2015 - Recycle Rush

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Season Overview

2015 Robots & Game Animation

Recycle Rush scored qualification matches cooperatively, so FRC recorded no win-loss-tie records that season.

Team 3847

X-Ray

• 3events
• #21/59best rank
• 1award

Season Hardware

• Judges' Award

• CAD→
• Code→
• Photos→
• Events & records→
• Design review→
• Season recap→
• Impact video→

How Recycle Rush worked

FIRST's official game animation for the 2015 season.

January 4, 2015

Day 1: Change is Here

The 2015 kickoff has come and gone.

Recycle Rush

This is a drastic change in FRC's recent history. Alliances won't be interacting with each other very much in this game; there won't even be a winner and loser of each match. For Recycle Rush, FIRST has also removed the bumpers and size requirements, permitted the use of an unlimited number of motors, and added a number of other major changes to the way games have been running.

We spent 3 hours going over all the rules and trying to revise a lot of our conventional ideas for how FRC games should be played. While brainstorming possible strategies, the irrelevance of defense was mourned.

After strategizing, playing with the game pieces for a bit, and getting an idea of how some of the main methods of point collection should work, we moved on to defining robot tasks. There is a variety of potential courses of action in this game, and we wanted to start looking at possible prototypes to accomplish them.

The complete removal of the importance of a strong drive train is another one of this year's biggest changes. It will always be important to have a reliable and effective drive train, but now a strong drive train that can get out of T-bone pins isn't needed. A simple 4 CIM drive train with a large gear reduction to allow for a moderate top speed of 8-9 ft/s should be all that is necessary for this game.

We made several rough prototypes of passive end effectors to be used for manipulating the totes and recycling containers. 

Reorienting the containers also seems like an important task in this game. Flipping around the totes seems less useful since there are so many totes available for use.

We'll have pictures and some videos of our basic prototypes tomorrow.

- Spectrum

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude."
- Maya Angelou

January 5, 2015

Day 2: Prototypes Have Begun

We did a lot more work on day 2. Our passive manipulator designs progressed further, and we modified our 2013 robot to use its lift as way to test basic concepts.

Here is a quick video of a couple of our prototypes mounted on that lift. None of these use any motors or pneumatics to grip the totes or recycling containers; they only use the lifting mechanism.

We also discussed our lift mechanism in more detail today. Our two primarily competing concepts are a single stage lift and a 4-bar arm mechanism. Both of these mechanisms are relatively simple to build and will accomplish all the game tasks that we want. We have to look at a lot of the details of each mechanism and its ability to integrate with the rest of our robot. 

We spent more time looking at our drive train for Recycle Rush. We are still leaning towards a 2+2 drive train with omni wheels on the rear of our robot and away from the stacking mechanism. This will allow us to pivot near the totes and containers to adjust our pick up mechanism. We did some CAD sketches to explore the possibility of using 4" or 6" wheels, but 6" wheels will make navigating the platforms far easier. We are still looking at using a single speed transmission and will most likely be using WCP SS Gearboxes since they allow us to get a large gear reduction in a nice, complete package.

Our goal is to build a simple robot that can quickly and reliably stack totes and containers. Overall, we believe that this game can be accomplished in a simpler manner than in the last few years since its tasks have to be accomplished quickly but not under duress from a defensive robot. It's like the difference between shooting a free throw and shooting a 15 ft jump shot. They both accomplish the same thing, but this time no one is allowed to try to block our shot. Mechanisms can be built a little less rigidly since there will be less direct robot to robot contact. Driver practice in Recycle Rush may be more important than ever, but it will be a very different kind of practice. Drivers must be ready to complete the same tasks repeatedly with great skill and precision to make for efficient and high-scoring rounds. Skillful and intelligent programming will greatly assist your drive team in becoming more efficient. The more autonomous a team's stacking and acquisition systems are, the more repeatable they will become.

We started building a section of the scoring platform today and will continue building the remainder of playing field this week. On the bright side, it's nice to have a game we can practice in a hallway instead of one (like those in recent years) we have to practice in a gym. 

- Spectrum

“Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.”
- Babe Ruth

January 6, 2015

Day 3: 4-Bar Prototype

Most of today was spent working on the 4-bar prototype.

This design was inspired heavily by FRC#148 The Robowrangler's 2011 robot Raptor. 

We didn't get it powered on today, but that should be the first thing we do tomorrow.

The current version (as pictured) is too large for our actual needs. Even if we lower the pivot points and shorten the arm, we are still able to reach the height limit of 6.5'.

The prototype is made of plywood, 2x4s, hardboard, and some extra metal pieces from old robots.

We improved the CAD of our proposed drive train.

Our current idea gets its inspiration from forklifts and their ability to steer from their rear. All 4 wheels will be powered, but we are hoping to pivot mostly over the front traction wheels. We have thrown around the idea of having a drive train that is able to drive sideways, and, although we haven't ruled it out, the simplicity of a drive train like the one pictured is very appealing. 

We will continue working on iterating collector prototypes this week. We will also work on some programming tasks, including finding a sensor-based solution to aligning the robot to a tote. Our idea uses two range finders to get the distances of the left and right sides of the robot from the tote and has a control loop set them to be equal. We hope to test this by the end of the week.
Lots of good work is being done, but now we are working on finding any little details that might help us speed up our scoring. One of today's ideas was for the robot to be able to set a tote on top of a stack, lower its arm, and lift the stack -- all while remaining stationary. This an ambitious feature, but it would allow much faster and more accurate stacking.
- Spectrum
“The joy of the creative process, minute by minute, hour after hour, day by day, is the sublime path to true happiness.”
- George Lois

