left with 17 days to build the competition robot and hopefully find answers to many of the variables in our robot.

- Spectrum

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." - Niels Bohr

February 2, 2014

Day 29: Mama said there'd be days like this

This is a hard post to write. It’s just been one of those days where nothing goes well. We had some problems yesterday but we were pretty optimistic we would be able to fix them without too much trouble. Things didn’t get better today.
From bad crimps to breaking a handle on the robot to diagnosing a drive train problem for 40 minutes only to realize it was a dead battery, nothing went our way today. We would try to improve things only to make them worse. The current state of just about every subsystem is markedly worse then it was 36 hours ago.
The biggest problem of the night came at around midnight when we were testing our latest change to the collection system and getting ready to test driver centric control. We were driving along fine, we strafed right and then when we went to strafe back left we saw the robot sort of dip and then just completely stop moving. We strafed back and it sort of worked but in a big arc. We thought we might have unplugged a speed controller or gotten something jammed in a gear. When we turned the robot on it’s back to see the drive train we discovered that we had broken one of the rollers clean off our VEXpro 4“ mecanum wheel.

We haven't done much to these wheels at all, we have only had them for 6 days and have driven less then an hour and half on them on FRC carpet only. They haven't been put up against other robots or had any pushing tests done with them, we have just driven around and tested collection for the most part. After looking at the broken wheel we found that the roller didn't spin at all, we checked all the other wheels and have found at least five other rollers that either don't spin or are very tight.
The six of us that were still at the shop at midnight discussed it and unless there is some very strong reasoning by the rest of the team to stay with mecanums, we will be switching to butterfly for this year's drive train. If this were to happen during a match we wouldn't be nearly as effective and the ability to strafe isn't worth the risk or breaking wheels and having to make repairs.
To top off the day of everything going wrong, on our way down from the third floor where our practice area is to our lab we ended up on the first floor. Our lab is on the 2nd floor, literally nothing went right today.
Tomorrow we'll change the wheels back to omniwheels, and we'll halt development on holonomic control and sensors. This may turn out to be a good thing, without worrying about mecanum wheels and holonomic control we'll have more time to focus on other systems. That's at least how we're going to spin it.
15 days left to get it right, tomorrow should be better since we get to watch the Superbowl as a team and have some fun.
- Spectrum
"Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful." - Zig Ziglar

February 3, 2014

Day 30: When life gives you mecanums

Well today was interesting. We started the day by taking off the mecanum wheels from our drive train and replacing them with the omniwheels.

We have the robot set up so that we can remove the end caps of the chassis easily to work on certain parts of it.

We also made our collector not pivot outwards. Originally we thought the collector would need to expand to allow the ball through, but after testing we started reducing the swing more and more. Now we think we can build in enough flex and compress the ball enough that the system won't need to expand. This will eliminate a degree of freedom and make the system much simpler.

While doing this we decided to test different wheels for collection. We tried the set of the mecanum wheels that we had taken off the drive train, because we're trying to make the most of the items we have on hand. Even though they were intended for a much different purpose, they worked surprisingly well. The mecanum wheels are very grippy on the game ball and they are actually making the ball go into our robot better than some of the other wheel choices. We still have a lot of testing to do before we decide on a final roller, but mecanums are currently in the lead.

That last shot shows our backwards tipping point on this robot, so we don't think we'll have a tipping problem. The wings are still very rough, but they are doing their job.

We put the potentiometer on the launcher today and should be able to get the encoder on in the near future. The plan is to use the encoder as a velocity sensor and the potentiometer to set the release point.

We added an encoder to one side of the drive train and may add one to the other if we find a need for it.

- Spectrum

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” -  Maya Angelou

February 4, 2014

Day 31: More mecanum news & catching video

This morning we got a call from VEX explaining that they had intentionally shipped the incorrect rollers with the 4“ mecanum wheels so that they could get the product out faster to teams. The rollers they shipped are for the 6“ wheels and thus don’t provide a completely smooth motion. This is why we were able to break one since 100% of the load ends up on the tips of the current rollers during part of their revolution.
We worked more on collection today. We strongly believe that collection will be more important than shooting in this year’s game. Having a fast and reliable collection system alone will allow you to play in eliminations.
Here is some quick video of our robot catching bouncing balls. We’re hoping to be able to chase down balls that are bouncing anywhere on the field and catch them instead of having to collect them, which should be faster.

We're still using the mecanum wheel collector. We tried to build one out of 1/2" schedule 80 PVC but the mecanum wheels out performed it by a lot. We're going to keep trying different wheels and rollers but right now the mecanum wheels are working really well.
- Spectrum

“The best creative solutions don't come from finding good answers to the questions that are presented. They come from inventing new questions.” - Seth Godin

February 6, 2014

Day 33: Fixing our mistakes

Sorry for no post yesterday, we had a really short meeting since there were parent-teacher conferences. Mostly worked on chairman's award stuff.

We'll start with a video today of us doing some catch testing. We're not really planning to catch that often but we think we're pretty decent at it. If there is defense it might be a different story, which is why we might not be catching very often.

We also received our new proper 4" mecanum rollers today. We're still not sure if we will be switching back to octocanum or not but the new rollers look a lot nicer than the ones for 6" wheels. We'll probably do some side by side tests once we have the competition robot up and driving.
Our shooter has been slowly getting worse since late last week and we weren't really sure why. We had been making some changes on the upper assembly, but no one really looked down at the first couple stages because we figured well, how could those be breaking? We were very wrong.

That is a picture of the belt that drives the first stage of the launcher. Apparently you really shouldn't ever allow your belt to ratchet since you can just rip the teeth clean off the belt backing, we now know that from experience. We moved the belt around to where the bad section wasn't engaged during launch and we got all our distance back. The ratcheting was happening when we didn't have limit switches or other sensors installed on the launcher and we were running it into a hard stop. Now that we have more sensor feedback we shouldn't have this issue anymore. We still might move to chain just to be safe.

We received our bigger bore cylinders,1.5" bore x 1" stroke,  today for our drive train. Somewhere in the design of our drive train we forgot to do some basic math on the leverage needed to lift our robot and now were paying the price by having to redesign to fit the larger cylinders. Had we just moved the point on the modules that the cylinders push down, we wouldn't be in this mess. We made a pretty poor system today which will get us through some testing, but we'll have a more complete fix ready for the competition robot.

We spoke with our powder coat sponsor and they say it will be done by Friday or Monday. We're hoping for Friday but we know we can assemble the robot in the last week if we have to.

We've fixed most of the problems that cropped up over the weekend and we're happy with where the competition robot should be once we get her built.

- Spectrum

"The willingness to share does not make one charitable; it makes one free." ~Robert Brault

February 6, 2014

Day 34: Withholding allowance and 3D printed parts

We’re sort of just waiting on the parts to come back from powder coat at this point. Lots of little things going on but not much major work. We’re reworking the launcher and have added springs to make it easier on the motor to accelerate to top speed. We still have a lot of programming to do before we’re sure we can make all the shots we need.
We’re also making sure that we will have all the parts for the competition robot ready to go once it comes back.
We also discussed our “artist formally know as the withholding allowance”. The GDC has changed the rule to 45lbs due to inclement weather around the country. We actually weren’t planning to withhold that much this year, but with the new rules we probably won’t be bagging our collector and launcher bar. We’ll have a full drive train and tower in the bag, but we should be able to make lots of modifications to the other parts of the robot.

These are some of the 3D printed parts that we have been using this year. There will be a few more as well. We’re finding lots of interesting ways to make parts with the 3D printer this year.
- Spectrum
“So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.” - Caterina

February 8, 2014

Day 35: Launching Better

We spent the day gathering all the parts for the competition robot. We still don’t have the sheet metal back yet but that should be Monday. We want to have everything else ready to go when we get it back, and it should go together like a big Lego set.
We also replaced the belt on our shooter with sprockets and chain. We now have 2 CIMs and 2 BB775s driving a 5.33:1 VEXpro gearbox, that has a 12 tooth sprocket driving at 26 tooth sprocket that share a shaft with 2 15 tooth sprockets that drive 26 tooth sprockets on each arm of the shooter. Our final gear ratio is right at about 20:1. With the chain we have to be much more careful not to stall the motors into a hard stop.
We also started testing different release angles by adding a bar to the launcher arm at different points. This dramatically alters our shot trajectory and can provide us a much further shot. We’re going to play with this more to find the optimal position.
A few minor things as well, we got more air tanks and the real mounting brackets from Pneuaire, we mounted them on the practice bot and had to modify the mounts slightly to make them work the way we wanted. We also put on the 3D printed pot adapter for the launcher and that didn’t work as well as the makeshift one we had before. We’ll have redesign a bit to make sure that it’s very robust. We changed the outward angle of the wings by adding a small spacer to the cylinders, which prevents them from pulling any further out.
Here is a quick video of us testing the ability to drive with two balls. I wonder why we would want to do that?

- Spectrum
“When in doubt, always err on the side of generosity!” - Ping Fu

February 9, 2014

Day 36: Programming, Friends, and Fundraising

We did a lot of work on programming today.
We added in our IR sensor to detect the ball. This allows us to automatically stop our collection and catch commands once the robot sees that we have the ball. This makes catching and collecting much easier. It’s extremely simple code; basically if the sensor sees something within a certain distance it just stops doing the commands. Very simple but should be very beneficial.
We added in our PID position control for the launcher arm. We have added about 60lbs of constant force springs to our launcher so it no longer rests in the down position. We might be removing a couple of those to fix this but we still needed a way to force the launcher to return down after we fired. We do have a potentiometer on the arm so that it know how to return to the stowed position.
We finished turning several of the pieces for the real robot, mostly just standoffs and spacers but they’re very crucial for proper alignment.
We had a few friends over today. Team 4280, N-GEN from Sam Houston Math, Science, and Technology came by and we helped them with some electronics and worked with them to get their bumper frame built. We had team 3666, Bolton Bear Bots, from Alexandria, LA come by to get in a little bit of practice on real FRC carpet. We have been working with them on several items this season and generally just sharing ideas. It was very cool that they had the chance to drive all the way out here work with us today.

At the end of the night we got to do some shooter tests in our gym. It’s working very well. Our 18 ft shot still needs a bit of work but we’re confident we can get it consistent soon. Here are a few of our test shots over the truss.

On a different note Team 987, The High Rollers, have started putting together an absolutely amazing video series on how their team operates. They have been consistently one of the best teams in FRC on a robot and organizational level. Here is the thread about the series and the first video is below about fundraising. Thank you 987 for putting these together, many teams will benefit.

- Spectrum

"Synergy — the bonus that is achieved when things work together harmoniously." - Mark Twain

February 9, 2014

Day 37: Everything is ready

We prepped all the parts we needed for the construction of the final robot. Every little spacer is ready to go and should make final assembly very quick.
We had more friends over today. This afternoon we were joined by the Discobots at our build site. They ended the day by getting some good test shots out of their robot.
We did a bit more programming today and worked on the vision code that will allow us to detect which goal is Hot in autonomous mode.
We worked a bit more on the launcher but never got the consistent 18ft shot we were looking for. It’s not crucial for our strategy so we’ll be stopping the pursuit until we can ensure the rest of our priorities are accomplished.
We finished up the CAD models for our week 6 laser run. It will include a few new parts for our collector and also some replacements for our pneumatic cylinder mounts on the drive train.
The Chairman’s essay is now finally under 10,000 characters but it’s always a struggle to keep it that way. We have so much to say and so little space.
- Spectrum
“Trust your passion, identify your dreams, and find the courage to share them with others, no matter how many times they call you a fool.” - Bill Strickland

February 11, 2014

Day 38: New Collector but no powder coated parts

We didn't get our powder coated parts back today. We have been assured tomorrow. The assembly should only take 3 days but it would be nice if we had all weekend to work with the robot.

We did however get our last run of laser cut parts. Included in this run was some plate hex hubs, some mounts for the pneumatic cylinders in the drive train, and some new collector parts.

Here is the new collector mounted n the robot. It may look the same but it's designed not to rotate anymore. We also finally moved to using 775s on the collector which was the plan all along. The 775s have nearly twice the power that the BAG motors do. That puts our motor count this year up to 6 CIMs, 4 MiniCIMs, and 4 BB775s. We really like our collector for a few reasons, particularly because we don't have to stick anything out past our bumper except for the wheels and hex shaft. We're still a bit worried about bending the mounts but we are working on ways to prevent that. The pneumatic cylinders are very low on the pivot and allow the shafts to be pushed back very easily which means they don't bend or break if we run them into a wall. We can also collect when the ball is off center and we can easily eject the ball forward out of our robot to pass or score in the low goal.

Tomorrow should be basically all assembly and more chairman's award work.

- Spectrum

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” - John Quincy Adams

February 12, 2014

Day 39: Parts are finally back

We got all the parts back from the powder coater today, sadly there won't be any purple powder coat on our robot but the white still looks good. There will probably be a few purple spray painted items as well.

We started final assembly and have gotten pretty far along. We have the full drive train complete and waiting for electronics. We have most of the back panel assembled just need to add the two launcher shafts.

With the 45lb withholding allowance we won't be bagging a collector, wings, or launcher arm so we'll have plenty of time to work on those before our first event, Week 3 in Dallas. All of those mechanisms are very modular and should be very fast to reattach at the event.

- Spectrum

"I have seen many people become good at copying, but then never think to apply what they learned to their own drawings. Applying something from what you study tests you to see if you actually understood what you copied." - John K

February 14, 2014

Day 41: Five Days Left + Chairman's Award

Spectrum 2014 Chairman’s Entry

That’s our 2014 Chairman’s entry for this year. We have put in a lot of time working on it and way more working on the activities that we talk about it in. The Chairman’s Award is FIRST’s highest honor and something all teams should strive for.

Sorry for not having an update yesterday, nothing really exciting has happened. We're assembling the competition robot, putting some of the bumpers together, and getting ready to spray paint some of our other parts.

Here's a quick picture of our wiring for the competition robot. We're still not as good as some of the west coast teams (254, 968, 1538, etc.) but we're pretty happy with it. This is still missing pneumatics, sensors, the main breaker, and a fewer other things, as well as three talons, which will be withheld with our practice bot and the MiniCIMs that attach to them.

- Spectrum

"I hope you're proud of yourself for the times you've said 'yes,' when all it meant was extra work for you and was seemingly helpful only to somebody else." - Fred Rogers

February 15, 2014

Day 42: The last push

Today was the first of 4 straight 12+ hour days for us. Our school’s schedule works out very well and we always have a 4 day weekend for presidents day.
We spent most of today wiring; we won’t know for sure if this is our best robot till it plays some matches but we can already tell that this is our prettiest robot. Lots of little details are getting hammered out, not many major changes, though we did change the location of our solenoid mounts.
We are moving to VEXpro traction wheels with rough top tread along with our omniwheels in our Butterfly drive. We tried the new Versawheel DTs but sometimes you shouldn’t mess with what works. The 2“ wide traction wheels have far more traction than the versawheels, it’s not even close. When combined with our 8 motor drive train the acceleration in low gear makes it look like our robot is going to take off. We’ll be adding some ramping functions so the drivers can keep the front wheels on the ground. The traction wheels are actually about 4.25“ diameter once we mounted the tread on which caused some issues in our wheel wells so we had to turn down all of our standoffs to 7/16“ instead of 1/2“.
We had Discobots in the house tonight and they’ll be working at our place all weekend. We’ll also have at least a few more teams over for the Houston practice session. We don’t have much of a field this year, but this game is sort of like soccer: all you need is some carpet and a ball and we should be able to practice.
- Spectrum
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” - Maya Angelou

February 16, 2014

Day 43: It's really pretty

We have spent way more time making sure that everything on this robot is in the right place and looks good this year. Last year we had a lot of little issues because something would come unplugged or get plugged in to the wrong place. That won’t be happening this year.
We’re also doing 15 hour days today and tomorrow. Last little bit of time with the competition robot before we put it in the bag.