January 7, 2015

Day 4: More Prototyping & 4-Bar CAD

We worked out a few more iterations and developments today but made no major changes.
We started looking at quick ways to drag totes from the landfill. We could use our lifting mechanism, but speed may be crucial once game play prioritizes the race to get to the recycling containers. The tasks that are important to a single robot aren’t always those that are important to an alliance. This may be like the human player pass back last year; it didn’t directly give an alliance points, but it had the potential make or break its strategy.
Most of the day was spent reworking the dimensions of our frame and 4-bar. We realized it would be beneficial to have a long, narrow robot this year. A long wheel base would make a robot more stable when carrying the weights of totes and containers on its lifting mechanism. A narrow track (the distance between two wheels sharing an axle) would allow a robot to navigate more easily through a congested field. We are currently looking at a frame size of 24-27“ x 36-38“. A 28“ x 38“ robot was the common frame size before the 2013 frame perimeter change. It worked very well in FRC for a long time. Our frame dimensions directly affect the length and heights of our 4-bar mechanism. Our current goal is to be able to elevate 4.5 ft, enabling us to place a tote on a stack of 3 already on the step and helping us to earn Coopertition points. Reaching this height would also allow us to place a Recycling Container on a stack of 4 totes on a scoring platform. So far, this seems like the most reasonable plan. This would allow a team to contribute to a high scoring alliance or to score highly if carrying the majority of its team’s scoring load. For example, if a team is allied with two robots that cannot lift game objects, its allies should be able to push stacks of two totes from the feeder station onto the platform. Afterwards, the team could combine those two stacks and place a Recycling Container on top of them for additional points.
While achieving our 4.5 ft. elevation, we also want to minimize the distance our arm travels past our frame perimeter to keep us more stable.

This is the CAD sketch we have been using to calculate the length and heights of our arm segments. 2D CAD like this can be extremely helpful during prototyping. This sketch shows that we currently will push out from the front of our frame about 9.31".

We are continuing to iterate on our hook mechanisms. We have tested several passive hooks that can grab totes and recycling containers and are working out how to do this most reliably and efficiently. We haven't ruled out an active mechanism, but we would like to solve the problem in the simplest way and believe that this may be a reasonable solution.

We have started adding photos to our Flickr page. 

Please leave any questions or suggestions you have in the comments below. If you think we are heading down a bad path, please let us know; we are always open to suggestions for improvement.

- Spectrum

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

January 7, 2015

Day 5: Ideal Alliance Partner

We did more work on the 4-bar prototype today and got it lifting totes and containers. We will release videos in tomorrow’s post. We had to make slight modifications to the prototype to ensure that we are starting at an ideal distance from the floor and able to reach our desired height. We also worked on the passive manipulators and some programming. A few special projects began today, including a long-reach Recycle Container hook (tape measures are involved) and a bin-alignment device.
The following is a guide to being a good alliance partner. There are always various degrees of robot abilities in FRC games, but this year seems like it might have one of the most drastic ranges in recent years. Advanced teams are going to be very good, and struggling teams may find it difficult to score well and rank highly. We started talking about what we think the ideal third robot would do on an alliance at a regional (assuming that the first two robots are able to stack totes and at least one of them is able to stack recycling containers).
Ideal Partner Team Characteristics

• Controlled: There is a large risk of your own alliance members losing your hard-earned points if they don't have good control over their robot. All members of an alliance should be able to drive their robots around a heavily congested field while keeping keen awareness of their surroundings. If you run into a bin too hard, you might knock down an adjacent stack. Programming and drive train design will help with this, but it will mostly be up to the driver and how much practice and focus he puts into his craft. This isn't a year for aggressive drivers.
• Drive train design suggestion: a slow, controllable drive train and a narrow chassis will make it easier to drive through congestion.
• Game Smart: Know the rules, and know how robots and teams work and behave. If you are at a later event, watch videos from prior events. Knowing where not to be during a match might be more important than knowing where to be. The top-scoring robots will have extremely efficient scoring mechanisms, and if any of their partners get in their way their alliance's score will only go down. In a game like this year's, your top scoring machine should have the right-of-way. Stay out of its way, and let it keep putting up points.
• Reliable: Any failures are catastrophic since every point counts during the 1st two rounds of the playoffs. Make sure your robot drives every match, you're on time, you have spare parts or use common parts, etc.
• Nice People: This is on the list every year; if we're going to be spending a few hours together, we should at least like talking with you. Be a nice team that is fun to be around.

Robot Abilities

• Noodling a recycling container: Although its true value is questionable since it is useless in eliminations, TNA is getting crippled soon. Be able to carry a recycling container to the feeder station so that a human player may noodle (or, to be politically correct, "deposit the litter" into) it. (Fun fact: most pool noodles are made from a material that many areas don't recycle). Then, stash the bin somewhere for your partners. This could be an extremely quick way to add 18+ points to an alliance score. The RCs won't be stacked till later in the match, anyway, for fear of having them fall off if placed too early. This leaves plenty of time for a third robot to be noodling.
• Tote assists from human player: Working with a human player to get stacks of 2 totes to your alliance partners is a valuable role. The shorter the distance they have to travel to stack totes, the better for your alliance. You may even be able to start the stacks for them by pushing or placing them on the scoring platform.
• Pulling totes from the landfill: This isn't too valuable by itself since landfill totes aren't already stacked and since they are located at the back of the playing field, where it will be harder for many teams to accurately acquire them because of their distance form the driver station. However, moving these totes may allow an alliance partner to remove the RCs from the step. These game pieces are going to be highly coveted, and the faster an alliance can get to them, the better, since it's a race with the opposite alliance to obtain them. At many regionals, you won't have alliance that can score 7 RCs, but a 4th container might make a difference for your alliance. If you can clear a path for your partners that need it, all the better for your team. BuildBlitz just posted a video of a simple tote dragging mechanism that may work very well for this.
• Acquire RCs from the step: This is a bit of a dream 3rd alliance partner, but if you can get the RCs from the step and you're available in the 3rd round, teams will be counting their lucky stars and wondering why other teams always seem to draft poorly.
• Righting an RC: This is another dream ability, but it is one that teams doing the picking shouldn't overlook in a partner.
• Autonomous: With top tier teams being able to independently form a container stack in auto, a third partner should at least have the ability to drive into the auto zone. It is nice for teams to have autonomous features, including:
• Being able to take a container to the auto zone
• Being able to drive over the platform to the auto zone
• Being able to delay any of its autonomous commands
• Being able to drag totes from the landfill and to the scoring platform
• DREAM: getting RCs from the step

If your robot can do most of these things, we think your team is likely to find itself in the playoffs at most districts and regionals.