That's just a small corner of the robot, the theme this year is #AllWhiteEverything
We're pretty sure we are going to be slightly over weight like 121lbs after we add the MiniCIMs and 2" wide traction wheels to the robot at our first event (we're withholding them so we don't have to buy spares). So we are going to have to go on a small diet and remove some less needed things here and there.
The first day of our open lab / practice day was a very big success. We had two rookie teams and three veteran teams in our shop today working on their robots. Some of the teams need help with construction and others just need a place where they can stay late to finish their robot. We're happy to help either way. The last weekend push is hard no matter what, and we're happy to make it a little easier for some teams.
- Spectrum

“If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” - Zig Ziglar

February 17, 2014

Day 44: The robot is complete (except for all the iterations we still have to do)

We had the competition robot driving and shooting today. At first the robot was doing something very interesting: it was shooting straight up in to the air. The ball would actually land back in the robot. This was not the intended result. We figured out that our launcher bar for the competition robot wasn’t bent at the correct angle and it was just a little shallow. We bent it a few degrees more and it’s shooting better than the prototype. Collection is about as good as we could ask for. We have over a 180 degree window for the ball to hit the collector sticks where it will still collect.
Tomorrow will be spent programming and filming our reveal video.
We also talked about strategy and scouting again today since we were able to watch some of the webcast from the scrimmages from around the country. One of the main points of debate was what is important in this game. In most games shooting percentage and shots taken are two of the most important stats; last year you wanted robots that could get Frisbees in the goal. This year it’s different since each alliance only has one ball; we have to use stats that are more similar to traditional sports like soccer, basketball, football, and rugby. In basketball a very important stat for point guards is your assist to turn over ratio, which basically says how good you are at setting up your team mates for points with the ball in your hand. We think that a similar stat in Aerial Assist can be Assist Generated to Lost Ball ratio, we want to compare how often a team generates an assist by passing to a team mate to how often they lose the ball. Lost Balls can occur in many ways: dropping the ball while driving, missing a shot, throwing a truss pass that isn’t quickly secured by a human player, team mate or the same robot, or any other way that the ball gets out of control of that team. Lost balls are going to be time killers for teams and cycle time is the most important thing for an alliance. Ball recoveries may be another important stat because you want teams that are able to recover a lost ball quickly and reliably. We’re also going to be keeping track of things like inbound catches, tackles, deflections and much more. Since not every team needs to score, advanced metrics will be even more important this year.
We wrapped up our practice open lab today by having 4 teams in our shop working, practicing, and getting ready for their events.
We have had people working 41 hours over the last 3 days. We have another 10+ hour day ahead of us tomorrow.
- Spectrum
“The losers are the ones caught up in that afternoon rush hour. The winners drive home in the dark.” - Neal Boortz

February 18, 2014

Day 45: Filming

We started the day trying to get through a few problems that have crept up on the competition robot. Nothing too major there was a popping noise in one of our drive modules that we have discovered was a bearing rocking in it’s seat. We also had some issues with getting as a consistent shot as we want but found a few options to make that better.
We filmed most of our reveal video today. We’ll film a bit more tomorrow afternoon before we bag and should have it up sometime on Wednesday.
Around 8pm we received a call from a local team, 4155 SHARC, because they were having trouble getting their cRIO to image after breaking the sidecar. We actually had them bring their electronics board to our shop and we found that one of their students had mistakenly wired their cRIO to 12v instead of 24v. Surprisingly it will still work pretty well, except it won’t take an image and will have other random errors, but it does boot and the imaging tool can find it. Once we found the cause of the problems, we got them squared away and they should be practicing again tomorrow.

For one reason or another this photo was taken during filming of the reveal video.
- Spectrum
“You should bring something into the world that wasn’t in the world before. It doesn’t matter what that is. It doesn’t matter if it’s a table or a film or gardening — everyone should create. You should do something, then sit back and say, “I did that." - Ricky Gervais

February 19, 2014

Bag Day: Infrared

Infrared

Reveal Video
Reveal Photos
To discuss the robot head over to our CD thread.

It's in the bag.

 The handles even work when it's in the bag.

We withheld the collector, the launcher bar, the traction wheels, and a few other things. Lots of things to iterate over the new couple weeks.
- Spectrum
“When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” - Buckminster Fuller

February 23, 2014

Day: 51: Inspiration

We took a short break after bag day and didn’t meet on Wednesday. We met Thursday but only really looked at reveal video and did a little work on the practice bot to reattach some of our withholding weight for testing. Friday and Saturday were spent volunteering at the South Texas VEX Championship. We helped setup the event and then we were referees, score keepers, and part of the field reset crew. With over 60 teams there it was a huge event. We had four fields running at once with a single division. The winning alliance was led by teams from Galveston.
Inspiration

There is currently a thread on Chiefdelphi.com about inspiration and generating new ideas from old ideas. We want to take this time to acknowledge of a few of the places were gained inspiration for some of the features on Infrared.

Ri3D Boom Done Team: If you look at our robot, you can see the overall structure of the systems is inspired by Boom Done. Dr. Joe Johnson and his team put together an extremely effective robot in only 3 days. We were really impressed by its versatility and that it had the potential to meet nearly all of our design goals. We had been building prototype catapults and punchers but we were worried about being able to implement systems to provide a wide variety of shots and passes. We also wanted an open top design with a back panel that would allow us to easily catch balls from the human player and possibly other robots. Boom Done's overall structure met these goals. We also knew there were a lot of places for improvement after all it was designed in 3 days and we had six+ weeks. The collector was one of highest priorities; we wanted to be able to get the ball off the floor as quickly as possible. We also knew that leaving the collector deployed would increase the risk of it getting damaged and it wouldn't allow the ball to be secured. We went through at least 4 major iterations on the collector before we got to the non-pivoting independently dropped down, Mecanum collector that we have today. We added wings to the side of the tower to help with catching and to secure the ball even more then we drive. We also knew that the launcher could be improved, because its motor powered we figured that if we added more motors we could increase its acceleration and thus increase the balls exit velocity again giving us a wider variety of shots. We prototyped the shooter using a 3 CIM gearbox that we had used on our previous year's drive train. We replaced one of the CIMs with two 775s to give us even more power. We have been experimenting with constant force spring on the launcher bar to help with acceleration even more but there are some draw backs, such having to lock the launcher down instead of just having it rest at any point.  Our drive train is also different but that was inspired by another team.

Team 3928 Neutrino and Aren Hill: We didn't use the choo-choo mechanism that many people are so found of that Aren Hill demonstrated this year but we were inspired by a drive train that he helped design last season. Neutrino's butterfly modules were extremely impressive when we were pit neighbors with them this summer at IRI. The simplicity of just pushing down on the module and having it sprung up on its own was very cool. Our original plan was to use their shifting concepts in an octocanum configuration but we ended up back at butterfly after a few problems. We modified it to allow us to add MiniCIMs to each module and also include 2" wide traction wheels. Another difference is we put our omni-wheels to the outside of the frame which makes our traction drive a little less stable but it does allow it to turn better.

Sheet metal Designs of 148, JVN, and many others:
We have been learning about sheet metal design for the past two seasons. When we first got into it we looked really closely at the Robowrangler robots from previous years, like Raptor and Tornado. We also had a huge number of our questions answered by JVN. Since then we have been improving and had a student learn to run the laser and the break to cut and bend all our parts. These two threads on chiefdelphi provided a huge amount of advice on solid drive train design. Thanks to the mentors from 971, 973, 488, and others.

610 Helpful Tips:
We posted about this earlier but this thread on Helpful hints for all is a great read. Because of it, we added an attached velcro strap to our SB50 Battery connector, we stood off our Power Distribution board from the belly pan to allow us to mount things under it (Radio power inverted and lights), and we added wire rope and pneumatic tubing handles (These might be the best feature on our robot). In a different thread Mr. Lim of 610 led us to these potentiometers. They are continuous rotation single turn pots, and we use one our launcher and they've been great.

On board volt meter from team 1818:
This is one of the best features we have put on a robot-- it weighs almost nothing and just plugs in to our terminal strip for the lights. It couldn't be simpler. We bought ours from overseas but Adafruit and others sell them. We expanded this concept to the entire back panel of the robot, which is the central display for all the information on the robot.

VEXpro:
Our last two robots have relied very heavily on VEXpro products. Nearly all the gears, sprockets, and pulleys on Infrared are from VEXpro. Their Versaplanetary gearboxes allow for some extremely nice designs because of the reduction you can get in such a small package. 

Thank you to all the people that have inspired our design choices and more than anything taught us cool things-- that's one of our favorite parts about the FRC community.

- Spectrum

"It's a great thing, for someone to feel that they can draw inspiration from you." - Chloe Sevigny

March 10, 2014

Day (not counting anymore): Dallas Regional starts on Thursday

We have been quiet the past couple weeks but we have been very hard at work.
We got the chance to practice with a few of our local teams this past weekend and we are very pleased with the practice performance. Hopefully it will all translate to the competition robot.
We have a few additions to add in to our 45lbs withholding allowance including an entirely new shooter bar assembly. The bent conduit was giving us some inconsistent results at times, so we iterated and now we think we won’t have any shots going straight up into the air.

After watching weeks 1 and 2 of competition we also made a few minor tweaks to the way we hold the ball and also to our planned strategies. We're very excited to get Infrared on the field in a few days and see how she handles Aerial Assist.

- Spectrum

"Strive for continuous improvement, instead of perfection." - Kim Collins

March 18, 2014

Dallas Regional Recap

We competed in Dallas this past weekend. We finished with a 9-7 record overall and made it to the semi-finals. We were the 4th overall selection for eliminations and we got to play on an alliance with our friends FRC#231 and FRC#2950.
Here is the YouTube playlist for all of our matches this year.
Here is one of our favorite matches of the event.

Our launcher gave us problems all weekend. We practiced with 118 before the event and had very little problems with consistency or accuracy. When we were on the practice field at Dallas we could make shots just fine but when we would go out for a match our consistency was no where to be found. We will be working on changes to improve the shooter before Lone Star.
We also submitted for the Chairman's Award at this event. We had a great presentation but the award was eventually given out to our friends from the Woodlands FRC#1477 Texas Torque. They are one of the best teams in FRC and have deserved to be recognized for their efforts for many years. Below are our poster from our presentation and our feedback form from the judges. We have a lot of stuff to change before we present again at Lone Star in week 6.

- Spectrum
"Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street." - Zig Ziglar

March 18, 2014

Inside Infrared: Bumpers

We are going to start our Inside Infrared series with something that seems pretty easy, our bumpers. Teams have been iterating bumper designs for a long time.

Here are our bumpers for this season. The blue set is 19.5lbs and the red set is 18lbs. Each bumper is made from a 10ft piece of 1x6 which is really 3/4" x 5.5" solid wood. This is much cheaper and easier for us to use since we don't have a table saw. 

For our fabric we used 1000D Cordura that we purchased from eBay for about $10 a yard. We bought 4 yards of each red and blue and will have bumpers for at least 3 seasons from that purchase. 

To mount our bumpers we used a sheet metal supporting structure that is inspired by 148's 2011 robot, Raptor. The bumper support goes around the entire robot and it most be put on over the top of the robot. Here is the drawing of what we had laser cut for our mount.

To actually latch our bumpers on to our frame we use butterfly latches that are commonly used on road cases. We found these during the off season and retro fitted them on to our 2013 robot for our off season events. These are great for bumpers since they allow for tool less install and remove of each set. We also purchased these from eBay, they are about $2.50 each and we use 4 on each bumper set. Make sure to the get the ones that include the springs they make securing the bumpers much easier.

They attached to the robot in these slots that we put into our front and back frame rails.

Along the bottom of the bumpers we attached 1" x 1/8" angle aluminum that secures the bottom edge of the bumpers and also seats them securely against our frame.

For the past several years we have just painted on our numbers. We end up having to touch them up through out the season but they are easily visible from the stands and last a whole event. We custom make stencils our of manila folders that use our branded font.

We didn't have many bumper problems at Dallas. There were a few matches that we had to pry up on corner of our bumpers because they slipped down past our frame but that wasn't a very big problem, they would only drop about an 1/8" which still keeps us within the bumper zone.
- Spectrum

"In many ways, it's the things that are not there that we are most proud of." - Jonathan Ive, iPad designer, on all the features that are missing from the iPad.

March 19, 2014

Iterating: Pneumatic Launcher

We have been working on our robot in the past few days since Dallas. We had several problems with our launcher at event when ever you put it out for a real match. It just wasn’t consistent.

It was pretty easy getting the prototype working and we should be able to do the final make over, quickly on Friday at Lone Star. We did have to play around with launch geometry but it wasn't that complicated. We also looked pulse timing and we found we can change our shot pretty easily using it.

- Spectrum

"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." -  Vince Lombardi

March 20, 2014

Inside Infrared: The Back Panel

 One of the features we are most proud of on Infrared is our back panel. It integrates our launcher and all of our pneumatic system. It also has a place for our instrumentation panel.

Starting at the top is location for our launcher bar to mount. Below that is a radio mount that uses the screw mounts on the back of the radio along with Velcro straps to secure it. The Velcro straps also secure the radio power connector so it doesn't come loose.

Below the radio is the second shaft is the intermediate shaft for the launcher it takes the first stage reduction and moves power to both sides of the launcher to keep them even.

Below that shaft is the mounting location for three of our air tanks. 

On the right side we have our pneumatic controls, it includes all three of our gauges and both our regulators along with our vent valve. The pneumatic instrumentation is mounted with the regulator mounting nuts.

To the right of the pneumatic instrumentation is our tether port, voltage display and main breaker.

The tether port that we use is a common keystone connector for use in a wall or similar home installation. We purchased our from Amazon. Then there is just a small Ethernet cable that runs up to the router from this panel.

The voltage gauge is a simple two wire voltage gauge that plugs into the same breaker location that use to power our LEDs off of a terminal strip. We bought them from overseas to get them cheaper.

The power switch is mounted on stand offs so it's recessed. It's very easy for a hand to turn on or off the robot but it is nearly impossible for any object or robot to accidentally hit the power switch.
- Spectrum
“Good design is often invisible, but it can contribute to reshaping the way our society works.” - John Maeda

March 23, 2014

Practice with 1477 & Running Layups

Yesterday we were able to go up to the Woodlands to practice with our friends FRC#1477 Texas Torque.
While there we got to work on our running shot with our new pneumatic launcher.

We also worked on an automated truss shot that ensures we are fully inside the white zone before firing the truss.
- Spectrum
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little."  ~Edmund Burke

March 24, 2014

Inside Infrared: Collector

If you followed along during the build season, you saw nearly all of our collector prototyping. We spent many hours getting to the final version of our collector. This is truly iteration at it's best.

We initially took our cues from the 72 hour builds that mostly used over the top rollers.

After that we looked into a version of team Boom Done's El Toro style collector. We modified the axis of rotation to allow for smoother contact with the ball. This system worked alright but it still wasn't fast enough for our needs. The prototype also had the collector motors out past the bumpers which was the opposite of our design goals. Overall we were happy with the speed of collection and we thought this would give us a wide angle to collect from. We also tried several other failed attempts during the phase including spinning a polycarbonate stick and other solid shaft collectors like Boom Done's original design, we didn't like that they had to expand so far around the ball and thought the wheels would be better.

In the next video you will see the first sheet metal version of the collector. It has 3 degrees of freedom being able to move up and down, left and right and spin each collector stick. Again the system worked but we know improving it would be necessary. 

During this process we had found that we kept needing to tighten the surgical tubing that we used to all our collector sticks to pivot in and out. Eventually we realized we could hard mount them and just use the ball compression to allow us to collect them. At the same time we tested the collector wheels (formally known as mecanum wheels) on our collector. They worked very well. They allowed us to center the ball and collect from a very wide area in front of the robot. At this point we were still using prototypes and bolting things down to pieces that weren't designed for it. 

The final version is actually pretty simple. It uses 2 pneumatic cylinders (1 1/16" bore, 1.5" stroke, double acting), 2 BB775 motors in 10:1 VersaPlanetary Gearboxes with 1/2" hex output shafts and simple sheet metal plates. To extend the hex shafts we used colson live hubs from 221systems. We did have to cut down the hex output shafts from the VPs this allows the coupler to fit right up against the gearbox. Just on the other side of the coupler we mount a hex bearing in a small sheet metal c channel. The bottom wheel is a 3.25" VexPRO versawheel and the shaft is an uncut 18" long VEXpro 1/2" hex shaft.
We put together a quick gif showing all parts that go in to the collector mechanism. It really is rather simple.

The spacers in this setup are all VEXpro tube axle with 1/4-20 bolts going through them.

To stabilize the two structures we have a piece of AndyMark churro tube that is tapped on both ends with a 1/4-20 bolt screwed into it. We actually use this bar as a hard stop for our launcher bar as well.
We call this collector "Sipping Bird" because we thought it looked like a drinking bird when it was first CADed. We also didn't know what a drinking bird was called at the time.

You may have seen in our reveal video that we had purple hubs on the collector wheels. Those were 3D printed parts but when we practiced with them we were able to break them when they got caught on the side of the field. They worked fine in compression but once they were in tension the plastic could not take the stress. We moved back to the real VEXpro hubs and had no problems at the Dallas Regional. We did have a small issue when we got entangled with a  robot that had a net but that was it. We also had 4" Versawheels in the video and in the reveal but we found the smaller wheels worked much better so we moved to the 3.25" wheels with the hex bore already in them.

The distance between the two hex shafts on the collector is about 23". We compress the ball to have it go through the collector.

Solidworks CAD files of Sipping Bird

- Spectrum

“Anyone who says failure is not an option has also ruled out innovation.” - Seth Godin

April 6, 2014

Lone Star Regional Update Qualification Day

We finished day 1 of qualifications at the FRC Lone Star Regional in Houston Texas ranked #3 out of 55 teams. We have a record of 7-1 with 2 more qualifications matches to play tomorrow.

During the afternoon award ceremony we were honored to receive the Creativity Award for several of the unique features on our robot. This is the first award the team has won for engineering features on any of of robots.

We have all of our match videos archived on YouTube and you can watch them here. The full regional will be archived in this playlist.

Tomorrow we will be playing 2 more matches and then heading in to the eliminations rounds we are very excited to see how the event unfolds.