- Spectrum

"When you’re forced to be simple, you’re forced to face the real problem. When you can’t deliver ornament, you have to deliver substance."
- Paul Graham

January 8, 2015

Day 6: 4-Bar & the Q&A

4-Bar Arm Prototype

This is our current arm prototype. It can stack totes and put an RC (Recycling Container) on top of 4 scored totes.
Problems we are still trying to solve:

• How to support the totes to keep them level, or tilted above level.
• How to quickly release totes from our arm when we are stacking them on top of each other.
• How to align to totes quickly and accurately.

We have a few ideas for some quick pneumatic actions that could help us to accomplish a few of these goals. We should be able to have them tested by tomorrow or Saturday.

Q&A

The Q&A opened this Wednesday, and some interesting answers have already been provided.
Q&A 5 defines the Auto and Landfill Zones as volumes and not areas, so a team cannot start with any portion of its robot hanging into them. This important clarification makes getting to the RCs on the step at the beginning of auton somewhat more difficult.
Q&A 7 was asked by our team. This year, the GDC is allowing teams to have pole-mounted cameras on their operator consoles. This could lead to some cool uses for drivers and auton.
- Spectrum

“Help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.”
- Jim Rohn

January 10, 2015

Day 7: Prototyping Continues

We made progress on some of our prototypes today.
4-Bar Lift

We added a tilt to the lift to aid in the lifting and releasing of the totes.  Hopefully, this will speed up the stacking process a bit.  We also 3D-printed a hinge that will help with stacking.  This hinge presses on the bottom of the totes while they are lifted, supporting them, but moves out of the way when the lift moves vertically against a stack.  We hope to record a video soon that will clarify the design and use of this part.  We’re also developing the pneumatic system needed to control the lift.  However, we still have quite a bit of work ahead of us in order to improve things like tote alignment and speed.
Measuring Tape Hook

This prototype can extend and retract a measuring tape with the intention of pulling a tote with the hook on the end of the measuring tape.

Tote Puller

We are working on building a pivoting hook that can grab the lip on the top of the tote and pull it. In this design, the hook falls onto the tote when the bottom of it presses against the tote upon robot collision with the tote.  The hook disengages when the robot backs away slowly from the tote. We still have a ways to go on building this one, but hopefully it will be useful during gameplay.

- Spectrum

"How does a project get to be a year late? … One day at a time."
- Fred Brooks

January 10, 2015

Day 8: More Prototyping

Today we worked more on our prototypes.
Tote Puller

Here is the working version of our tote puller.  This mechanism will be used to retrieve the totes from their starting configuration and move them around.  We still have to perfect the tension and position of the surgical tubing.
Drive Train

Our drive train has been modified to be an H-drive consisting of two rear wheels and a large omni wheel on the front.  This could potentially allow us to strafe sideways and at angles to align the totes more easily.
Pneumatics

Our pneumatics are ready for testing.  This setup is designed to control the lift's actions.

- Spectrum

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

January 12, 2015

Day 9: 1st Boot Camp Build Day

Sorry for the delayed post, we had a long weekend.
Yesterday we opened our lab to 6 other local teams so they could collaborate with us as we all worked on our robots.
We had four rookies teams with us 5416 from Katy Taylor, 5427 from Katy Tompkins, 5566 from Sugarland, & 5769 from Santa Fe High School. It was great to see these young teams just getting into FRC. We helped them learn the ropes and put together their AndyMark AM14U2 drive trains. We also did an electronics demonstrations and guided them through the new control system. We’ll be holding another collaborative build session on Sunday Feb 1st.

One thing we concentrated on was our lift and end effector.  We attached the pneumatics to our prototype for testing and should have some of the new active features ready to be tested this week. We're a little behind in CAD this year, there are a lot of design decisions to be made since there are so few constraints this year. It's much harder to choose a chassis size when you have close to unlimited options. Every little decision we make now will have ramifications later on in build season.
- Spectrum
"In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed." - Charles Darwin

January 12, 2015

Day 10: Finalizing Designs

We’re into Week 2 and we have started finalizing our designs. We tested out an option to lower only a single wheel to allow us to strafe and it looks like this will work for us. We aren’t planning to strafe very often, only for small adjustments when stacking and for autonomous. This means we didn’t want to dedicated a ton of space or weight to make it work. The plan is to use the same 2+2 drive train we’ve been planning but also having a drop down 2.5“ Colson wheel between the two front wheels. This small wheel will drive us sideways in an arch, to counteract the arc we will have our rear omni wheels turning at the same time with feedback from a gyro. This will compensate for the rotation and allow for short bursts of horizontal travel.

If you haven't already check out the work of the VEX staff on their Build Biltz project. They just posted a couple great guides on building drive trains and claws for Recycled Rush.

Also remember to continue reading the Q&A and check the team updates every Tuesday and Friday. 

- Spectrum

"Have a plan. Follow the plan, and you'll be surprised how successful you can be. Most people don't have a plan. That's why it's easy to beat most folks." - Paul "Bear" Bryant

January 13, 2015

Day 11: CADing and Printing

We fixed a few things with the prototype robot, but most of the day was spent CADing.
We also have our 3D printer making very accurate parts out of polycarbonate filament (Lexan).

This part is piece for our four bar that will allow us to tilt back the totes and recycling containers while we are carrying them.

We should be getting drive train components in the next couple days so robot progress will speed up then.

- Spectrum

“Your work is to do the work, not to do your job. Your job is about following instructions; the work is about making a difference. Your work is to ship. Ship things that make change.” - Seth Godin

January 14, 2015

Day 12: Putting some new toys to work

As part of our move to our new lab, we got a CNC router and new 3D printer. Today we had them hard at work. We setup the router to put 1in on center holes in our 2x1 rectangular tubing to make ourselves some prototype versaframe pieces. The photo below shows our test setup into a piece of scrap 1x1 tubing. The long piece on the right is part of a clamping jig that ensure we clamp each piece perfectly square. One of our team members wrought some useful g-code that allows us to easily tell the router how many holes we want, where to start the pattern, etc. This will make working with the extrusion much easier.

Purple lights make everything cooler.

We are also 3d printing a spool that will be used with our powered tape measure to hopefully help us secure a few of the recycling containers off of the step.

We started laying out our electrical and pneumatics system today. We are building our robot closer to the pre-2013 size dimensions and it feels so nice and roomy in our belly pan compared to the last two years. 

We are getting our drive train parts in tomorrow and we should be able to be moving on Saturday at the latest. This drive train will be our prototype robot, it will get lots of holes drilled in it in random places and we'll tweak things before assembly starts on the real robot.
- Spectrum

"Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition - in having put forth the best within you." - Henry J. Kaiser

January 16, 2015

Day 13: Parts arrive and more CNC routing

Our VEXpro order came in today that included our drive gearboxes, and some other parts of our chassis.

We also started using our new router more to help with the chassis gussets and also the belly pan. This year we are using a 1/4" Baltic Birch plywood belly pan. We bought the plywood from Clark's Hardwood here in Houston.

- Spectrum
"Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

January 17, 2015

Day 14: Ramping Up Production

We really started getting into the construction of our versaframe based chassis today. Many of the parts we are 3D printing or CNC routing for the prototype to make sure we like everything before we purchase some of the pieces.

The above image shows some of the cutouts we have made from a sheet of ABS, it cuts very nicely and it's fast for prototyping and test fitting.

We've built up both our drive rails and we'll have them chained up and hopefully assembled tomorrow. We have to cut a few more gussets and make a few more mounts but we should have something driving sometime on Sunday. The versachassis system has been very easy to get started with. Something simple for a drive base will make our robot really reliable. We're planning to add an H-drive colson wheel that we should be able to mount fully over the weekend as well.

One of our special projects this season has been the tape measure based recycling container hook system. We've been iterating on it and working to make sure we can quickly acquire a few of the containers. Today we added a spool and string to allow for a stronger pull back.

We are almost finished with our electronics layout in Solidworks and we'll be putting that on the router in tomorrow afternoon to mount to our test chassis.
Tomorrow we have our friends the Discobots working with us in our shop.
- Spectrum
"The best way to get the most out of engineers is to surround them with other great engineers." - Felix Salmon

January 18, 2015

Day 15: Drive Train Coming Together

We had a busy day of CAD and routing parts. Today was the first real day of riveting as well. We’ve been making a ton of gussets on the Zenbot CNC router and they all need to get riveted to the robot.
Here is a picture of our belly pan with all the mounting holes piloted by the router. Right now we can only drill 1/8“ or 1/4“ holes with the router since we only have collets for those sizes. We use the 1/8“ bit to pilot all our holes then match drill them to 3/16 for rivets or 13/64 for #10-24 bolts when we go to mount them.

We'll finish mounting the belly pan on Sunday and get started on mounting and wiring the electronics. We should be driving soon.
Our recycling container grabber mechanism is now finding it's way into CAD to make a more production ready unit.
- Spectrum
“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.” - Richard P. Feynman

January 19, 2015

Day 16: Drive Train is put together

Lots of progress on the practice robot (robot 1) today. The electronics were mounted and wheels were chained together. We never actually got to put it on carpet and drive it around but that will happen tomorrow.

As shown it weighs about 50lbs without the battery. That's with potentially every motor we will have on the robot. We still need to add all the upper structure, the pneumatic system, plus signage, cameras, sensors, etc.

The electronics layout worked out very nicely on the baltic birch plywood. We tested out using some speed taping drill bits and they seem to work very well into the wood. Most of the electronics are bolted down to the threads we drilled into the wood. We also have zip tie holes drilled for every part if we start to notice the threads breaking out of the wood at any point. So far we really like the 1/4" baltic birch belly pan.

Above is a picture of our arm gearbox. It's currently a CIM and MiniCIM but we might got with two CIMs on the real robot. They are both fed into 49:1 versaplanetary gearboxes and then finally a 11:84 tooth reduction.

- Spectrum

"The optimist sees opportunity in every danger; the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity." - Winston Churchill

January 19, 2015

Day 17: Drivetrain Video

Short post today. We got the complete prototype drive train working. Please note the pneumatic is just for the real robot will be much smaller. That’s just what we had lying around that would work for our goals.

We tested this briefly on our practice bot form last year and saw that the concept works. It works a bit better on this robot. The gyro should be able to do the steering for us and keep us moving straight sideways during autonomous and when adjusting for stacks.
This week we will be getting the tower and supports made and hopefully have this robot stacking totes by the weekend.
- Spectrum

"He that does good to another does good also to himself." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

January 21, 2015

Day 18: Cleaning up the wiring & building structure

 We cleaned up our electrical wiring on the practice robot. This will make it easier to keep things safe and organized.

 We also started cutting and drilling our support bars and tower bars that will support the arm pivot points.

Our ekocycled 3d printer came in yesterday. It printing a test print pretty quickly. We don't plan to use this for all the much but we should be able to learn some things from it.

- Spectrum
“I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.” - Oprah Winfrey

January 22, 2015

Day 19 & 20: CAD, Arm Linkages, & Frame Building

For the most part we have been focusing on getting our CAD models complete over the past couple days.
We’re still working on our end effector but the majority of the robot is complete in CAD.
One of the promising features of our robot is the ability to tip the totes that we are carrying back towards us. The idea behind this is that we want to shift our center of gravity back towards are robot while also lifting the front end of the totes higher. This is similar to how you would carry a heavy box by leaning back and lifting the front end of the box up. This should also make placement easier as we are able to tip the totes down on to stacks instead of just dropping them vertically.

Our printer is hard at work making some of the parts that will be included in our tilt mechanism.