Matches will be streamed tomorrow at this website.

https://photos.spectrum3847.org/2012-FRC/2012-Dallas-West-Regional/i-tmWBhhH/A

We hope you will watch

Thank You,

- Spectrum
“When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.” - Maya Angelou

April 9, 2014

Lone Star Update Elimination Day

For a full list of thank yous read this post on chiefdelphi.
The third day of Lone Star was very thrilling. We had the chance to end the qualification rounds with only one loss but when one of our alliance partners had to sit out a match due to an electrical error we lost a hard fought match to some very good teams. Our qualification record of 8-2 was enough to make us the 5th seeded team.
During alliance selection we wound up as the 4th seeded alliance captain and selected our friends 5287 Jersey Voltage and 2881 The Lady Cans. Both of our alliance partners played great matches in the elimination rounds and our alliance played very well together. We won our quarter final round and had to play the #1 seeded alliance of 148, 118, and 2585 all teams we know very well. We had 3 of the toughest matches at the event but eventually we were topped by that great alliance. In the third match all three of our alliance partners had pretty catastrophic failures to their robots. Our sidecar was completely blown and our alliance partners both couldn’t drive for at least the last 30 seconds of the match. After investigation, we believe all of these problems were robot issues and not field problems.
The finals put 4 of the top 20 robots in the country against each other. It was a small preview of of what many of the matches at Championship might look like.
All the matches from Lone Star can be seen on our YouTube Page. We are also working on documenting our streaming setup and should have that out before to many of the off-season events start up.
During the award ceremony we were honored to win the Lone Star Regional Chairman’s Award.

We are proud to show you our 2014 Chairman's Award Video

For the full essay and judge feedback forms head over to our CD white paper here.

We are now headed to championships from Apr 22-27th in St. Louis.

The robot leaves tomorrow afternoon.

- Spectrum

“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.” - Maya Angelou

May 6, 2014

Summer Plans

Spectrum is going to be busy this summer. We finally uploaded the archive of our build blog to Chiefdelphi.
Our full calendar can be seen at Calendar.Spectrum3847.org
This month we have our end of year banquet on the 20th. That weekend we are running a very large demonstration at the Texas International Comic Convention Comicpalooza, we’ll have 13 FRC teams there over 4 days. There will be over 30,000 people in attendance to see all the action.
In June we have a few small demonstrations setup early on but we’ll mostly be focused on preparing for the Texas Robot Invitational, an off-season even we are hosting on June 21st. The planning is still on going but Houston area teams should expect an invitation sometime this week or early next week. This event is invitation only. The event will be free for all participants and it will have a full FRC field.

We also are attending RoboReboot in Ft. Worth on June 28th. More teams should sign up for this event. It’s going to be a blast.
July has us hopefully attending IRI and we are also running a CAD workshop for teams on July 22nd-26th. We are also hosting a mentor workshop on July 11th-12th for mentors from around the state. We also run our free SPECTaculaR summer camp for two weeks in July at the Spring Branch Boys and Girls Club.
We end the summer with the Texas Robot Roundup in Austin the, defacto Texas State Championship, August 1st and 2nd.
After we come back to school we will attend the Red Stick Rumble in Baton Rouge, LA, on August 31st.
We have a very busy schedule but we’re excited.
- Spectrum
Synergy is the highest activity of life; it creates new untapped alternatives; it values and exploits the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people. ~Stephen Covey

May 8, 2014

Justin Ridley - This Is How I Work

Justin Ridley is our second mentor from FRC#118 The Robonauts. He is another FIRST success story, having started on a FIRST team in high school, mentored a team in college, started his career as an engineer, and continues to mentor a team now. Justin is the key man behind 118's recent run of exceptional reveal videos. You can hear about his job at NASA, how a skiing accident brought him into robotics, and more.
[Responses from October 21, 2013]

Name: Justin Ridley

CD Username: Justin Ridley

Current Gig/Job: Robotics Engineer at NASA/JSC

Alma Mater/Degree: Michigan Technological University / B.S in Biomedical 

Current Team(s): 118 (2005-Present)

Former Team(s): 27 (1998-99), 221/857 (2000- 2004)

Location: Houston, TX

Hobbies: Traveling, Playing Hockey, Reading

What inspired you to do what you do? Tell us a story.

My sophomore year of high school, my math teacher (Woodie Flowers award winner, Kyle Hughes) asked me to join our school’s new robotics team. I declined because I wanted to spend the winter on our school’s ski team instead. It turns out I must not have been a very good skier because I ended up breaking my leg during a race. With skiing out of the picture, I decided I might as well join the robotics team.

There are a lot of stories about FIRST changing people’s lives, and I feel like mine is probably pretty cliché. But cliché or not, it’s just true. I didn’t have any real interest in engineering prior to FIRST. With my gimp leg, I found myself in an environment that slowly changed the way I thought about things. I had fantastic mentors on Team 27 and due to them, and the program, I learned that engineering was definitely something I wanted to pursue. This led me to go up to my mentor’s alma mater, Michigan Tech, and study engineering. Three other alumni and I started a FIRST team up there and it has continued affecting my life since.

Being at Michigan Tech I had the opportunity to apply for a co-op at NASA down at the Johnson Space Center. This allowed me to get my foot in the door for a full time job here, which I love. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be where I am today if it were not for FIRST. I can probably say the same for that broken leg, but I like to give most of the credit to FIRST.

My story has inspired me to continue mentoring students in the hopes I can help them make similar stories of their own.

What is your day job, and how’d you get there?

I started answering that question above. After coming to NASA full time, I started my career at NASA as a Flight Controller for the International Space Station (ISS). For about 7 years I worked with the group operating all of the life support systems on ISS from Mission Control. During this time I volunteered as a mentor on The Robonauts (118). After years of working with the other mentors on the team, they convinced me to transfer to where they do their day jobs, the robotics group here at JSC. Our job is basically to build really cool robots. It’s like FIRST with a bigger budget, and I love it.

ISS Mission Control Room

What is your favorite story to tell about robotics?

Like most of our peers, there are too many stories to pick one favorite. A lot of my favorites involve the intense moments between matches of a tournament, making repairs, talking strategy, etc. Back in ’08 our robot, Ballacuda, had a crab drive we had built for a few years. Something within it broke during the Lone Star tournament and in the process of fixing it after a match, we induced some strange electrical problems. One thing led to another and mechanism after mechanism seemed to have some issue. I specifically remember somebody yelling, “Just tell me what we have on the robot that works!”, which space nerds will recognize is quite similar to a Gene Kranz quote from Apollo 13. Even with all the stress and excitement, I couldn’t help laughing at the time. We struggled through each match, trying to get things back to 100%. At one point we sent the robot out with only three of the four wheel modules… bobbling around the track. There have been many intense moments between matches since then, and once in a while I like to jokingly yell out that quote while there are a dozen hands in the robot frantically trying to fix something.

What's your favorite robot that you didn't help build?

Chief Delphi’s (47) 2000 robot. Back then we didn’t have all the motor options we can utilize now. Building complex mechanisms was a much more difficult task and robots were often a lot simpler. Simple, however, was not part of 47’s vocabulary in those days. The arm/manipulator on this thing had like five different motions to it. It would snake down to fly under the bar and then extend back up to dump balls, all with a swerve drive underneath. One of my favorite FIRST memories would be watching one of the first elimination rounds of their first tournament. After dumping a load of balls they swerved over to the opponent’s goal and started sucking their balls out. Almost nobody in the stands had ever seen them do this, or even know it was possible (they hadn’t used that feature until the finals). Needless to say the crowd went absolutely nuts. This robot always serves as inspiration to me… keeping it simple is great and all, but sometimes it’s fun to shoot for the moon and really do something crazy.

What apps/software/tools can't you live without? (Work/Robotics/Home)

I use this all the time: http://www.engineeringslidechart.com/

The couple of things it doesn't have, I added myself. There’s probably an iPhone app with all this info, but there’s something about having a sliding chart in your hand that really makes you feel like you’re doing some real engineering.

What's your workspace setup like? (Work/Robotics/Home)

Nothing too special about my workspace. Generally a mess of papers, parts, random nuts, bolts and tools, all of which prevent me from finding my trusty TI-89 calculator and Mitutoyo calipers when I need them.  

What do you listen to while you work?

Spotify. I have a fairly eclectic musical taste. I’m a big fan of music festivals, such as Sasquatch or Austin City Limits. Look at the lineup for any of those from the last 10 years and there’ll be a lot of stuff I enjoy. I also listen to NPR a lot, and sometimes I’ll bring up something like The Jimmy Fallon Show on Hulu and listen to it in the background… what can I say, I enjoy distractions.

What’s your schedule like during build season?

Officially our schedule is MWF from 5-9 and 12-9 on Saturday. Unofficially… well let me just say that after 16 years I have not yet figured out an appropriate robot/life balance during build season. I think because building these robots just demands so much. One thing I love about 118 is that we’ve got incredibly dedicated people involved. That dedication is contagious and there’s usually people working on some part of the robot 5-7 days a week, many times very late into the night.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

I wouldn't say I’m the best at anything. The other 118 mentors would tell you I’m really good at a week 3 panic attack about the direction of our robot and if we’re going down the right path.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

Nothing specific comes to mind, so I’ll share some advice I wish I would have received. If you’re a high school student about to start college, take a break from FIRST. It’s too hard to be a mentor, keep your studies up, and enjoy life the way you should be in college. In addition, don’t stress about graduating as early as you can. Go out and get internships and co-ops, study abroad, take extra classes. In my opinion, all of these things are way more important (especially the co-ops) than getting into the real world a year or so earlier.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

In the off season I see quite a few movies and watch a lot of TV. I’m sure there’s something better I could be doing with my time than catching up on Breaking Bad or binge watching The Wire.

Fill in the blank. I'd love to see ________ answer these same questions.

Dennis Hughes of Team 27. He taught me a lot back in the day and has plenty of good stories about robots.

Anything else you want people to know about you?

In 2005 I made a short video just for our team of our robot at the 3 week mark in order to get everyone excited about our progress. I continued this the following years and this evolved into the Robonauts release videos. Almost more than building the robot, I enjoy making the robot videos. Our team has put a priority on trying to make our robots look good, and showing them off in our videos. In the last days/hours of build season when we should be fine tuning mechanisms and getting some drive practice, we instead spend that time shooting down helicopters, launching prototypes through driver stations, and making sure the robot lights are working just right so we can get the perfect shots of it driving around. In other words, our priorities are a little out of whack, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.  

“Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” 

– Winston Churchill

May 23, 2014

Comicaplooza Day 1

 Today was the first day of Comicaplooza 2014. It was great being able to bring FRC and VEX robots to so many people and we get to do  it some more over the next 3 days.

Setting up the FRC robots

Setting up the FRC robots

VEX and VEXIQ Demo

Walter E Jones, the first Black Power Ranger, driving our robot

- Spectrum

“The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little.” - Montaigne

May 24, 2014

Comicpalooza Day 2

We had our biggest day of the weekend with 12 FRC teams represented and several VEX teams.

Teams in attendance

118 - Robonauts

624 - CRyptonite

1429 - KAOS

1477 - Texas Torque

2585 - Bellaire Robotics

2587 - DiscoBots

3103 - Iron Plaid

3335 - Cy-Borgs

3735 - Klein Bots

3847 -Spectrum

4587 - Jersey Voltage

5287 - FLARE

Students after playing Laser Tag

Father points out the robot action to his son

Klein Bots working on their robot

A view from behind the drivers

Introducing new people to FIRST

Children are ready to feed the bots and watch them score

Group Picture

Helping a wrestler with their workouts.

More photos are on our Flickr Page.
- Spectrum
“Creativity is the residue of time wasted.” - Albert Einstein

May 29, 2014

Comicpalooza Recap Video and Photos

Photos are available on our Flickr Page.
Also you can discuss the Comicpalooza demonstration on this CD thread.
- Spectrum

"Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much." - Helen Keller

June 3, 2014

Paul Johnson - This Is How I Work

Paul has been a mentor on team 1429 since its inception. He teaches engineering and is one of the go-to mentors in Texas for help with building strong Chairman's Award presentations and teams. Paul has been working on inspiring students and improving their lives for many years. He talks below about his career teaching engineering and photography.

[Responses from October 3, 2013; Updated on May 6, 2014]

Name: Paul W. Johnson 

CD Username: pjohn1959

Current Gig/Job: Engineering teacher at Galena Park High School

Alma Mater/Degree: The University of Houston, B.S. Industrial Distribution

Current Team(s): FRC team 1429

Former Team(s): -none-

Location: Galena Park, Texas

Hobbies: Golf, Reading, and my dogs

What inspired you to do what you do? Tell us a story. 

My father worked for NASA here in Houston. My childhood heroes were astronauts and the space program.  I guess I have always enjoyed working on, and building things. When I got to Galena Park, they needed a co-mentor for the robotics program. I didn't know exactly what I was getting into, but after one semester I found that robots was my new obsession. I learned a lot that first year, mainly studying how teams were organized and how they ran their program. I was drawn to how outreach programs helped inspire students. From that moment, I knew my calling was to the Chairman's program. I have never claimed to be a 'robot' person, but I do think I understand the workings of a successful Chairmans program, having won 4 RCA's. I have already picked up 2 new teams to help mentor for the 2015 season, so I am looking forward to a very productive year.

What is your day job, and how’d you get there?

I teach two engineering classes. These are both associated with the Project Lead The Way organization. The first one is Principles of Engineering, and the other is Aerospace Engineering. I also teach a Commercial Photography class.

What is your favorite story to tell about robotics?

My favorite story is how we worked to change the culture of the students in our program. When I first started, our team president was a Hispanic female. She was also number one in her class.  She was planning on going to the University of Texas and getting an engineering degree. Her father was very much against this, and told her that she should stay at home with the family. After many discussions with her parents, they finally conceded to letting her go and attend U.T. This paved the way for her two younger sisters who went on to graduate and attend colleges and enter the engineering program. 

What's your favorite robot that you didn't help build?

That’s easy, the 2008 robot from FRC Team 1114, Simbot SS. Their solution to the autonomous (hybrid) period was truly ingenious. Then, their simple design helped them to dominate the 2 minute driver controlled period.

What apps/software/tools can't you live without? (Work/Robotics/Home)

My favorite program to use is Excel.  I find I can use it for most document creation. I also use Photoshop and Coral Draw for graphic creations.

The apps that I really like to use are Satellite Tracker, so I can watch them fly overhead at night, FRC Spyder to keep up with current scores from other regionals, and VEX Via to track VEX competitions.

What's your workspace setup like? (Work/Robotics/Home)

I do not have an office in the robotics room. I have to bring my materials with me. At home, I have a laptop set up on the table in front of the couch, so I can watch TV and work at the same time.

What do you listen to while you work?

I usually get to listen to the kids screaming and having fun. I am also indulged with their hip-hop music they like to have blaring in the robotics room. I prefer peace and quiet, but I give that up to have the kids be productive.

What’s your schedule like during build season?

My robotics work schedule is usually Monday through Friday 2:30 to 6:00 pm. Then, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Saturday. Our school district does not allow us to work on Sundays.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

I don’t think that there is anything that I do that is better than anyone else. I do like to support my kids and help them succeed in whatever they are trying to accomplish.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

Never give up. Make your dreams a reality. This was told to me by my parents when I was going to college. This inspired me to finish and get my degree.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

I guess that I’m a Homer. I like to see teams from the United States win. The latest was watching Oracle Team USA come back from an 8-1 deficit, to defeat Emirates Team New Zealand in the 34^th Americas’ Cup. The robotics team watched the final races with me in the room.

Fill in the blank. I'd love to see ________ answer these same questions.
Glenn Lee (FRC 359). 

"The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'"

- Ronald Reagan

June 6, 2014

Weekly Links for 6/1/14

Here are the links for the week of  6/1/14
Engineering Link: NASA’s Low Density Supersonic Decelerator is prepared for a test in Hawaii
Cool Kickstarter: GoRemote Bluetooth 4.0 LE Waterproof Remote Control
Engineering Link: Space X tests a prototype for a reusable rocket that can land exactly where it took off 
Ted Talks: How synchronized hammer strikes could generate nuclear fusion.
-Spectrum

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.”

— Henry Ford

June 12, 2014

Engineering workshops for young girls

This week we worked with two groups of girls and taught them to program Lego robots.
On Monday night we worked with local American Heritage Girls in our lab and helped them on their way to earning their Engineering Badge.

More Photos in the Flickr Album

This morning we took our show on the road to Houston Baptist University to help Girls Inc. of Greater Houston at their Camp SMART. 

More Photos and Video in the Flickr Albums

Time Lapse Flickr Album

- Spectrum

"When one teaches, two learn." - Robert Half

June 17, 2014

Texas Robotics Invitational is this Saturday

  We would love for you to attend the inaugural Texas Robotics Invitational on June 21, 2014, in the Strake Jesuit Competition Gym, 8900 Bellaire Blvd, Houston, Texas, 77036. There will be 32 FIRST^® Robotics Competition (FRC^®) teams participating in the event, planned and organized by Spectrum, the FIRST Lone Star Regional Committee, and Houston area teams and volunteers.
The teams will be competing in AERIAL ASSIST^®; an FRC^® game that challenges teams of high school students and engineers to build a robot that can autonomously launch large exercise balls into goals seven feet high while under the control of student drivers. Each match pits two alliances of three teams against each other. The alliances must work together to earn the large point bonuses earned through teamwork. Each alliance must move the balls down the field while also attempting to slow down the offense of the opposing alliance.
The event consists of qualification matches that are played with randomly assembled alliances. The teams who exit the qualification rounds in the top eight are designated “alliance captains.” The alliance captains then select their partners to play with in the elimination matches held in the afternoon. Each alliance is also given a randomly assigned fourth partner that completes their alliance. All 32 teams will be playing in the elimination rounds.
The goal of this event, with its unique alliance selection process, is to promote cooperation among teams and to strengthen the community of Texas FRC teams. In addition, T.R.I. gives teams more play time and provides an opportunity to practice competing on a real competition field. This event is free of charge to all invited teams and has the generous support of the Texas Workforce Commission, FIRST in Texas, and the FIRST Lone Star Regional Committee.
The event is also free and open to the public and press. This is a great event for children of all ages to learn about robots and the fantastic STEM programs that exist around Texas.
Spectrum is the engineering team from St. Agnes Academy and Strake Jesuit College Preparatory.

- Spectrum
“The one thing that matters is the effort.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

June 18, 2014

P.J. Lewalski - This Is How I Work

P.J. has been on team 910 since 2007, a teacher in training at Oakland University, a trained referee and a dedicated member of The Foley Freeze. He was inspired by FRC to pursue a career in teaching and he talks about his life changing experiences he has had with his team. 

[Responses from May 10, 2014]

Name: P.J. Lewalski 

CD Username: P.J.

Current Gig/Job: Full Time Student at Oakland University, Substitute Teacher at Bishop Foley Catholic High School, Camp Counselor at Camp Ozanam, All Around Lackey for the Bishop Foley Drama Department

Alma Mater/Degree: Wayne State University/B.A. in English and History, Currently at Oakland University/M.A.T. in Secondary Education

Current Team(s): Team 910 – The Foley Freeze (2007-Present)

Former Team(s): None

Location: Madison Heights, MI

Hobbies: Reading, Watching Sports (New England Patriots, Detroit Red Wings, and Detroit Tigers), Arguing About Sports, Binge Watching Netflix, Camping, and Robotics

What inspired you to do what you do? Tell us a story.

Well in 7^th grade I was at Bishop Foley’s open house, looking at all of the different clubs and teams and whatnot that the school had to offer. The robotics team was doing a demonstration and I knew that was what I wanted to do during high school. So in 2007, my freshman year, I joined the team. Back then there were only ten or eleven kids on the team and we only had a few mentors, none of whom were particularly organized. None of the freshman ever knew when there were actually meetings, so when build season rolled around none of us had any real knowledge of, well, anything. But that was when the fun began. I have never learned more than I learned in that first build season, the mentors and older students were absolutely fantastic in teaching all of us as the season progressed. After this I was hooked. Over the next few years I got more and more involved with the team, culminating in my election as team captain as a senior in 2010. 

While I hate to do it, I’m going to be cliché and say that my involvement in FRC changed my life. I’ve had people question this statement, as my majors have absolutely nothing to do with STEM. History and English? What kind of FIRSTer picks those majors? But FIRST did lead me to choose those majors, albeit along an indirect route. As a senior I spent a lot of time tutoring the younger members of the team, helping them with their homework and the like. This is what made me realize that I loved teaching. While in college I decided on dual majoring in History and English because those were always my favorite subjects in school, and I’ve had some less than stellar teachers in both subjects that I know turned a lot of kids off to them. So my goal is to be able to show students that these subjects can be fun and interesting too, opening paths to kids that might not have otherwise seen that they exist. So, in my mind, this is similar to FIRST’s goal of expanding STEM, just in my case I’m focusing on other subject areas. Makes sense, right? Probably not. But that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. So my involvement in FIRST and Team 910 definitely changed my life, and this is why I haven’t been able to stay away.

After graduation, I decided to take a year off from official involvement with the team in order to make sure that I could focus on my schoolwork. However since I knew that all Michigan teams are required/strongly encouraged to provide two volunteers for every district event, I decided to help out 910 by being one of those volunteers. On a whim, I signed up to be a referee, not expecting to be picked to be one. To my surprise I was asked to do it, and I refereed two districts that year. Including those two, I’ve now refereed at 28 events (19 official and 9 off season) in the past four years. While I can’t say this with 100% conviction, I believe that I was the most experienced Aerial Assist referee at the end of the season, with 7 events and over 750 matches refereed this season. So that’s kind of cool. In addition, beginning in 2012 I became 910’s Strategy and Scouting mentor and this past year I also began helping with Media and Award Submission.

I love FIRST, I love what I do with team 910, I love volunteering, and I love watching my students grow into young adults. The “I” is my favorite letter in FIRST, as my goal every time I go into our build space is to inspire the students to reach their full potential.

What is your day job, and how’d you get there?

Currently my main job is as a student. I just graduated on May 1^st, 2014 with my Bachelor’s Degree in English and History, and in the Fall I’m starting work on a Master of Arts in Teaching with a Secondary Education Certification (Kind of a mouthful, I know). Along with being a student I also work as a substitute teacher at Bishop Foley, which is kind of weird because I still have siblings that go there. That makes for some fun classes. I also work a lot with the Drama Department at Foley, my mom runs it so I’ve kind of gotten roped in over the years into doing more and more. I started out as one of the guys in charge of the sound board in high school and have now evolved into the co-producer of all of the shows we put on, which pretty much means I do the paperwork my mom doesn’t want to do. Finally, during the summer I work as a camp counselor at Camp Ozanam. Besides FIRST this is my favorite thing that I do. Camp Ozanam is run by the St. Vincent de Paul Society and is provided as a free camp for underprivileged kids that would otherwise be unable to come to a summer camp. The camp is on a beautiful piece of lakefront property in the thumb of Michigan, on Lake Huron, and I love spending my summers up there. Overall my end goal is to become a high school teacher of History and English.

What is your favorite story to tell about robotics?

Oh there are so many…but there is one clear favorite. During my senior build season, my dad had a major stroke during Week 3. Like, “would have died if it hadn't happened just as he was getting off of his shift in the ER” major. As the second oldest of eight kids, this dumped a lot of responsibility on my lap as I tried my best to step up and help with whatever my mom needed so that she had time to go down to the hospital to visit him. As can be imagined, this began to cut into my robotics time. However my teammates and the mentors were completely understanding, doing whatever they could to cover my responsibilities when I couldn't be there. Various parents were constantly giving me food to bring home so my mom wouldn't have to cook, and every day before dinner the entire team would say a prayer for my dad to get better. This just solidified in my mind the importance of FIRST and the power it had as an organization. These people weren't just my team, they were my second family. Without the support of everyone I don’t know if I would have been able to finish out the season. A few weeks later at the Kettering District Event during Week 1, our lead scout had a breakdown and was unable to keep scouting organized. As captain I stepped up, knowing this was what my team needed and what my dad would want me to do, and during the first few qualification matches I completely redid our scouting system and started organizing the rest of my team in order to try to get some semblance of data. This turned out to be necessary, as at the end of the day on Friday we were ranked number one. We ended qualifications on Saturday ranked 2^nd and we were picked by the number one seed, Team 67 the HOT team, and together we picked Team 70, More Martians, as our third robot. After some tough elimination matches we ended up winning the district, which was the first official event win for 910 in team history. As one can probably imagine, the entire team freaked out and there was screaming and hugging and crying and it was amazing; I’ll never forget that feeling. The next day I went with my mom down to the hospital to visit my dad and brought him one of the medals because, while he didn't know it, he was my inspiration at that event and I used my personal inspiration as fuel to motivate the rest of the team. I would be a liar if I said there weren't any tears in the hospital room that day.

What's your favorite robot that you didn't help build?

Just like everyone else who’s been featured in this blog, I have to say this is probably the hardest question to answer. I have a great respect for the robots built by all of the “greats,” so it’s really hard to pick just one robot. So I’m going to cheat and list a few.

·         469 in 2010: Just such a dominant robot, and not just because of the redirection. The fact that at an off-season event (MARC, I believe) they took that entire structure off and were still one of the best robots there was astounding.

·         67 in 2012: I loved HOT’s utility, do-everything magic arm. This was my personal favorite HOTbot, it was just amazing to watch play.

·         33 in 2013: It was an adorable little vacuum bot! How can you not love it?

·         1986 in 2014: While I didn’t see it play as much as I would have liked too, I just really liked the overall look of Tusk. 1986’s robots of the last few years have all been very nice looking, and they’re one of the teams that I look to for inspiration.

·         254 in 2014: That 3-ball auton though. I had the honor of refereeing on Curie this year, and watching this robot’s run to Einstein through some very tough competition was amazing to watch.

What apps/software/tools can't you live without? (Work/Robotics/Home)

FRC Spyder, I’m constantly updating it and following all of the teams that are competing in a given week. My FRC Manual App is also frequently opened, as it’s a super convenient way to look up and search rules while reffing. I use Microsoft Excel a lot to create scouting sheets and do some simple analysis of teams during our Friday Night Scouting Meetings. But my number one and two robotics tools are a legal pad and a pencil, as any of my scouts can tell you. There’s just something about taking notes on one of those yellow pads of paper that I just can’t do without, even as technology advances around me.

What's your workspace setup like? (Work/Robotics/Home)

I don’t really have a fancy workplace setup, it’s just wherever I happen to have my laptop and phone. I’m a simple guy with simple needs, all that I require is a table with a little space and I’ll make it work.

What do you listen to while you work?

I generally just have Pandora running in the background almost all the time, but what I listen to depends on what I’m doing. I love classic rock, Queen is my go to band when I’m doing scouting analysis work. While I do research for school I’ve learned that Flogging Molly and the Dropkick Murphys go perfectly with historical research, while Disney music keeps me while I’m doing research on literature (don’t judge me). I’m also a huge fan of third wave ska, Streetlight Manifesto and Reel Big Fish are two of my favorite bands in that genre.

What’s your schedule like during build season?

During build season 910 meets Monday through Friday from 6 to 9 and Saturday from 10 to 4. Personally, I only come two or three times a week depending on what kinds of projects my students are working on. I’m there more frequently as the end of build season approaches, as that is usually when I have time to sit down with some students and work on developing our scouting system for the year’s game.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

Reaching shelves that are high off of the ground (I’m 6’ 8”). Besides that, I’m pretty good at remembering robotics names and team numbers and what their robots looked like in various year, it comes from having watched a lot of matches over the past eight seasons.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

The best advice I’ve ever gotten has come from my mom, but it’s really hard to pick just one thing that she’s told me over the years as the “best.” But one of the more impactful things she’s always told me is that it doesn’t matter what you do with your life, as long as you’re happy. One of my favorite quotes of hers is “I don’t care if you grow up and become a garbage man, as long as you’re the best garbage man you can be and you go home at the end of the day happy.” This had a large impact on my decision to become a teacher, because even though I won’t be getting rich anytime soon, it’s what I love to do.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

Netflix. When I’m in a bad mood or just burnt out after the robotics season or finals week I’ll sit down and watch an entire season of a TV show in a day. In that same vein, another guilty pleasure of mine is doing nothing. Sometimes I just need to sit down and not do anything for a day. I’ll go up to my family’s cottage on Lake Huron by myself and just relax on the deck. It’s horribly unproductive and I’m sure there are much better things I could be doing but it’s fantastic to just have no responsibilities every once in a great while.

Fill in the blank. I'd love to see ________ answer these same questions.

Jim Zondag (Team 33), Libby Kamen (Team 1923), Bob Bonczyk (Team 107)

Anything else you want people to know about you?

P.J. stands for Philip Jr. I know you were wondering.

“How about we just don’t scout the World Championship?” – My head scout, Jack Greiner 2013

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War

June 23, 2014

Thank You for an Awesome T.R.I.

(As posted on Chiefdelphi)

Thank you to everyone that came out to the inaugural T.R.I. this weekend. It was a fantastic event and all of that is due to the fantastic people that helped put it together. I promise I tried to make this short, however I failed.
First off thank you to Lucia Sevick for organizing a large amount of the event from bringing in volunteers to getting the table rented. Her experience with running events and getting all the little and big things checked off was amazing. T.R.I. wouldn’t have happened this year without her.
A huge amount of gratitude is owed to Texas Workforce Commission and FIRST in Texas. Their finical support allowed us to put on this event and remove the entry fee for teams. Thank you for all you have done for FIRST in our state, we truly appreciate it.
Mary Jo Maciejewski & Dominic Baula are two new teacher mentors on Spectrum this year and they led the school and facility side of planning and operating this event. Thank you so much for everything you did to make TRI a success. Also, thank you toStrake Jesuit College Prep and their facilities department for working through all our requests and helping put on a great event.
T.R.I. was a success largely due to the great volunteers we had working the event.
Chris Culbert didn’t really have a set position at TRI, I’m not really sure if he does at any event but he is always solving problems and working to give teams, students, and volunteers a better experience. Thank you for everything.
Judy Bryant (57) was our lead at pit admin as she is at the Lone Star regional and numerous other robotics competitions throughout the year. Cecilia Cisar was helping her out at this event as well. Thank you for all that you do for the teams and keeping that part of the competitions running so well.
Thank you to our referees at this event, they were Rachel Smith, Alan Cisar, LaQuinta Parker, Scott Rippitoe(1477), & Robert Oakley(1477). They had a number of people helping them scoring each match including Spectrum alumni, parents, and volunteers from team 3103 Iron Plaid.
We had a phenomenal field crew at TRI. Led by Mark Koors who made the trip to Texas to FTA our event and see how the new AM field perimeter would work out. AndyMark sent along Brett Heininger and Connor Forbes with the field who were awesome the whole event. FTAA for TRI was Aaron Graeve, a 1477 alumni, who has been a staple at Texas events this year helping to fix problems all over the place. Dave Cheuvront and Eldon Jackson were charged with keeping the field and the field reset crews working efficiently and they did a wonderful job of that as always. Scott Eddy and Fran Goundry(3103) were operating the scoring table for the event, and they even managed to work through our crazy elimination alliance selection process, I’m sorry and thank you. The TRI field reset crew included members and alumni from 1477, 3103, & 3847.
Paul Johnson(1429) was our MC and Game Announcer and he had a difficult job doing both tasks and keeping things moving. Thank you for your hard work.
Luis Medina(118) and The Robonauts ran the video, web stream, music, and a whole host of other things for the event. Thank you & it’s always great working with you guys. Nothing was really going are way in the morning but we came up with creative solutions to our problems. Next year we’ll get song selections for every team, instead of just the ones we think of on the spot.
Mrs. & Mr. Mendoza, Mike Outlaw (624), David Stoltz, Jim McAuliffe (3847) handled our queuing responsibilities making sure that teams were on the field and ready to play all day long. During eliminations half the time we didn’t know which alliance was supposed to be red and which was blue and we even switch bumpers mid round once but we got everything working and the matches that needed to be played were played. Thank you for your hard work.
Thank you to Lana & Steve Henderson(624) for getting the radio kiosk up and running and all the teams ready to connect to the field. 
We had three safety advisers on hand for our event. Marilyn Cisar, Robert Tinker, & Steven Treese(624) kept everyone safe at the event and I happy to report we had no major injuries at this event.
I want to thank all of Texas Torque (1477) for their help setting up and tearing down the field both processes went so much smoother having you all there. Mr. Ball, Chase, London, Domino, Robert, Matthew, Aaron, Scott, and the rest of the way to many of you for me to name right now, thank you.
I want to thank all of the students and parents on Spectrum that spent the last few weeks preparing for this event. Concessions were led by one of our parent volunteers Teresa Smith and a number of parents and students who did an awesome job. There are a ton of little details that make events run well and they wouldn’t have happened without you all. From making driver and volunteer badges, programs, signs, and a whole host of other things. Thank You.
Lastly I want to thank every team that choose to come to our home and play robots with us. Some of you had very long drives (3741 Grulla HS had a 5.5+ hr drive) to come compete, thank you for making the journey. We had 3 pre-rookie teams (Pearland ISD, Katy-Taylor, & Katy-Tompkins) and I have heard they all had a great experience working with the veteran teams and working towards building strong programs for this coming year. Our goal for this event was to build the community we have in Texas and give more teams experience to help them in the future. I hope each team was able to use this event to build their programs, train drivers, make new relationships, and learn.
I am sure I missed people but we are truly grateful to everyone that helped put on this event. Thank you all for coming, we had a wonderful time, and we can’t wait for next year. 
We’ll be sending out a team survey in the near future but most importantly please let me know how we can improve.

- Allen Gregory

"If necessity is the mother of invention, it's the father of cooperation." ~ John Ashcroft

June 25, 2014

Spectrum News: TRI Recap

TRI Recap

Post TRI Press Release

July 1, 2014

Alex Cormier - This Is How I Work

Alex Cormier was one of the founding members of team 1126 and since then, he has been on several other FIRST teams. He designs and makes items such as trophies, custom graphics, etched glass, and other creative custom projects on his website: www.TwoPencilDesigns.com.
In this edition he tells us the story of how he got interested in FIRST and why he chose to stick with it. 

[Responses from June 1, 2014]

Name: Alex Cormier

CD Username: Alex Cormier

Current Gig/Job: Machine Builder

Alma Mater/Degree: Alfred State College; Electro-Mech; Ass.