Here's the current state of the prototype robot. It has it's structure up and will be getting arms mounted tomorrow. Hopefully we are lifting totes again early next week.

We are sending our first round of parts off to our sponsors, Solarcraft Inc., on Monday. So we have a lot of CAD to finish between now and then.
- Spectrum
“Every number is infinitely more than zero. The lesson being, no matter how little you may accomplish in order to feel good, at least you have done something. By doing something, you avoided doing nothing. All that can happen from there is improvement.” - Jesslyn

January 26, 2015

Day 21, 22, 23, 24: CAD Hibernation

Sorry for the lack of updates, the past four days have been all CAD all the time.

That's the current state of the CAD model. We still have a lot of features to add and a lot of details to get right. The majority of the last few days was spent working on getting all the sheet metal ready to be sent to our sponsor. We sent it over this morning, so we should be getting parts back later this week.

- Spectrum

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”  - Richard P. Feynman

January 27, 2015

Day 25: Open CAD Release

Spectrum is using GrabCAD Workbench this year to do version control and content management for our Solidworks CAD files of our robot. One of the nice features of GrabCAD Workbench is it allows for you to share your CAD with others even if they don’t have a GrabCAD account. We didn’t really know how to use this feature until a couple days ago. Since we learned to use it and we are a fan of open designs, we are opening up our CAD files for public consumption.

There are some caveats. 1.  Our CAD is all still very much experimental. Do not expect anything to work. We haven't tested most of it and will be making countless changes before and after we assemble the robot. The robot isn't even complete at this point. Many of the models are just good enough for us to be able to build and test from. So please use anything at your own risk and your millage may vary.

2. We will try to update the partner space with our nightly updates but we will probably forget sometimes. That means you may not always see the latest CAD files. 

3. The GrabCAD online viewer shows suppressed and hidden parts in assemblies. We may have removed some things or have different versions that will show up in the web viewer. If something looks strange please download the entire assembly and see if it is a suppressed or hidden component.  
4. The names associated with files are just the people that moved them to the Partner Space and not necessarily the people that updated or made the original files.
5. If you happen to think of ways we can improve our robot we are more than happy to hear them. Our sharing isn't entirely selfless; we love the feedback we get from all the other eyes that look over our designs. We know we aren't right most of the time, so please feel free to give us a hand and point out areas we can improve. Leave comments below, tweet at us, Facebook us, Snapchat us, email us, call our mentor, or use any other form of communication you prefer.
6. The COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) folder is largely filled with models generated by other people and organizations. This includes many manufacturers of the parts. If anyone wants files removed from this repository please let us know and we will be happy to do it. We are adding this to our repository so that if anyone wants to download the complete model of our robot in Solidworks they are able to do so with all the referenced parts. Thank you to all the organizations that release high quality 3D models of their components. Our COTS folder isn't the most organized or up to date, so again use anything at your own risk.
Thank you to Solidworks and GrabCAD for their generous donation of software to FRC teams. We truly appreciate it.

Link to our GrabCAD Partner Space

CAD.Spectrum3847.org

- Spectrum

"When you give something away, you benefit more than the recipient does. The act of being generous makes you rich beyond measure, and as the goods or services spread through the community, everyone benefits." - Seth Godin

January 28, 2015

Day 26: Mid-build Cleaning

We started our meeting off with a mid-build clean. Swept and vacuumed up the entire lab and reorganized tools.
We are running our router non-stop during meetings to get our competition robot drilled and ready for powder coat next week.
We found out our sheet metal parts should be delivered from Solarcraft on Friday, which is very exciting. A weekend of non-stop riveting is ahead of us. We’ll be able to get most of our production testing done quickly.

We are using our Ekocycle printer to make thank you gifts for our sheet metal sponsors.
- Spectrum

"No one who achieves success does so without the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude." - Alfred North Whitehead

February 1, 2015

Day 30: Assembling the practice robot

We received our sheet metal parts on Friday afternoon. Everything looked great on the parts.

Saturday and Sunday were spent putting together the practice robot. We have the arms on and the end effector. We are still waiting on a few pneumatic cylinders before we can test most of the systems. We balanced the arm today with surgical tubing and it worked well but we may be moving to gas springs.

We prepped all the competition robot parts for the powder coater tomorrow.

We should have more video to share in the next couple days.

- Spectrum

"Problems are only opportunities in work clothes." - Henry J. Kaiser

February 2, 2015

Day 31: A Little Bit Closer

We finally got our cylinders in place for most functions today. We ran out of time to be able to drive test but that should be going quickly tomorrow.

Here's the full robot as it currently stands. It reaches the full 78"

Here is a close up picture of our H-Drive module, we're getting code ready for triangle drive soon. (Triangle Drive is the new name we are giving to our drive train just because other people like to name drive trains and we find that funny.)

Here is a close up of the collector as it currently sits on the robot. The wedges expand to grab a tote from the wide or narrow sides. After putting it together and just pushing the robot around we identified several areas of improvement. A couple simple ones that just need a few bolts and some Lexan and other's that potentially involve adding an active wheeled intake to it. We have a couple weeks to iterate before our first event, lots of ideas and hopefully enough time to find the one that works the best.

Here's the back side of the collector, it's amazing that everything fits. We had to shave down some bolt heads to get the clearances we needed.
We dropped off the competition robot parts at SABS a rim repair shop here in Houston that will be powder coating for us this year. Always nice to get a new sponsor.
- Spectrum

"Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times." - Niccolo Machiavelli

February 6, 2015

Day 34: A good day of tests

The last few days had been uneventful. We had some failed tests and we have been working through some potential solutions. Tonight we tested one of the solutions which was to add reduction to our arm to make it harder to back drive. We also increased the amount of counter balance using two 30lb gas springs. We tested it tonight and we’re very pleased with the results.