Current Team(s): 1405

Former Team(s): 229, 1126, 1930, 2228, 3181

Location: Rochester, NY

Hobbies: Robots, Darts, Bon Fires

I want to thank Team 3847 for the opportunity for me to participate in this great initiative. The opportunity to learn about other people in the FRC community is great.

What inspired you to do what you do?

The truth is FIRST inspired me to be and do what I am about nowadays. Back in my youth I was playing football and wrestling. One evening during wrestling practice, I was on the mat and couldn’t raise my left leg more than 3”. I went to see the doctor the next day. I needed surgery for a dislocated hip and wasn’t allowed to play any more physical sports. That same year, I was at home watching tv when I noticed these robot competitions on ESPN. I looked over to my mom in the kitchen and told her I want to do that some day. Amazingly enough, when school started back up the next year, there was an informational meeting for a team in my high school, SparX out of Webster, NY team 1126. Back in 2003, was our first year and it was amazing, so I have been hooked ever since.

What is your day job, and how’d you get there?

In this day and age, one income is just not enough to get me by with all my toys. J

During the day, I am a machine builder. I wire and fabricate equipment for automated machines. I build anything from small enclosures to giant 140’ 4 line conveyor systems to assemble fuel injectors.

At night, I have my own business; Two Pencil Designs. We like to design items to help contribute to the robotics community. The other half of the business is glass etching, where we go to a few local festivals and sell our wonderful glassware.  
Here's a link to my website: https://web.archive.org/web/20141221050023/http://twopencildesigns.com/wp

What is your favorite story to tell about robotics?

My favorite story comes from my very first competition. After we won the competition at buckeye (thanks to 27 and 540), the driver came running over to me and in the process of going crazy, we knocked over the huge section of pipe and drape. Celebrate at all costs, right?

What's your favorite robot that you didn't help build?

Team 67’s 2004 machine. I had the liberty to see and compete with that machine for 1 regional victory and 1 divisional victory. That was a beastly machine and so good looking. Vinyl flames make everything look better.

What do you listen to while you work?

There’s usually a radio or two on in the shop at work. Just the local stations like oldies, rock, and country.

What’s your schedule like during build season?

Robotics is my favorite when it comes to winter. (Our local NHL hockey team isn’t that great anymore…) So I will go to as many meetings as possible. I can easily say that I have been to robotics 90% of the days from kick off to bag day. That also includes voluntary days.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

I always like to think of things that I can make money on. I would walk to through stores, look at items and see what I can do to make them better and sell them.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

Nothing ever gets done, without first trying.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

Currently it is Darts. I have joined a few local leagues. It’s a great time and lets me keep that competitiveness when robotics isn't going on.

Fill in the blank. I'd love to see ________answer these same questions.

Dustin Benedict.

Anything else you want people to know about you?

If you need any vinyl graphics, team awards, and, pretty much anything else, contact me! Alex@TwoPencilDesigns.com I love to get creative and build things!

I have been doing FRC since 2003 and was a student from 03-05. From 2006 to present day, I have been in the following roles: lead mechanical mentor, coach, Lead FLL mentor, a volunteer at many regional and championships, an off-season competition committee member, and business owner. 

“There’s only one way to succeed in anything, and that is to give it everything. I do, and I demand that my players do.” – Vince Lombardi

July 19, 2014

Wendy Holladay - This Is How I Work

This week we are looking into the life of Wendy Holladay, a very supportive member of her team, always helping and encouraging her students to get the energy to move forward. She is a dedicated founder to her team and doesn’t let anything get in her way. 

[Responses from Jun 4, 2014]

Name: Wendy Holladay

CD Username: Wendy Holladay      

Current Gig/Job: Electrical Engineer

Alma Mater/Degree: BS Chemistry (1980), BSEE in Electrical Engineering (1981) both from the University of Miami

Current Team(s): FRC 1912 Combustion

Former Team(s): Various Jr. FLL teams

Location: Slidell, Louisiana

Hobbies: Cooking, Baking, Jigsaw Puzzles, Traveling to National Parks

(2013 Bayou Regional: Wendy Holladay pictured with daughter Rachel, son Sam, husband Ken and long-time robotics friend, Curtis Craig, who is also a Woodie Flowers Award Winner at the Bayou Regional and who presented the award. Missing are the two older Holladay children, Ben and Annie.)

What inspired you to do what you do? Tell us a story. 

I had a BS in chemistry and I was marrying a math professor. I realized that having a PhD in chemistry would make is difficult to find a job in the same place as my husband. Chemistry requires a PhD. I was always better in engineering so in 1.5 years, I got my BS in electrical engineering degree.

What is your day job, and how’d you get there?

Thirty-two years ago I answered an ad in the newspaper. I’m the Electrical lead on a rocket engine test stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. We test developmental rockets, not production ones and many times we are surprised at the results.

What is your favorite story to tell about robotics? 

Going into the 2010 season, our team’s robot had been dead last two years in a row. I knew we couldn’t continue like this. I had a vision of remaking our team so that instead of being centered only around the robot, that we would center our FIRST’s vision and outreach. At that time, none of the other mentors on our team saw the importance of the Chairman’s Award and what it stood for. I actually got a lot of pushback. Winning the Chairman’s Award our first year (2010) was absolutely incredible but it was even better to watch the students as they won over and over again (2010-2013). It was after our first win that the entire team became incredible energized. There was a core group of students whose enthusiasm and dedication was not only contagious but inspiring. They all saw the importance of our outreach mission and went crazy with it. For me, it was awesome not only to watch the team transform but also to help the students as I saw them transform and grow.

What’s your favorite robot that you didn’t help build?

I really like the clever ideas that make you say, “Who came up with that?”

●     148 in 2008. I remember watching it go round and round at the Bayou Regional. Such a simple strategy that was so effective. Nicknamed “what was that little octagon that went round and round and round”

●     469 in 2010. This idea was incredibly out of the box. It was fun to see it on Einstein. Nicknamed “those people who outsmarted everyone and just fed the balls through like boom-boom-boom”

●     33’s stinger in 2012. I’m pretty sure they were the first to introduce the stinger. Our drivers, when balancing, would always rock back and forth and it was so nerve wracking to watch. Then this team comes with a simple, elegant solution.

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without? (Work/Robotics/Home)

The internet. I’m also especially attached to my Android phone and in terms of software I’m a fan of Google Apps, especially Gmail. With 4 children in college, it is the communication method for our family.

What’s your workspace setup like? (Work/Robotics/Home)

●     Work: I use my NASA laptop with a docking station. In my office I have a couch, which I've had for most of my career. Also, as a gift from my daughters, near my computer sits a small WALL-E doll, which always reminds me that robotics should be fun. 
●   Home: Well lit, large two story living room, adjacent to my engineer designed kitchen, with granite counter tops and my black Kitchen-Aid mixer (best counter top alliance ever). No single use item. Upstairs a large bonus room, where many, many robot functions have occurred, Beta testing, training, team meeting, and robot builds.

●     Robotics: We moved a new build space this year at the high school, the company whose facility we used closed. We are still adjusting to as it is arguably not as good as our old one. I truly loved our old space and dislike our new one. .

What do you listen to while you work?

I do not usually listen to music while I work.

What’s your schedule like during build season?

I go to work. Then I go home to make dinner. I cook every night. Then I go to build. A good meal is always worth making.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

Superb chef and baker.  On numerous occasions I’ve cooked and baked for the team.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? 

I actually more remember the advice I didn’t take. Over the years I was often told I couldn’t do something. That I couldn’t have four kids, that I couldn’t be an engineer, that I couldn’t go part time, that I couldn’t start a robotics team. Over and over again, I was told I couldn’t do xyz and sometimes it was because women can’t do it. As I said, I didn’t take that advice and did it all anyway.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

I am at an age where I no longer feel guilty about these types of things

Fill in the blank. I’d love to see ________ answer these same questions.

Fredi Lajvardi from FRC 842 Falcon Robotics (2013 Woodie Flowers Award Winner)

Anything else you want people to know about you?

-All 4 of my children were on our robotics team. My 2 eldest founded the team, my 2 youngest transformed the team. I now have 4 children in college, 2 in grad school, physics and robotics, 2 undergrad, 1 twin double majoring in computer science and robotics, other twin majoring in electrical engineering. 2 in California, 2 in Pennsylvania. 

-The post was scribed by my daughter Rachel Holladay

2009 Bayou Regional: Ben (grad school UC San Diego Phd Physics), Annie (grad school Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute Phd Robotics), Rachel (undergrad Carnegie Mellon, double major Robotics and Computer Science), and Sam Holladay (undergrad UC Berkeley Electrical Engineering)

“If you are going through hell, keep going” - Winston Churchill

“CREAM - Cash Rules Everything Around Me” - Wu Tang Clan

July 20, 2014

The Ballad of Sprinkle(s) (Branding a Team in Under 12 Hours)

On a sunny July day in Ft. Worth, Texas, a simple question was asked. If you are given a different team number when you run two robots at an off-season event, why not just create a second team? Of course, these things are easier said than done.  After all, some teams take years to build a brand, but this team was to compete in less than 12 hours. How could a brand be built in so little time with so few resources? The team pondered this seemingly impossible problem. For awhile it seemed all hope was lost, but then the team had a brilliant idea.
“TO THE DOLLAR TREE!” they cried.
And so after the pits were closed and dinner was consumed the team trekked to the nearby Dollar Tree with but a few hours to form a workable theme. The team spread out and scrutinized each and every aisle. Several options presented themselves. A beach theme or an American theme seemed quite doable, and the abundance of school supplies and cleaning supplies sparked many creative ideas. However once the team intensely discussed these and many other options, one idea indisputably stood high above all others. It was at this very moment that this team’s simple question gave birth to a new phenomenon: BIRTHDAYBOTS. 
The brilliance behind this idea was clear: Everyone loves alliteration and the Dollar Tree is full of birthday supplies. After this revelation was had, BirthdayBots purchased a plethora of celebration gear including party blowers, birthday hats, tablecloths, hanging signs, birthday balloons, centerpieces, and more. In total they spent just under $15.
Then BirthdayBots triumphantly proceeded back to their hotel, where they solidified their new team’s philosophy. They composed a creed which defined BirthdayBots’ values and mission. BirthdayBots believe that everyone should be treated like it’s their birthday, every day. They strive to celebrate everyone and wish the best to all with whom they interact by greeting everyone with an enthusiastic “Happy Birthday”. When they are introduced at the start of matches they blow the birthday party blowers to signal the start of the party.
Also one artistically-talented student quickly designed a fun but professional-looking logo for for FRC#9997 BirthdayBots.

The next day, BirthdayBots festooned their trusty robot Sprinkles(s) (they never decided whether or not the name was plural) with tinsel and pennants so it would be as birthday themed as possible. Sprinkle(s) is a pneumatics-free version of Spectrum's practice robot, meaning that Sprinkle(s) is unable to launch balls or pick them up from the floor. It is, however, able to human load, kiss pass, and pass back.

Here is Sprinke(s) first match of the day:

Sprinkle(s) played its preliminary matches with much spirit and bravery. Unfortunately, Sprinkle(s) was unable to compete in the final matches due to a shortage of teams. Sprinkle(s), regrettably, will be missed.

The rest of the matches can be found on the YouTube playlist for RoboReboot.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTocT0DivsNle0KDHXyxj50Wto_NbFW2w

Match Listing and Results are all on The Blue Alliance.

http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2014txrb
- Spectrum
“Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is.” - Will Rogers

July 24, 2014

Dell Business Plan Challenge Recap

We were finalists in the Dell Business Plan Challenge put together by Dell and FIRST in Texas. This summer competition was designed to allow FRC teams to better their presentation skills while displaying FIRST front and center before of Dell’s executive team. Teams would present their outreach ideas to them in hopes of receiving $3,000 to make their goals a reality. The other two finalists would both receive $500. Since this is the first time an event like this has taken place, we want to provide some details so that other teams can be more prepared for similar events in the future.
The competition was announced on June 2nd. The requirements for entering the competition were emailed out to teams in Texas and posted on the FIRST in Texas Website here and in this presentation.
Submission Requirements (from the presentation linked above)
Participating FRC teams will submit the following collateral to the challenge management team by June 20th

–(details on all of these items are provided below)
–A link to a copy of your team’s business plan
–A one-page summary of your team’s qualifications and business plan proposal
–A short PowerPoint presentation providing background for your proposal
–A link to a video of your team presenting your proposal
–A link to your team’s Chairman’s Award video
–A link to a video of your team’s robot in action (match play preferred)

 All of this had to be done in under three weeks which was not a lot of time. Luckily this was something we wanted to do so we made time for it.
Here is our initial submission package to Dell.

Business Plan:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7-1xsf0lB3Gd2M4TE1WcWp2ejQ/edit

One Page Summary:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7-1xsf0lB3GVVFrWXRuZFJSdEU/edit

Presentation:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B20zrVFOCISReXlkZ1otdnpwTWc/edit

Video of presentation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0v0jzi54ig&feature=youtu.be

Chairman’s Award video:              

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGThUZfhi6w

Video of Robot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izGUItAbqUw

The video was a blast to shoot. We didn't have time to memorize our presentation so we set up a system that allowed us to use one of our member's iPads as a teleprompter.  

Here is a behind the scenes shot of the presentation filming. We shone light from a halogen work lamp on an old presentation board and an old sponsor check which reflected the light onto the presenters. The teleprompter was merely an iPad supported by some foam we had lying around. Both presenters wore microphones plugged into a headphone splinter connected to the DSLR camera we used for filming. We shot the whole video in one of our school stairwells from about 8:30pm-10:30pm.

We submitted our information on June 19th since we were setting up for the Texas Robotics Invitational on June 20th and would be unable to work on it. On July 2nd we were notified  that we were one of the three finalists in the competition. At the time we did not know who the other two finalist were, but we quickly learned that they were our friends FRC#2881 and FRC#418 both from Austin.

We had several conference calls throughout the process detailing how the final stage of the competition would be handled. 

We learned that on July 15th we would be presenting directly to the Dell Executive Leadership which included Michael Dell himself, the very top of the Dell corporate structure. The competition would be similar to the television show Shark Tank, since we would be pitching our outreach ideas to compete for the $3,000.

This timing was not perfect since the time we would normally use to prepare for an event like this had already been committed to running our SPECTaculaR summer course at a local Boys and Girls as well as the Texas Mentor Workshop the Friday and Saturday before the event. That basically meant we would have as little as two days to prepare for the competition. We did what we could beforehand but with many events and a few of our key team members traveling during that time it wasn't easy.

We worked the night of 13th and left for Austin Monday afternoon. When we go to our hotel room we went straight to work ironing out the presentation script, designing the slides, and making the leave behind.

Our proposal in a nut shell was to purchase robotics kits for the organizations that we work with so that they can continue the STEM development during the months that we don't work with their students.

The day of the event we had to check out of the hotel but we still needed to practice the presentation. We drove to a local wings place for lunch and practice. Pro tip; look around a restraunt for a table near an outlet, that 

The competition was held at Austin's Thinkery, something akin to a children's museum. FRC#2468 Team Appreciate played a huge part in bringing this event into existence and they were there providing logistical support for the event. After we did introductions, we did a short demonstration of the robots before we presenting to the judges. 

Our presentation team did an awesome job.

We weren't allowed to watch the presentation by the other teams but from what we heard they all did a fantastic job and had wonderful ideas for how we can better reach out to students and get them inspired to pursue STEM in their futures.

In the end the award went to FRC#2881 The Lady Cans. The judges said that they had a great idea and back it up with a strong plan for measuring their success. Congratulations to them on winning the event and congratulations to LASA FRC#418 for making it to the finals as well.

Thank you to Dell and FIRST in Texas for putting on such a great event. Our team had an awesome time and it's always nice to see our friends from Austin. We even got Michael Dell's autograph.

Dell had their media team on hand to film the presentations and we'll be sure to send out a link once they get that out to us.

- Spectrum

"The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation". - Bertrand Russell

August 14, 2014

Libby Kamen - This Is How I Work

In this edition of "This Is How I Work" we have one of the most prominent figures in the FIRST community, Libby Kamen. Many of you know Libby for being a member of FIRST's founding family and a regular award presenter at the FIRST Championship. However Libby is far more than just a figurehead within FIRST. She's the founder and an active mentor of FRC 1923, The MidKnight Inventors, as well having been an active college mentor on both Teams 229 and 4124. Within MAR she's known for her commanding presence as a strategist and drive coach. Today Libby shares her experiences with us of growing up in FIRST, founding a rookie team, staying involved while in college, and how to best handle long distance mentoring. Unfortunately she didn't reveal any of her secrets when it comes ruining my Jordans. :)
- Karthik Kanagasabapathy 

[Responses from June 25, 2014] 

Name: Libby Kamen 

CD Username: Libby K

Current Gig/Job: Graduate student: MS Marketing & Technological Innovation at WPI

Alma Mater/Degree: BS Communications & Digital Media, concentration in Engineering Technology from Clarkson University

Current Team(s):

1923: The MidKnight Inventors, from Plainsboro NJ

2006-2009: Team founder, captain, driver, mechanical lead, you name it.