Several of the features still have limited testing but overall we're very pleased
The arm tilt mechanism allows us to tip back a tall stack of totes to prevent them from falling and allow for easier stacking.
The recycling container righting is one of the mechanisms we have been a bit unsure of. We have prototyped it but we weren't sure how well it would work, tonight's were 100% successful. We'll try to break it and improve over the next couple weeks. The traction materiel used on the bottom of the mechanism is cut surgical tubing.
- Spectrum
"Once an innovation is implemented it is no longer innovative." - Jack Anderson, Chevron

February 7, 2015

Day 35: Active Collector, Powder Coat, & Electronics

After we posted some videos and our CAD part of the feedback we got was people asking us about our collector choice. We liked the passive collector for it’s simplicity but we understood why an active collector would help. The last two days we prototyped an active collector for our robot. We got it working tonight.

We also received our powder coated parts back today.

Mechanical assembly will be begin in earnest very soon.

We started electrical assembly of the competition robot today. The belly pan is baltic birch plywood with a 1/32" piece of acetal on top of it. 

Here are a few other photos from robot construction.

- Spectrum

"The most fundamental winning formula is to bet on human decency and be patient." - Robert Brault

March 1, 2015

Recycle Rush Rev 2: Day 1

The last month has been challenging. We had faced a number of set backs with our current design.

We started with a twisted and sheared hex shaft during our Week 0 Practice.

We looked at going to a chain design but that didn't work well.

We replaced that with a steel shaft and that fixed most of that specific problems.

Yesterday was the final straw we complete broke both of the Versaplanetary CIM output shafts on our arm gearbox. This was after we broke two Talon SRXs not 30 mins earlier.

After watching some of the week 1 event we decided are strategy wouldn't pay off even if we could keep find bandaids to fix the issues we were having. So we decided to completely rebuild our robot and have a plan to that at our first competition.

While taking apart the practice bot today we found out why are arm had been showing a lot of tilt. The lower arm bar is completely bent.

Here is a quick sketch of what we are planning to move too or at least the initial stage of the move. We wanted something that we could keep improving through out the year.

Our current plan

- Build up a fictional prototype on the practice bot in the next 3 days

- Replicate the changes with the parts that our in the bag, 30lbs of withholding, and COTs parts on Thursday at Arkansas

- Iterate throughout the season.

Current state of the practice bot.

- Spectrum

”I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” - Thomas Edison

March 2, 2015

Rev 2 Day 2

The 2nd rev is progressing, very little time left. We should be able to test tomorrow.

March 6, 2015

Rev 2: Day 5 - Getting to Rock City

Day 4 was spent traveling to Texarkana in preparation for our first regional in Little Rock.
We got to Texarkana with very little trouble, just a lot of rain.
The ride from Texarkana to Little Rock on a normal day should be about 2.5 hours, today it took us about 8hrs.
We started off driving along the snowy road which was perfectly fine, nice and slow going but very safe. We started hitting some ice so we pulled off at gas station to wait it out. We were there for about 2 hours waiting for the temps to rise above freezing. When got on the road again, though the ice had cleared near us but I-30 north of us was shut down and that was our route into Little Rock. We were able to find a route up 67 north to meet I-30 further east.
As we made our approach to the venue, we managed to get the bus stuck on a hill. This was highly unfourtante but thanks to the generosity of one of the members of the neighborhood we were able to at least move about 20 yards forward. This put us infront of one of the locked gates into the venue parking lot. With some calls to the Arkansas Regional Director we were able to get the gate unlocked. Then came the fun task of sliding the bus in reverse into the gate. Surprisingly all of this worked pretty well, and we had the robot into the venue at around 3pm.

Bus stuck in the snow outside of the venue

Once inside we started loading in at 3pm. That's 6.5hrs after pits had opened. We immediately go to work tearing down the old robot and getting it ready for the additions. The tear down was complete at about 5pm and we started the reassembly with only 3 hours to go till pits closed. We weren't able to fully rebuild the robot but we are very close to being able to pass inspection.

- Spectrum

"Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit." - Napoleon Hill

April 28, 2015

Championship / Banquet May 21st / Summer Dates

Judges' Award

Spectrum was awarded the Judges' Award at the 2015 FIRST Championship event for the Archimedes-Tesla Division. The judges' believed that our team deserved special recognition for our efforts in the community to encourage young girls to pursue STEM and our support of the greater FRC community.

This is our first ever Championship award, only 60 total awards are given at the Championship event that included 600 of the best teams from around the world.

Championship Event

Spectrum had a great time at the Championship event. The team performed well ranking 31 out of 75 teams in the Tesla division. We were selected by the #1 alliance of #2481 Roboteers and #624 CRyptonite, to be their third partner. Our alliance had a lot of potential but due to some technical troubles was eliminated in the quarter finals.

Banquet May 21st

Invitation to the 2015 Spectrum end of year banquet should be coming your way very soon. Mark your calendars for May 21st.

Summer Dates

• May 9th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• May 21st - Spectrum Banquet
• May 22nd-25th - Comicpalooza Demo
• June 3rd - ISA Scholarship Night (Small Demo)
• June 6th - End of Year Party (More information to come)
• June 13th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• June 19th-20th - Texas Robotics Invitational, Off-season event hosted at Strake Jesuit
• June 25th - 28th - RoboReboot, Off-season event in Ft. Worth, fun off-season event, and six flags trip on Sunday.
• July 11th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• July 13th - 24th - SPECTaculaR Course at Spring Branch Boys and Girls Club, great way to get service hours
• July 31st Aug 1st - Texas Robot Roundup, off-season event in Austin
• Aug 8th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• Labor Day Weekend - Off-season Event

There will be more dates added but these are the ones we know about now.

April 28, 2015

Championship

Spectrum won Judges' Award on our division at champs. This is a huge honor and our first award at the Championship level.

We had a great time playing on the Tesla field. There were some very good matches on our field this year. We recorded nearly all of them and are uploading them to YouTube through out the week.

TESLA MATCH VIDEOS

We also recorded the award ceremonies and Einstein matches and will have those uploaded soon as well.

On the field it was also our first time being selected to a Championship playoff alliance. Our good friends FRC#2481 Roboteers and FRC#624 CRyptonite picked us to be on their #1 seeded alliance. We didn't see the field during the playoffs because we were in our pit getting retrofitted for can burgler duty while our alliance played in the quarter finals. Due to some technical problems we weren't able to advance to the semifinals where our robot would have gotten to help try to move our alliance on Einstein.