2010-now:  Proud alumni & continuing mentor in robot design, strategy, PR/Communications, and community outreach. Oh, and drive coach too. (Basically, everything but programming. I don’t do the “typey-typey magic” as we call it.)

My semi-official title on the team is “Director of Everything Else”.

Former Team(s): Worked with 229, Division by Zero, during my time at Clarkson, 2010-2013.

Location: I live in Worcester MA, but every weekend during the build season I drive home to Princeton NJ to work with 1923 – and during the weeks of competition I’m usually bouncing around to different events.

Hobbies:

I’m admittedly a pretty avid gamer (MMO’s are my main thing, but I enjoy just about everything- for example, I’m currently obsessed with Hearthstone but I know my dorm-mates from Clarkson have fond memories of destroying me in Halo), but I’m also in the process of returning to figure skating after injuries, I love running, and even though I’ve graduated from every choir/acapella group I’ve been in, I still keep my voice pretty active (my apartment turns into a concert stage sometimes!)

What inspired you to do what you do? Tell us a story.

Alright, so I guess it’s pretty easy to talk about how I got into FIRST (which helped me find my path) – my uncle founded the program, and my entire family works with FIRST in some way, which means inevitably kid-Libby was going to find her way to events. I loved the robots, even as a little kid – and talking to the teams about how they worked only further sparked my interest in building things.

The time came for me to hit high school, and my district didn’t have a team. So I sat down in my principal’s office and said “Look. We’re GOING to have a FIRST team.” Not a question. Fortunately he gave me free rein to make it happen, and 1923 was born. I was a captain as a freshman, and stayed that way for four years, acting even as administrative lead when we didn’t have a teacher to help us. The team grew from 4 kids to 25+, and I was crazy proud of the program I’d left behind when I went away to college. (Fun fact, the 1923 roster now tops out at 105 students from multiple high schools.) I continued to work with the team from a (really-really-far) distance at Clarkson University.

It wasn’t until I got to Clarkson (and my first few internships) that I realized that while I did love building things and seeing how they worked, I was also really enjoying our interactions with our clients and being able to use my writing and creative skills to help translate what the technical developments meant for our customers. I switched over to the Communications program my sophomore year, and I never looked back. My MechE freshman year helped immensely with my concentration in engineering, and that brought me to the program I’m in now. The goal is to be able to use my STEM background in combination with my marketing-side creativity to help tell the world about technology & science. I’ve still got a year left in my Master’s degree, so this time next year I should be able to talk more about where that takes me.

What is your day job, and how’d you get there?

Right now the answer to that is ‘full-time student with a summer internship’. I’ve had some really lucky opportunities to intern at FIRST and DEKA (Dean’s ‘day job’) in the past, but this summer I’m trying my hand at something I don’t already know, and interning at a company called NetBrain Technologies. They offer software that automates network diagrams and helps network engineers troubleshoot their systems. So far it’s a really interesting challenge since I’m still learning about the technology, but I’m able to put into practice everything I’m learning in my masters program, and I love it so far.

What is your favorite story to tell about robotics?

I have about 15 years of conscious memory for robotics stories, but I’ll TL;DR a few of my favorites.

1)    When I was a kid, Sally Ride came to Championship at Epcot. (Yes, even then it was an international event. Stop calling it Nationals!) I was insanely lucky that I got to spend time with her – she was one of my idols beforehand, and getting that special time with her even as a kid was amazing. Now, keep in mind I was a pretty sassy kid (not that anything’s changed). So after a while I drag her by the hand over to my father to introduce them. “Daddy, this is Miss Sally. She’s a doctor and an astronaut. YOU’RE just a Doctor.”

2)    Another really great moment for me was 1923’s first regional win in 2009. I was a senior, a driver, and had spent four years fighting to keep the team alive – being able to get that gold medal was all the thanks I’d needed for my efforts.

3)    More recently, as I’m sure most in the FIRST community know, my father (Dean’s brother) passed away in 2012. For the 2013 season, my team named the robot RoBART – and made a banner and stickers in his memory. I didn’t know about the stickers until their first event, when people sent me photos. At Championships we made another run of them to hand out – and the best moment of the Championship for me was when the kids on my team came up to me and said “Libby, we did it.” Did what? “We put a sticker on every robot at the Championship”.  It’s things like that, that explain just how much I love the FIRST community. We’re one big family – and I know it helped my family get through that year. Thank you, all. It meant so much.

What's your favorite robot that you didn't help build?

I love 1114’s 2008 robot and its 2014 evolution. 254’s robot this year, too. Damn. 1923 has the strategic design stuff down (the what & the why), but when it comes to actually manufacturing things (the how) – we don’t have a machine shop or a machining sponsor. We build in a donated storefront with whatever we can get. So seeing those robots with those kinds of resources that are able to just demolish the game challenge is something our whole team aspires to. We’re a little more on the simple-but-usually-sorta-barely-elegant side.

What apps/software/tools can't you live without? (Work/Robotics/Home)

So I can pretty much guarantee that I’m gonna be the weird one here – I don’t use a whole lot in the way of apps! When it comes to planning out my to-do list, I’m a big fan of physical paper. I live and die by my Filofax. Recurring appointments go in my Google Calendar, but assignments, meetings, calls, you name it – they all go in my planner.

However, for all the distance-mentoring collaboration, we love Google Drive, Hangouts, and Dropbox.

What's your workspace setup like? (Work/Robotics/Home)

Work: Pretty standard cubicle. Laptop, second monitor, keyboard, mouse, phone. I’m only here for the summer, so I haven’t done anything super fantastic with it. There are post-its EVERYWHERE, and that’s about as decorated as it gets.

Home: Since I’m a graduate student, I spend a lot of time at my laptop writing or working on assignments. While I can do that from anywhere, I really like having a dedicated space in my apartment that’s just for work (and sometimes – okay, often – gaming.) It’s nothing particularly pretty to look at, but my apartment came with this little den/nook thing, so I’ve transformed that into my ‘chill zone’. I put string lights up so there’s some warm light, I keep my desk obnoxiously clear of stuff – laptop, to-do-list post-it, mouse, and whatever book or paper I’m working with. I’m notorious for not being able to work in a cluttered space – to the point where I’d clean my entire house top to bottom in college before I felt like I could get to work. Once my space around me is clear I can buckle down and work on what’s in front of me.

What do you listen to while you work?

At work, I won’t listen to anything, just because my office isn’t really an environment where you can tune everyone out. The marketing team is constantly chitchatting (about work, and about regular-life stuff) so it’s been fun to be a part of that for the summer.  At home, it kind of depends on what I’m working on. For homework, I’ll usually throw on something without words – like a good video game soundtrack, or instrumental cover playlists on YouTube. If I’m just messing around with personal projects or playing video games, anything goes. I’m a big believer in ‘put my entire library on shuffle and see what happens’.

What’s your schedule like during build season?

Ha. This one’s fun. During the week, I’m at school in MA. Going to classes, doing my homework, skating, going to the gym, gaming, whatever. Come Friday, I pack up some clothes & my laptop, and I put the dog in the car and drive about 4 hours home to NJ. Sometimes it’s a short drive, and sometimes there’s a snowpocalypse and traffic and it takes me 6 hours to get home. I get home, leave the dog at my mom’s, and then we both head over to the build site.

Friday we’ll work as late as the students feel up to it, with the college-age mentors keeping the site open. We’ll drive students home, and pick up again Saturday mid-morning. Same deal on Saturdays, where we’re up as late as we can stand it – and then those who can come in on Sunday, do. We close the build site Sunday after dinner and I head back to Massachusetts, leaving behind a pretty comprehensive to-do list for the week. Rinse & repeat until Ship Weekend. (I’ll always call it that.)

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

I once killed a fly with a nerf gun in my college dorm room. So there’s that.

My mom and I are also really good at calling out what the song is within a few notes of it starting. She’s the Human Jukebox, I’m just her apprentice.

I’m not really sure I’m ‘better’ than anyone else at something, other than just being me. That’s probably a really cheesy cop-out, but whatever.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

“You don’t dance unless you hear music, and you don’t pull out your guns unless you need them.”

Obviously not a true statement on dance habits or gun control, but for me it’s a really important reminder to try and act when it’s needed and when it matters, rather than react before something’s even an issue.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

I’m not sure if I really have anything too ‘guilty’ on here- I’m not apologetic about the things I enjoy. I’ve got a crazy travel schedule during the season (and even during the summer/fall), so to me, being able to disconnect even during one weekend is a luxury I often feel guilty about. I’m always checking my phone- I’m an admitted social media addict, especially when it comes to things I love like #omgrobots, so being able to say goodbye to the outside world for a day or two just to have some ‘me’ time feels like I’m stealing away. It’s intensely needed, and it’s awesome.

Fill in the blank. I'd love to see ________ answer these same questions.

FRC’s very own Frank Merrick. He’s so awesome about being open with the FIRST community, and I think it’d be cool to see inside a sliver of his day at HQ.

Anything else you want people to know about you?

I am, and will always be – an open book online. I can be found on

Twitter, Facebook, tumblr, whatever – you name it, and I’m always up for a chat with someone from our awesome community. This crazy little robot family is such a big part of my life, so I’m happy to just strike up a chat with someone new. I don’t bite, I promise!

"You get in life what you have the courage to ask for" - Oprah Winfrey 

August 18, 2014

This Week in FRC #1

We’re starting a new series today – “This Week in FRC” –  which will feature the recent happenings inside the FRC community. We’ll include new information when it’s released from FIRST headquarters and the FRC Blog, we’ll highlight the interested threads/photos/whitepapers on Chiefdelphi (CD from here on out), FRC twitter memes and happening, new YouTube videos, and perhaps even a /r/FRC post or two.

Event Postings

Many of the 2015 Regionals have confirmed their dates and venues. The updated list of venues is on the FIRST website is here. Sometimes, the community knows about an event date before it's official, so this year people will be posting such news in this CD thread. Also, to those who don't know, Easter weekend coincides with Week 6 this year; this may play a part in some teams' regional decisions.

For those of us in the Texas area, we know that Dallas is Week 1 & Alamo is Week 3. For the out of state but still close to us events, we know that Bayou is Week 4 and Oklahoma is Week 5. Official announcements for Lone Star, Hub City (Lubbock) and Arkansas should happen in the next few weeks.

Chezy Champs

2014 Chezy Champs Banners A lot of the hype around the FRC community lately is dealing with the build up to Chezy Champs. The reigning World Champions, FRC#254 The Cheesy Poofs, are hosting their first Off-Season, and its poised to be one of the best events in FRC history. They recently posted the blue banners they will be awarding to the winning alliance. Here's the original thread with all the details about the event. It's going to be August 30th and 31st (Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day Weekend) at Bellarmine College Prep, the home of the Cheezy Poofs. The crew from GameSense will be on site to do live commentary of the entire event. They are completely overhauling all of their technology to make Chezy Champs on heck of an event. They will have new overlays with stats, photos, and more to make this a professional production. We highly recommend you tune at least to catch the elimination rounds on Sunday afternoon. Here is the link to the live stream location on their Twitch Channel

FRC Beta Test Hardware is Out

Courtesy of Team 358

The Beta teams have started receiving their hardware and photos and discussion has started on this thread. Many of the Beta teams have agreed to post their results on this Facebook page, so be sure to check it out and learn more about the future control system of FRC.

Great Speech from a Little League Coach

Here is a great speech from a Little League coach. There will be much better videos of this speech soon but this is the best we have right now. This is a great example of gracious professionalism in use outside of the world of FIRST.

Updated: Here is the official video

- Spectrum
“The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.”
- Will Rogers

August 24, 2014

This Week in FRC Aug 19th - 24th 2014

This was an exciting week in FRC. We had a few big announcements made by FIRST Headquarters and a couple of key part suppliers as well. We’ll also take a look at a few teams that have released design details for their robots including 971, 1114, & 254.

Events This Weekend

Red Stick Rumble Aug 30th CD Thread
Chezy Champs Aug 30th & 31st CD Thread
Be sure to tune in to both events. The Blue Alliance will have the webcast links.

New speed controllers released by VEXpro and Cross The Road Electronics

VEX Robotics and Cross the Road Electronics announced new speed controller designs this week. 

Size Comparison courtesy of VEXpro

The Victor SP and Talon SRX are both smaller, lighter and improved with knowledge from the Jaguar, Victor, and Talon included in their designs. They are both passively cooled and have updated PWM frequencies out to the motor. They also both have integrated wire leads for both motor outputs and power inputs. The PWM cables and pre-installed on the Victor SP and the CAN wires are pre-installed on the Talon SRX. Though both share similar design features they offer up different options in terms of controlling your motors. The Victor SP allows for the standard PWM control that we have been used to with the Victor speed controllers. The Talon SRX allows for CAN control and integrated PID like the Jaguar controllers used to. 

The FRC Blog announced more information about their legality for 2015.

The former 3 models of Speed Controllers will still be legal and still be sold this season but they are all no longer being manufactured so once they sell out they are gone forever.

It's still not official that these new controllers will be legal for 2015 but for the most part everyone believes that they will be.

Designs are being posted

Many of the best teams in FRC have been releasing CAD, code, and/or design notebooks for their past robots this summer.

971 Spartan Robotics

FRC#971 from Mountain View, CA is the latest team to release their past robot designs to the public. Spartan has been producing top tier robots for several years. Their 2014 entry was one of the most advanced robots in recent FRC history. On Wednesday, they posted a new CD thread with links to CAD files and details for all their robots going back to 2007. (FRC#971 Mammoth 2014)

Along with the CAD release they also released an awesome design notebook for their 2014 robot Mammoth. 

Every year Spartan posts one of the most complete photo albums of any team. Here is a link to their 2014 photo album.

Spartan also has a very extensive set of resources on their website that are a must read for FRC teams trying to learn and grow both on and off the field. They have safety manual examples, programming guides, CAD trainings and more.

1114 Simbotics

In June, the Simbots joined the club and released all of their CAD and design information some of their past robots. They have CAD and design details for their 2010 - 2014 robots. Here's the CD thread for the announcement. (FRC#1114 Simbot Evolution)

In addition they added their engineering notebooks for Simbot Evolution (2014) and Simbot B.A. Baracus (2013).

All of these are fantastic resources. 

254 Cheesy Poofs

While the Cheesy Poofs haven't posted CAD files for their robots, they do release their build blogs each year. The build logs high quality pictures of their robots and also an in-depth look at the design process they use to get to their designs.

Here is their 2014 Build Blog and Technical Binder and here is the CD Thread as well.

In addition the Cheesy Poofs released their 2014 software for teams to learn from. Each year the FRC#254 has some of the most advanced code in all of FRC and they provide a great example for teams looking to learn more advanced programming concepts. Here is there 2014 code release thread.

FRC Designs

Another great source for FRC robot designs is FRCDesigns.com many teams have posted their CAD models on this website. They already have 13 Aerial Assist  robots including the likes of FRC#67 and FRC#118 two of the best teams in FRC.

2015 Championship Qualification Details Released!

Official Blog Post
CD Thread
It's now official. The FRC Wild Card system has been expanded. Now any team that wins an event that has was already qualified for the FRC Championship or if they also win one of the 3 awards that give a team a spot at Championship will generate a wild card spot for the finalist alliance member at that event. This means if a team wins the event and wins the Chairman's Award at that event, one of the finalist alliance members will be given a Wild Card spot at the World Championship event.
Remember that Wild Card spots first go to the Alliance Captain, then to the 1st team selected, and then the 2nd round selection.
This changes allows for Hall of Fame teams, Original and Sustaining teams, 2014 Championship Engineering Inspiration Award Winner and 2014 Champions that are already qualified for the 2015 Championship to generate Wild Card spots at their first event if they win them.
FRC also announced a new wait list lottery system that will give better odds to teams that haven't been to championship in the longest amount of time. However the process is now random so we should see a nice diverse group of teams attending championship off the wait list. Teams that attended championship in 2014 are ineligible for the wait list.
- Spectrum
"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt." - Henry J. Kaiser

August 26, 2014

Ty Tremblay - This Is How I Work

With Chezy Champs just around the corner we thought it fitting to introduce one of the members of the GameSense crew that will be doing commentary at the event. Ty Tremblay has a long history in FRC. Ty's story reads like a promotion for FIRST and introducing students to STEM. Like many people he was introduced to FRC in a "unique" way and was hooked throughout high school. He attended a university that is heavily involved with FRC and mentored team 190 while getting his degrees in Robotics Engineering. He's now an engineer for a robotics company and he returned to mentor his high school team. You can't write an FRC success story better than this. Be sure to read the rest of his article and listen to him and the rest of the GameSense crew this weekend on the Chezy Champs webstream.

[Responses from August 14, 2014] 
Name: Ty Tremblay

CD Username: TyTremblay

Current Gig/Job: Manufacturing Engineer at Symbotic, GameSense Co-Host

Alma Mater/Degree: Worcester Polytechnic Institute – MS in Robotics Engineering

Current Team(s): Team 319 – Big Bad Bob (2012-present)

Former Team(s): Team 319 – Big Bad Bob (2004-2007), Team 190 – Gompeii and the H.E.R.D (2008 - 2011) 

Location: Quincy, Massachusetts

Hobbies: Diving, Reading, Robots

What inspired you to do what you do? Tell us a story.

While in high school, I was dead set on becoming a professional chef.  I would leave my school early every day to take a bus to the local vocational school.  The vocational school has a restaurant and a full kitchen, and it was there that I was learning how to prepare and cook food.  I loved it and looked forward to cooking class every day.

One day in December, I was running late.  The bus was going to leave me and I was going to miss my favorite part of school.  My path to the bus was a winding one due to the Industrial Arts room (woods, metals, etc.) being in the way.  I took a shortcut through the IA room that day because I knew the teacher well.  What I didn't know was that it would change my entire life’s path.

Mr. Hikel was there with FIRST Robotics Team 319 and their 2003 robot, driving around.  As soon as I opened the door, the driver lost control of the robot and I was directly in its path.  The robot backed me against a wall and nearly hit me before the team could stop it.  “Ty, meet Bob.  Bob, meet Ty,” Hikel said.  I never went to culinary class.

I joined Team 319 that day and it’s been robots ever since.  I found out about WPI through my involvement with FIRST just as they were introducing the first ever Robotics Engineering Bachelor’s Degree.  I applied, got in, got my Bachelor’s Degree, got my Master’s Degree, and now I work at a robotics company on the forefront of the robotics revolution.  Cooking is still a major passion for me, but I’m glad I don’t have to do it for a living.  Robots are much more fun.

What is your day job, and how’d you get there?

I am a Manufacturing Test Engineer at Symbotic, LLC where we make warehouse automation technology.  I love the job because it’s different every day.  One day I’ll be writing software and the next I could be designing complex mechanical systems, or developing a circuit, or even travelling across the country to support a customer.  Robotics is an incredibly multi-disciplined field, and my job lets me take advantage of my multi-disciplined education.  In the past, I’ve worked at iRobot on the PackBot team and at Hologic, a medical devices company.

I also have a night “job” in that I’m a host on the new FRC web show GameSense.  We’re a group of alumni and mentors that get together on Wednesday nights with experts from all over FRC to discuss the game, upcoming and previous weeks’ events, and other FRC topics.  We’ll also be kicking off our live event coverage with GameSense @ Chezy Champs at the end of August!

What is your favorite story to tell about robotics?

Despite it being about me, see my inspiration story.

What's your favorite robot that you didn't help build?

You’re really going to make me pick one?  No, I refuse.  I’m going to pick 4 (in order) because they all made everyone in FIRST say the same thing.  One of my dreams in FIRST, and in my engineering career, is to develop robots and mechanisms that make people say one simple phrase.

“Why didn’t I think of that?”

1.     71 (2002) – I’m sure this has been said before, but it deserves to be repeated, and repeated, and repeated.  This robot is the epitome of excellent strategic analysis meeting superior engineering.  Beatty developed a machine that, if it accomplished its match tasks, literally couldn’t lose.  Interesting caveat for that year, however, is that rankings relied heavily on points and 71 didn’t sore many of those.  As a result, 71 was rarely in the top spot despite winning almost every match they played.

2     469 (2010) – The ball returner strategy was attempted by very few teams, but still a few more than 71’s 2002 Beast.  Regardless, no one pulled it off as well as 469 did.  They had to be in a certain spot in order to execute.  “So just prevent them from getting there, right?”  Wrong.  They had a ridiculously strong drive train that you couldn’t push around.  Oh, and they got there in autonomous anyway (even after scoring 2 balls).  “Okay, we’ll just push them out from their spot.”  Wrong again.  They locked in to place so that no one could move them. (Side thought, what would happen if you pitted 71 from 2002 against a locked in 469?).  “Fine, we’ll just block the balls they return.”  Nope.  They can choose which goal to score in.

3.     254 (2014) – This one is a little more subtle because it did almost all of the match tasks in a similar fashion to other robots.  What sets 254 apart, however, is that they did everything much, much faster.  Oh, and a 3 ball auto and almost couldn’t be blocked. 

4.     190 (2004) – The best way to score points is to hang from the bar?  Let’s do that.  Only, let’s do it and then prevent anyone on the other alliance from hanging.  And let’s do it in autonomous.  What’s the second best way to score points?  Oh right, the doubler.  Let’s take that away from them too.  This is the most 190 bot of all 190 bots.

What apps/software/tools can't you live without? (Work/Robotics/Home)

Solidworks, Visual Studio, Google Drive, Gmail, my Nexus 5.  I have all of the same software on all of my computers, and Google Drive to sync everything. 

What's your workspace setup like? (Work/Robotics/Home)

Two monitors at work, two monitors at home.  I’ve always tried to be neat in that I have a place for everything, but nothing ever seems to get back in its place once I get distracted by something else.

What do you listen to while you work?

My favorite thing to listen to while I really need to crank out the work is Chillstep. 

What’s your schedule like during build season?

I live and host GameSense in southern MA, work in northern MA, and mentor my team in central NH, so my schedule can get pretty hectic.  During build season, I work 9 hour days on Monday through Thursday so I can leave after lunch on Fridays.  This usually puts me at Team 319’s school by the time the team meets on Friday.  I then work with the team through Sunday night, and do the 1.5 hour commute to work from NH on Monday morning. 

Once competition season starts, I’m usually taking vacation time on Thursdays and Fridays so I can go to events with 319 as well as volunteer. For GameSense, we have a tech call with our expert on Tuesday nights to prepare for our show on Wednesday nights.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

No matter how good you are at something, there is always someone better.  Always.  The thing to take away from this is that there is always someone you can learn from and there’s always someone you can strive to be as good as.

To somewhat answer the question, though, I’d say I’m good at looking at a robot and very quickly understanding how it works.

Oh, and I can cook a mean steak. 

What's the best advice you've ever received?

“Want it?  Get it.”

It’s a deceptively simple phrase, but it’s been a driving force for me since I started college.  Very little in life (read, almost nothing) is going to be given to you unless you deserve it.  If you want something, you need to work for it.  Sometimes, that work is as complicated as years of effort to get good grades so you can get into that college you want.  Sometimes, it’s as simple as asking someone for help or advice.  If you want that new car, you save up for it.  If you want a blue banner, you build a team and a robot that can get you one.  You won’t always get what you want, but you’ll have tried, and you’ll have bettered for yourself. 

As surprising as it may seem, the phrase “Fake it ‘till you make it” is actually good advice.  You’d be surprised how far you can get, and how much you can learn, by portraying confidence even if you’re lacking it. 

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

Video games, Magic: The Gathering, and TV.  Being a robotics engineer can be stressful work, so anything that helps me shift into another frame of thought, or turn off my brain completely is a welcome distraction.

Fill in the blank. I'd love to see      Art Dutra (148)       answer these same questions.

Anything else you want people to know about you?

If you have any questions or advice, please feel free to email me at ty.tremblay@gmail.com.

"Those without dreams are without ideals.
Those without ideals are without beliefs.
Those without beliefs are without plans.
Those without plans are without actions.
Those without actions are without results.
Those without results are without happiness."
- Unknown

September 2, 2014

This Week in FRC Aug 25th - 31st

With two off-season events this was one of the busiest weeks of the fall for FRC.

Chezy Champs

The inaugural Chezy Champs was an unbelievable success. We spent Sunday watching the live stream and enjoyed one of the best FRC viewing experiences ever. Chezy Champs was prodiemetly California teams with a few from the pacific northwest and our friends FRC#148, The Robowranglers, made the journey to Bellarmine College Prep as well.
The GameSense crew was doing pre and post match commentary along with Karthik as the MC, and Paul Copioli as the announcer this event had one of the largest and best commentary crews of any FRC event.
Congratulations to the champions of Chezy Champs 2014, FRC#1678, FRC#254, & FRC#973. That was most likely the most dominant alliance we have seen all season. The biggest surprise was just how well the #2 alliance played them in the finals. FRC#846, FRC#971, & FRC#2135 went cycle for cycle with them in Finals 1. If you only watch one match, watch this match.

All the elimination matches can be seen on The Blue Alliance.
Chezy Arena is the system that was used to run all the matches, provide video overlays, and more. This is a wonderful system and the developers will be releasing the source code soon.

Red Stick Rumble

Spectrum was out in Baton Rouge this weekend for the 2nd annual Red Stick Rumble. Daniel Eiland and the rest of FRC#3337, Panthrobotics, do a great job of hosting a fantastic event. It's the only off-season event for teams in the Bayou region.
We ran the webstream for this event and have all the matches archived on Youtube and The Blue Alliance.

Congratulations to the Champions FRC#2587, FRC#4587, & FRC#1818 and also the finalists FRC#364, FRC#1421, FRC#4978. These two alliances took the finals to 3 matches and the third match was decided by the tie breaker rules. Again, if you only watch one match Red Stick Rumble make it this one.

FRC Blog

The FRC Blog had a pretty busy week as well. They announced an FRC Tools Developers Conference which will lead into a new API for the Field Management System so tools such as TheBlueAlliance, FRC Megaphone, FRC spyder, scouting apps and more will be able to get better data for all of us to use. This is a very good thing and we are very happy that headquarters is taking action to improve this.

There was also a dual Frank Answers Friday. He talks about the open and reserve capacity at regional events. To summarize, Regionals are now holding 15 spots instead of 10 for local and rookie teams. He also discusses the quality of video coverage at events. This was before the beauty that was the Chezy Champs coverage. We all have a lot of work to do to get to their level.

CD Threads of the Week

Penalizing Mecanum Wheels during Alliance Selection Team 254 Presents: Chezy Champs

Announcing The Blue Alliance for Android

Engineering News

Google Project Wing - To deliver packages across a city in minutes instead of days.

- Spectrum

"Fix your eyes on perfection and you make almost everything speed towards it." - William Ellery Channing

September 4, 2014

Broadcasting FRC Events

There has been a bit of discussion about how to broadcast FRC events recently.
Frank talked about it in his Frank Answers Friday piece. A huge amount of praise was given to the Chezy Champs and Game Sense crews for their terrific broadcast of their event this weekend.
We wanted to look at some of the recordings from various streams so people have an idea of the various ways groups are streaming events.

FIRST Championship Einstein

Here is how FIRST broadcasted the 2014 Einstein Finals.

Chezy Champs + PNW Video Equipment + GameSense Crew

Here is Chezy Champs Finals Match 1

Detroit Public TV Michigan State Championship

Here is the Michigan State Championship as it is broadcast on Detroit Public TV

EngiNERDs Michigan Districts

Here is a simple GoPro Recording of MSC Finals 1. This is how many of the Michigan districts are streamed. This setup was pinorred and often setup by The EngiNERDs. 

PNW District Video Crew

This clip is from IRI 2014. This year the crew from the PNW District did the broadcast for the event. Notice the use of multiple cameras during the match.

Citrus Circuits

Another awesome group doing live streaming of events is team 1678 The Citrus Circuits. In the video below you can see their full field coverage plus custom video overlay for match scores and teams.

Spectrum

We use a system inspired by The EngiNERDs but add in the score overlay directly from the FMS. This is a very inexpensive system. Total cost is under $500 plus a laptop to run it on. For more information on our setup see our draft version of a white paper on the subject.

There's more than one way to ______ a ______* 

(we couldn't decide so see the bottom of the post for some possibilities) We're sure there are probably more examples of teams and events doing high quality streams of FRC events but these are all we can think of right now. We love what Chezy Champs was able to do with their stream but that may not be possible for every event. However it should be possible to get HD recordings of every FRC match. The budget requirement isn't that great and the volunteer support required is minimal.  Hopefully this will be useful to groups looking at adding a live stream to their events. Teams have even streamed events from the stands with a web camera and a cellular hot spot.

- Spectrum

"Any good broadcast, not just an Olympic broadcast, should have texture to it. It should have information, should have some history, should have something that's offbeat, quirky, humorous, and where called for it, should have journalism, and judiciously it should also have commentary. That's my ideal." - Bob Costas

*

1. Eat a Corndog 
2. Throw a Frisbee
3. Wear Denim
4. Accept an Alliance Request (graciously or otherwise)
5. Build a Robot
6. Win an Event
7. Make Bumpers
8. Pop an Aerial Assist Ball

September 7, 2014

This Week in FRC: Sep 1st - 7th 2014

FRC had a relatively slow week. Nearly all teams are back in school and there weren’t any off-season events this week. We do have some CAD Tutorials for you and news from a few other major robot competitions.

973 RAMP CAD Tutorials

FRC#973 Greybots and their mentor Adam Heard are back it making their RAMP CAD tutorial videos. These are the best FRC design tutorials out there. Adam does a great job of explaining his design decisions and walking you through how they would design features into their robots. If you are new to CAD this is a great place to learn. Much of it is designed for teams with limited machining resources. 

Their latest release covers the design of a completely COTS (commercial off the shelf) single jointed arm. They show you several simple ways to improve the robustness of the arm.

FRC Season Calendar

Much of the FRC season calendar was flushed out this week with the release of the district event dates.

For more discussion on these dates and venues check out this now very long CD thread.

FLL & FTC Games Released

We're a bit behind on the FLL announcement as it happened last week but we'll play catch up today. Here are the game video for the the 2015 FLL Challenge World Class and the 2015 FTC Challenge Cascade Effect

VEX World Championship, Louisville, April 15-18

VEX announced that they would be moving the 2015 World Championship from it's prior home in Anaheim to it's new home in Louisville Kentucky. This move also allows them to put the event on the weekend before the FRC Championship so teams that compete in both events won't have to decide which to attend this year. The new venue will allow for more teams and it also moves the event closer to the center of the country making travel easier for many of the US teams. 

Here is the announcement video.

FRC Blog

Youth Protection Program and the New 2015 Control System

Just a reminder about the new Youth Protection Program and it's impact on registration and a look at some of the Beta teams like 1114 who have been posting videos and images of the 2015 RoboRio control system.

Who's at Salt Lake Comic Con this Weekend?
Teams are doing a large demo at the Salt Lake Comic Con. We demoed at the Houston comic book festival, Comicpalooza, and it was a huge success. You can see some highlights here. If there are any events like this in your area we highly recommend you get in touch with the organizers and try to get FRC a presence. They are a great opportunity to introduce FRC to more people.

CD Threads of the Week

BunnyBots 2014 Rules Release: A Fall robotics competition for the PNW.
Operation: Code Clash: An online programming competition.
[Ri3D] Robot in 1 Weekend: A group doing a weekend FTC build.
Bronc Botz FTC - 48 Hour BUILD BLITZ!!: Another group doing a weekend FTC Build

- Spectrum

"People seldom refuse help, if one offers it in the right way." - A. C. Benson

September 9, 2014

Jason Ball - This Is How I Work

Mr. Ball graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in physics, and he later graduated from Rice University with an M.S. in physics. Mr. Ball is currently in his second year of teaching at the Academy of Science and Technology, where he teaches  Pre-AP Physics, AP Physics, Electronics and Robotics. Mr. Ball has been with Texas Torque from the day he taught at the Academy of Science and Technology, he​ and has tirelessly worked to contribute to the team ever since.  Mr. Ball is passionate and inspires youth to explore STEM fields and become positive members of their communities. Through his involvement with FIRST Robotics he has had the amazing opportunity to influence fellow students in positive ways​.
- Reagan Spexarth from Texas Torque 1477

[Responses from August 13, 2014] 

Name: Jason Ball

CD Username: J_Ball
Current Gig/Job: AP Physics and electronics teacher at The Conroe ISD Academy of Science and Technology

Alma Mater/Degree: University of Michigan (B.S. in physics, 2010), Rice University (M.S. in physics, 2013).

Current Team: 1477 Texas Torque

Former Team: 573 Mechwarriors represent my old high school, although I was never a member.

Location: Spring, Texas

Hobbies: Reading, video games, electronics projects, watching sportsball (especially University of Michigan and Detroit sportsball).

What is your day job?

I’m a physics teacher. I teach basic principles of mechanics and electromagnetism to high school juniors and seniors. I also get to shop at Toys ‘R’ Us for Nerf guns to use in class, build fruit batteries, launch water balloons across the parking lot with a homemade slingshot, talk with students about black holes, the standard model, and the LHC for hours after school, find new and interesting ways for students to break the Java applets used in my virtual labs, light snack foods on fire to measure their caloric content, and generally have fun at my job.

Jokes and fun aside, science and physics education are things that have become very near and dear to my heart. Taking AP Physics B in high school was a dramatic turning point in my life – before that I was leaning more towards majoring in psychology or possibly history. That course frankly blew my mind and every new topic we covered became the new coolest thing ever. From then on it was never in doubt what I wanted to do with my life. It always saddens me when I tell people that I am a physics teacher and they cringe and tell me how much they disliked it. I strive to get the opposite reaction out of my students. I want the STEM fields to flourish and I want them to be a part of that. I want them to see that the laws of physics can be beautiful simplicities or intricate puzzles. I want them to appreciate the inconceivable nature of nature, as Feynman once put it. I live for the moments when my kids "get it" – when the proverbial light bulb goes off in their heads – and  I find it much more rewarding than anything I can possibly measure in the lab myself. 

In short, I love my job.

What is your favorite story to tell about robotics?

Apparently after the first time I met the students on Texas Torque they decided that one of the current students and I were so similar that I must be a version of him sent from the future. That single joke spawned a whole life of its own and resulted in multiple running gags and at least one picture posted to Facebook of him and I both wearing our Torque shirts.