In the end one of our favorite teams in FIRST, FRC#118 The Robonauts, took home the World Championship trophy for the first time in their long and storied history. They were accompanied by their alliance parterns FRC#1678, FRC#1671, and FRC#5012. We couldn't be more happy for the Robonauts one of the best run programs in FRC and some of our best friends, happy to have gotten to root for them to victory and cheer with them in celebration. 118 and 1678 and two great examples of teams who have made excellence their goal and achieved it. They both shining examples of what an FRC team should be.

- Spectrum

"You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win." - Zig Ziglar

May 4, 2015

Tyler Holtzman - This Is How I Work

This week we are getting to know more about Tyler Holtzman, the highly revered mentor from 2056 OP Robotics. He's been involved with FRC for more than 10 years and previously mentored 1114 Simbotics before joining 2056 OP Robotics as one of their founding mentors. He has numerous years of FRC experience that helped him build up 2056 to the powerhouse team that they are today. With his help, OP Robotics have won every regional they have competed in since he has joined the team. FIRST has had a large impact on Tyler Holtzman’s life by giving him his first full-time job that he continues to do today. Even as he is heavily involved in the FRC community, he lives a balanced life that allowed him to train and participate in the Ironman Mont Tremblant in August of 2014. Be sure to read to more about his story and advice in the rest of the article and learn how a great mentor works.
[Responses from September 8, 2014; Updated on May 1, 2015] 

Name: Tyler Holtzman

CD Username: Holtzman

Current Gig/Job: Design Engineer

Alma Mater/Degree: McMaster University, B. Eng Software Engineering

Current Team(s): 2056 OP Robotics 

Former Team(s): 1114 Simbotics

Location: St. Catharines, Ontario 

Hobbies: Triathlon

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

Growing up, I was always playing with machines. I liked tractors, Lego, and was always building things and helping my dad in the garage. I built my first 4 bar when I was 6. I got into rock climbing when I was 10 and did that for a few years. I got into cycling when I was 15. It started off as mountain biking, and then road racing. I did that through most of high school and was fairly successful. I won the Provincial Championship a couple times, and won some big races in the States. I learned a lot of valuable life lessons racing that have stuck with me for the rest of my life. If you want to be truly successful at something, you have to make sacrifices. This is true in design, and engineering, as it is in life in general. I didn’t have much of a social life in High school. My schedule went something like go to school, come home, go ride till it was dark, then homework and bed. The other thing I learned was that going to races isn’t the fun part. Training isn’t the fun part. Winning is the Fun part. This kind of competitive spirit must be tempered with modesty, and grace. I don’t care for boastful attitudes, and prefer to be let my actions and achievements speak for me. There is no shame in losing to a better man, provided you gave your best effort.

To be great, truly great, you must have the drive, commitment, passion, a fire in your belly that sets you apart from the rest. Regardless of what you choose to do in life, give it your all, and you too will be truly great.

In my 2nd last year of high school, our tech teacher told us we were starting a Robotics Team. I got hooked our first year, but it wasn’t really until our second season that I began to apply my competitive spirit to robotics. My focus shifted away from bike racing, and stayed firmly planted on FIRST for many years to come. After graduating high school, I stayed active with the team travelling home on weekends, and building offseason prototypes with 1114.

In the fall of 2006, I heard that a new team was starting not far from where I was attending University. I agreed to come by a few days a week and lend a hand. A few days a week soon became every day of the week, and 2056 was born. 2007 I pulled double duty with FRC 1114 and 2056, but 2007 would be my last season actively involved with FRC 1114. I led the VEX team at 1114 until 2009 when I started working full time. I led the design effort and was field coach at 2056 up until the 2014 season.

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

I work for small automation company called Jantz Canada. We are a systems integrator for Kuka Robotics, and I am responsible for all robotic applications here. We focus primarily on Palletizing applications for the food industry.

A customer will come to us with an application they would like automated. I’m responsible for coming up with a viable solution, and helping to price out what we think the job will cost. If the customer chooses to buy the system, then I lead the detailed engineering design of all of the components in the system. We have in house fabrication here, so I keep an eye on the fabrication. We set up and test the system before we ship. Make whatever revisions we need to, and then ship it. Once the system is onsite, I travel there to oversee the startup, and to train the operators on how to use it.

An example of the kinds of systems we do can be found here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFE0KsItbZQ

Thankfully, we’re a lot better at making robotic systems than we are at making videos.

How I got there is an interesting story. In fall of 2009, one of our students at the time approached Jantz Canada as a potential laser cutting sponsor. They agreed, and provided laser cutting and bending for us for the 2010 season. On the Thursday of the 2010 Waterloo Regional, I got a call from the GM at Jantz asking me how our season was going, and what my current employment status was. At the time, I was recently graduated from McMaster, and was planning to start looking for work after The Championship. They hired me right after Champs in 2010, and I’ve been there ever since.

What is your favorite story to tell about robotics?

2012 was an interesting season for 2056 for a number of reasons. Our first event was marred with controversy. Our second event was relatively uninteresting, but at our third event, we were forced to cross a bridge I would have rather not crossed. We had to play against, and ultimately defeat 1114 at a regional.

The Archimedes finals of 2012 were the most satisfying victory of my FIRST Career. After being forced to play against 1114 in regional competition, we were able to select them with the 2^nd overall pick.

Following the release of the Divisions, we had stepped up our practicing with 1114. Both 1114, and 2056 underestimated how important Triple Balancing was that season, and both built long robots. This made tripling together almost impossible, unless we had a 20” robot in between us. Knowing this, we had built a short practice drive base the size of 4334’s robot to practice Tripling together prior to the championship. When we were able to select them in the 2^nd round, we knew we had put together the special kind of alliance you need to go to Einstien.