Welcome to Torque weirdness.

What’s your favorite robot that you didn’t help build?

Texas Torque 2014. Just kidding, somewhat. I also really liked CRyptonite’s robot this year.

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

Whiteboard markers. I’m old-school when it comes to, well, school. I don’t care much for PowerPoint – instead I enjoy drawing all manner of ridiculous diagrams and problems on the board. Legal pads and lab notebooks for scribbling down all my lesson and experiment ideas whenever they happen to come to me – creativity doesn’t just turn on like a faucet! Physics textbooks from 1939 with problems that you can’t look up on the internet. My TI Nspire CAS calculator, it just does so many cool things and I’ve barely scratched the surface.

As far as techie stuff goes, I recently obtained a Kindle e-reader and it’s helped me accomplish my goal of reading more books and checking the news more often this past summer. On the flipside of that I made the mistake of pairing it with my Roku at home and that has definitely NOT helped me read more. I like the Chase Bank, eTrade, and Mint.com apps for the Kindle (I am kind of paranoid about my finances).

Other random things I would have a hard time subsisting without include Netflix, Amazon Prime, Steam, the Roku mentioned above, Pandora, Urbanspoon, Wolfram Alpha, Georgia State’s Hyperphysics website (even teachers need to brush up occasionally!), and Pretty Good Physics, another teacher resource site.

What’s your workplace setup like?

I have a BIG classroom – it houses around 30 desks and 6 lab tables for doing experiments as well as lots of storage for random physics toys. Digging through Mr. Rip’s old stuff more often than not resembles an archaeological dig and I still occasionally find things that I never knew were there. The lab tables usually become pretty cluttered with physics and electronics equipment and trying to keep it separated becomes a real pain (not to mention trying to keep the physics students, robotics students in particular, from playing with the electronics setups and vice versa). In contrast I try to keep my desk clean but it inevitably becomes littered with papers and random junk as the year drags on. I keep my computer in the front of the room but I’m rarely seated at it unless the students are working on a test. One day last fall I felt like doing something different so I rearranged all the desks in the room from rows to a more college lecture-hall type format. It’s going to stay for the time being – no one will be hiding in the back of the room this year!  

What do you listen to while you work?

I have a fairly eclectic taste in music. Let’s just do a random iPod shuffle to illustrate this. Seventies hard rock? Check. 80s thrash metal? Check. Instrumental shred guitar? Check. Weird droning anti-music? Check. Flamenco guitar? Check Half-hour long southern rock jams? Check. Death metal? Check.  Electronic bleepy-bloopy stuff? Check Pretentious prog? Check Video game music? Check Synthpop? Check Primus? Primus. Dubstep? No. Friends don’t let friends listen to dubstep.

What’s your schedule like during build season?

Wake up at 5am, be at work by 6. Have an hour or so of prep time before students start rolling in. Work from 7:20pm-2:35pm, trying to get as much done as I can. Attend Torque build meetings from 3pm-8pm. Go home and prepare for the next class day. Try to be in bed by 11pm. Saturdays we also meet from 8am to late. Sundays I prepare lesson plans for the upcoming week and do all my cooking for the week – I cook 3-4 meals Sunday afternoon and keep them all in Gladware containers in my fridge.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

Writing physics problems involving Justin Bieber, One Direction, Miley Cyrus, Mario, escaped cats, lazy boy scouts, and refrigerators.

I can kick your butt as a Medic in TF2 or as Snake in SSBB.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

“To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of the love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do.”

- Hermann Hesse

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

I am fond of Ke$ha’s music.

Anything else you want people to know about you?

The picture above is OBVIOUSLY photoshopped.

"The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing." - Socrates

September 15, 2014

This Week in FRC Sep 8th-14th 2014

Simbot Seminar Series

The Simbots are an amazing team. So amazing in fact that they are going to teach everyone else how to be amazing. Karthik Kanagasabapathy and several other Simbotics mentors will be hosting Seminars each week on various FRC topics. This is absolutely huge for the community. Karthik's strategy talk has been standing room only nearly every time he has given it at FRC Championship.

The seminars start October 1st and will last through the fall. Check out this CD thread for all the details.

If you just can't wait till the 1st, how about (re)watching Karthik's Effective Strategy talk from Championship 2013.

Gateway Robotics Challenge 2014

The inaugural GRC was this past weekend at Hazelwood Central High School in St. Louis, MO. 

Here is the full thread about the event.

Congratulations to the event champions FRC#2481, FRC#1985 (the host team), and FRC#3397.

Winning Alliance (Courtesy of 2481)

The finalist were Team Titanium FRC#1986, FRC#4256, & a pre-rookie team.

We haven't been able to find any video of the event but check out the rest of the photos posted by the Roboteers.

CD Threads of The Week

OCCRA Rules Release
What is T-Boning? (explains the concept of a friction pin, ways teams are preventing it, and ways teams are using it effectively.)
Web Hosting Services

FRC Blog

Safety Superheroes & Comic Con

If you're interested in the safety animation, make sure you submissions are in by December 11th.
Friends Don't Let Friends Miss Event Registration

Another reminder that both you main and alternate contacts have to pass Youth Protection Training before you will be able to register for events.

- Spectrum

“It sounds obvious to say you should only work on problems that exist. And yet by far the most common mistake startups make is to solve problems no one has.” - Paul Graham

September 24, 2014

This Week in FRC Sep 15th - 21st

Regional Dates and FRC Registration

Most of the regional dates are now official and FRC Registration opens on Thursday (Sep 26).

For Texas teams here are the important dates:

Here is a list of the Texas Events and dates

Week 1 - Dallas Regional Feb 25th-28th

Week 3 - Alamo Regional (San Antonio) Mar 11th-14th

Week 5 - Hub City Regional (Lubbock) - Mar 26th - 28th

Week 6 - Lone Star Regional (Houston) - Apr 1st-4th

Other event that Texas teams are likely to attend.

Week 2 - Arkansas Rock City Regional (Little Rock) Mar 4th-7th

Week 4 - Bayou Regional (New Orleans) Mar 18th-21st

Week 5 - Oklahoma Regional (OKC) Mar 26th - 28th

Behind The Lines

Our friends over at GameSense have been very busy. They have partnered with FRC Headquarters to bring a new series called Behind The Lines. This series starts tomorrow so be ready at 8pm ET / 7pm CT. You can watch at https://frcgamesense.com/

Wednesday Night = FRC Night

With Behind the Lines at 7pm CT, and Simbot Seminar Series at 8pm CT, Wednesday nights are now officially FRC Nights.

Inter-District Play

The big announcement out of headquarter's last week was Inter-District Play will be in for the 2015 season. This only affects the District teams but this is a move in the right direction.

Off-Season Events

There were 6 off-season events around the country but not much in the way of videos or results have been posted.

Of the 6 only the Capital City Classic has results on TBA. Congratulations to the winning alliance of FRC#1678, FRC#2122, & a pre-rookie team 9073.

Robowranglers 148: #X009

If you haven't checked out the Robowranglers prototype drive train document, it's worth a read. JVN and team have been documenting their entire design process and it's extremely insightful. You can read the full document here. They're currently integrating the Beta test hardware into their design.

- Spectrum

“The very thing you're seeking only exists because of the whole. We can't deny the difficult parts, we have no choice but to embrace them.” - Seth Godin

September 30, 2014

Last Week in FRC: Sep 22nd - 28th

Short post this week. We are working on the new lab and haven’t had time to get much done.
WATCH THE SIMBOT SEMINAR WEDNESDAY NIGHT AT 9 PM ET / 8PM CT
All the information can be found here.
Now that the most important stuff is finished, on to the rest of the post.

Behind the Lines

Glenn Lee, Colin Fultz, & the Game Sense team did a great job on Behind Lines last Wednesday. If you missed it watch it here and download the presentation as well. FRC Behind the Lines

Registration Happened

Literally nothing to talk about, registration went just about perfectly. 

If you haven't noticed the Dallas Regional is STACKEDDDD this year, 118, 148, 624, 987, 1477, 2468, 2848, 3310, and we probably missed some . We sadly won't be participating but we'll be cheering on a whole lot of our friends, it's going to be some intense eliminations matches.

Full Registration CD thread can be found here.

2nd Event Registration opens Oct 23rd. We're planning to register for Arkansas as our 2nd event, we are already registered for Bayou.

roboRIO Expansion Port Explained

The roboRIO Expansion port rules were cleared up a bit this week. Read the blog post for all the details.

Off-Season Events

The Fall Classic, IROC and RoboFest were this past weekend.

Full results for the Fall Classic are up on TBA. Congrats to 3476, 330 and 3476B on taking home the hardware.

Fall Classic Day 2: From FRC#3476's Twitter

- Spectrum
"Having an aim is the key to achieving your best." - Henry J. Kaiser

October 6, 2014

Glenn Lee - This Is How I Work

This week we are featuring a revered mentor who’s been with his team since their inception, Glenn Lee. He’s led his team to become a Hall of Fame team, IRI champions, and winners of many regional competitions. There isn't an FRC team out there who doesn't recognize the Hawaiian Kids in their signature flower patterned shirts. He helps the robotics community, by holding grant writing workshops to help teams fund their programs. He also raises thousands of dollars for his team every year, so that his team can travel to regionals. Recently, he had an appearance on Behind the Lines, which is a new show from the makers of GameSense and FIRST.

[Responses from Aug 13, 2014]

Name: Glenn S. Lee       

CD Username: waialua359 (formerly a student’s account which I took over during the 2005 season).

Current Gig/Job: Waialua High & Intermediate School STEM Learning Center Coordinator, Career-Technical Education (CTE) Coordinator, Robotics and Design Technology Instructor.

Alma Mater/Degree: Leilehua High School, University of Hawaii @ Manoa B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Minor in Math, Master’s in Business Administration.

Current Team(s): Team 359-The Hawaiian Kids since inception in 1999.

Former Team(s): N/A

Location: Waialua, HI

Hobbies: Hiking, Bike Riding, Golf, Collecting Memorabilia, Traveling, Fantasy Sports, Old School Toyota Cruises and Family Time.

What inspired you to do what you do? Tell us a story.

Team 254 just finished their rookie season in 1999. Mark Leon, a member of the Cheesy Poofs with NASA Ames, had ties with Art Kimura, a STEM leader in Hawaii. Mark and Art arranged for members of the Poofs from Broadway HS to come and showcase their robot and explain what FIRST was all about. Jason Morella of the REC Foundation, was the lead teacher of the Poofs at the time. From my understanding, they approached both us and Team 368 because of our involvement and successes with racing Electric Vehicles since 1996. I can still recollect my first impression of what I saw when I stepped into the library where the demo took place. I was totally amazed, excited, and reluctant all at the same time. I never could have imagined that over 15+ years later, I am still heavily involved.

What is your day job, and how’d you get there?

I worked briefly as an intern Electrical Engineer at Hawaiian Electric Company and the State of Hawaii as a Quality Control Engineer. I quit both jobs to pursue a career in Education as a Science/Math teacher at Waialua High & Intermediate School in 1994.

What is your favorite story to tell about robotics?

2010 was one of the worst build seasons our team ever had. Our robot didn’t work very well when it was time to pack and ship our robot to our Week 1 Event. After shipping our robot, it gave us very little time to prepare for both a Week 1: San Diego and Week 2: Arizona events in the Mainland. When we arrived in San Diego, one of our students realized he forgot the driver station laptop at home in Hawaii! Luckily we were able to get it as a check in luggage the next day because we knew someone from Hawaiian Airlines. Of all the FRC events we ever attended, this was the only event where we didn’t get inspected on the practice day because our robot had too many issues and because we had to pick up our driver station at the airport that day.

Ironically, we went on to have the best season ever winning 3 FRC regional events and IRI that year. Our robot during the entire season still could not kick a soccer ball nor could it climb a pole for the end game points consistently. Better to be lucky sometimes than good!

What's your favorite robot that you didn't help build?

Definitely Poi Pounder XV this 2014 Season. Our new equipment, a Flow Waterjet, did most of the work. J It was easily the least amount of construction our team had to ever do during build season.

What apps/software/tools can't you live without? (Work/Robotics/Home) IPhone and IPad.

What's your workspace setup like? (Work/Robotics/Home) *see pics.

What's your workspace setup like? (Work/Robotics/Home)

What do you listen to while you work?

I’m a total 80’s music fan listening to both Soft Pop and Hard Rock during that era.

What’s your schedule like during build season? I used to spend the most hours at school during build season 7 days a week, till almost midnight. With a family now and our program with much better facilities, equipment and mentor support, we normally work no later than 8-9pm on most days with a few Sundays off.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

I enjoy Grant Writing and raising money for our Robotics Program. Over the years, I’ve spent countless hours learning how to best utilize our limited resources in acquiring more of it, so that our students have ample opportunities to experience STEM via Robotics Competitions.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

Life is short. Live each day like it’s your last. **Words I’ve lived by for sure.**

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

Spending money on useless things. I’m a sucker for items on Craigslist, Ebay and Amazon.

Fill in the blank. I'd love to see    Paul Copioli     answer these same questions.

Anything else you want people to know about you?

I’ve worked part-time at the Honolulu Country Club as a Banquet Waiter the past 25 years.

“Everything in life should be parallel and perpendicular” –Unknown 

October 20, 2014

Shelly Gaydos - This Is How I Work

Shelly Gaydos is a mentor who is very dedicated to her team and spreading the word of FIRST. Gaydos is geared towards bringing new ideas and projects to get kids more interested about engineering. She began an FRC team at the high school where she teaches and has been involved with FIRST ever since. She has even started robotics classes at her high school to get kids more interested in robotics and prepare them for the FIRST season. She’s also lead her team to win the Chairman’s Award during the 2013 and 2014 season.

[Responses from August 5, 2013; updated on October 6, 2014]

Name: Shelly Gaydos

CD Username: N/A

Current Gig/Job: Pre-Engineering Teacher, Hammond High Magnet School

Alma Mater/Degree: Southeastern Louisiana University BS Math Education ME Secondary Principalship

Current Team(s): Torbotics Team 2080

Former Team(s): N/A

Location: Hammond High Magnet School, Hammond, Louisiana

Hobbies: Robotics, Swim Team, Football

What inspired you to do what you do? Tell us a story.

I had been teaching math and physics for 21 years and was looking for new and exciting activities to bring into the classroom. When our principal showed me the FIRST Robotics information, I had no idea how it was going to change my life and the lives of so many others. I started by walking down the hall and telling some of my students to stay after school for a meeting. We did not know what we were doing, but thankfully there were FRC mentors just a phone call away. We finished (survived) our first season, and I was finally able to sit down and reflect over the chaotic rookie season that had just come to a close. I realized that FIRST Robotics was the solution that I had been searching for all of these years. I am inspired by each of these students as I see how they can accomplish things that they never thought that they were capable of doing. These moments can be anything from a student picking up a hammer for the first time to the excited screams at midnight when we shoot a basketball. My inspiration is the sound of lives changing one moment at a time.

What is your day job, and how’d you get there?

I am a teacher at Hammond High Magnet School. After our first two seasons with FIRST Robotics, I started a robotics class. The program has now expanded, and our students have the opportunity to take Engineering Classes starting with Intro to Engineering, progressing to Engineering Design I and Engineering Design II and finishing with Robotics.

What is your favorite story to tell about robotics?

I could write a book about my favorite robotics stories. Anyone who is involved in FIRST Robotics can tell you that it is always an adventure. My favorite story begins two years ago at the 2012 Bayou Regional. Everything was going great, and team 2080 was in the top twenty going into the selection process on Saturday. However, for the first time since our Rookie year, we were not chosen to play in the Championship Tournament that afternoon. We were devastated and shocked. I went with the drive team to return the robot to the pits, and I prepared myself to go help my students deal with the disappointment. When I came around the corner and looked in the stands, I found my students all on their feet cheering for all of the other teams who did get to compete that day. I am so blessed to have the opportunity to work with these teenagers each day! The story does not stop there. Instead of anger and bitterness, these students came home with a new passion to become a better team. They began to brainstorm on the way home that day. I am so proud to say that their passion paid off at the Razorback Regional 2013 and the Bayou Regional 2014 where Team 2080 won the Chairman’s Award both times. These students truly understand what FIRST Robotics is all about!

What’s your favorite robot that you didn’t help build?

My favorite robot was the Logomotion robot built by Team 456.

What’s your workspace setup like? (Work/Robotics/Home)

We were fortunate enough to be able to renovate the wood shop in our school to our Engineering Lab. It has machines capable of working with wood and metal. We are able to build our robot completely in our own shop.

What do you listen to while you work?

Country music makes me happy, happy, and happy!

What’s your schedule like during build season?

We work 6 days a week. We do not work on Sundays to allow the students to go to church and be with their families.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

I guess it would be time management. I have a weird way of being able to predict exactly how long it will take us to complete a task.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Don’t try to do it all!

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

DIET COKE!

Fill in the blank. I’d love to see     Maureen Politz     answer these same questions.

I was the Woodie Flowers Award winner for the Bayou Regional 2014.

“Education is not the learning of the facts, but the training of the mind to think.” - Albert Einstein