We advanced to the finals against Wave and HOT. Wave was exceptionally good that year, and HOT was the best triple balancing robot that season. They were a fantastic alliance, but hadn’t been able to nail the Triple Balance that had been HOT’s signature move throughout that season.

In the first match, our alliance nailed our triple, but Wave really lit it up, and we lost by 3. The 2^nd match, we kept it closer on balls, and hit our Triple to win the match. The third match was back and forth. Blue leading by 3 after auton. With 30s to go, we were tied, and 1114 lost Comms. Hot hit two more balls, to take the lead, and we hit two more to tie it up with 20s to go, as all 5 live robots go to balance. Just as we peel off to balance, our Human player hits a 2 to take the lead.

After losing the 2^nd match, The HOT Wave alliance tried for a Triple that had eluded them throughout the Elims thus far. After balancing for a couple seconds, wave tipped off the end, they quickly reorganized, and attempted again looking like they had it for good. We double balanced with just seconds to spare, and I looked over at the opposing bridge with three robots balanced but just as the buzzer sounded, they tumbled off the bridge, and we had the win.

And that’s where I end that story. Unfortunately we went to Einstein, and some stuff happened, but that’s a story for another day.

Why do you compete in FIRST?

I’m a firm believer that in FIRST, you get out what you put in. I’ve often thought that I focus too much on our performance on the field. That focus has provided me with the skill set required to be an effective engineer and I’ve never had to look for a job a day in my life. I try to instill that passion for success in our students, and couldn’t be more proud of what they’ve accomplished.

I continue to compete because I enjoy the competitive aspects of it, and the comradery that goes along with it. I have the utmost respect for the other Powerhouse teams. I enjoy going around the pits, chatting with other mentors and hearing their stories about how they come to their solutions.

FIRST has been around long enough that there are quite a few of us “Lifers” around now; Guys who’ve been in it for 10-15 years, and continue to come back year after year. I’ve come to call many of these my friends, and enjoy competing with and against them.

I don’t really get a lot of enjoyment out of winning regionals anymore. People ask me what it’s like to carry the streak on your back, but to be honest, I don’t even think about it anymore. After 6 when we broke the record, it was a big deal, and we celebrated and got hats made with the 6 on it. Now I’ve got a stack of hats at home and only one head.

IRI is my favorite tournament, but the Championship has become my “White Whale”.

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

2008 Team 1114 Simbot SS

This was the first year I wasn’t actively involved in 1114. I first saw the machine in action right before ship that year and was completely blown away by it. I knew immediately that they had a winner, and the rest is history.

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

Solidworks, Dropbox

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

My home and work desks are fairly similar. I spend most of my day at my work desk. It’s all about efficiency for me. I use dropbox to sync files at home, work, and the school. I custom build all the CAD work stations at our office. They’re purpose built for Solidworks, and run it fairly well. I have 3 24” Monitors at work, and use a space mouse for CAD work.

What do you listen to while you work?

I prefer to work in silence.

What’s your schedule like during build season?

It’s varied a lot over the years.

2007-2012 seasons, it went something like.

30-50 hrs a week

2013 was a little more

2014 was vastly less.

We do a lot of fabrication at the school, so I try to be there as much as possible while we have access. We are limited by the school custodians as to when we can be in the school. My dad is a retired machinist, and has a machine shop in his garage. I often help him with machining on weekends, or after official team hours. I’ve got CAD workstations at home, work, and at the school that all have dropbox to sync the models across. I do whatever I can to make it as easy as possible to be productive. I find it that too often, people put up barriers and make excuses why they can’t do something.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

I don’t know that I’m better than everyone else at one thing. I have a very good long term selective memory. I subconsciously file memories into two categories, things I need to remember, and things I don’t.

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

Take care of the little things, and the big things take care of themselves.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

Cheesecake

Fill in the blank. I'd love to see Travis Covington from 254 and Michael Corsetto of 1678 answer these same questions.

Anything else you want people to know about you?

I mentioned earlier that I led the design effort until the 2014 season.

My time with 2056 has had many successes, except for one. The 2012 season came within what felt like inches of a World Championship. Having that taken away from us the way it was a tough pill to swallow. The single largest effect had on me was adding fuel to the fire within me, that’s been on the verge of burning out of control for many years. I took on 2013 with an attitude and drive that was unsustainable, and my health suffered as a consequence of that. Our 2013 machine was very good, and I’m extremely proud of it, but the 2013 season really took its toll on me.

After the 2013 season, I knew that I needed a break from FRC. I had always been interested in Triathlon, and my background in cycling made at least one of the disciplines seem possible, so I decided to register for Ironman Mont Tremblant in August of 2014. I’ve never been one to start small, and I had already competed in a couple of shorter Triathlons in 2012 so this seemed reasonable. Knowing this would consume a good chunk of my time, I asked my most trusted alumni Trevor Kearse (strategy lead 2007­-2013) to take over the design effort. He along with several other key alumni are largely responsible for 2056’s on field success in 2014. Zac Young (Operator, Human Player 2007­-2010) stepped in as field coach, and I have to admit, I think he was a better coach than I ever was. My involvement was greatly reduced, and I was able to put in the time required to complete the race this past summer. I have to thank these guys, and everyone who contributed to our team’s success in 2014.

For 2015, I’ll be increasing my time commitment over 2014, but not to the insane 2013 levels.  Balance is important in life. Some of us just choose to balance the scales a little more off­center.

"You don’t have to win every match, just the last one you play." -Unknown 

May 11, 2015

Banquet and TRI Planning Meeting June 13th

Planning Meeting

May 13th 5:00pm

We will be holding a planning meeting for the Banquet and for the Texas Robotics Invitational on May 13th at 5pm. If you are interested in volunteering at TRI please try to attend this meeting, much of the volunteer work happens during the planning stages before the event.

Ways you can help

TRI

• Concessions

• Volunteer Food

  • Get Catered Food for the volunteered

• Pre-order Lunches

  • Order food from Subway and pick up on June 20th

  • Assemble bags of chips and snacks before hand

  • Once food is at venue put them in bags and distribute to teams

• Setup (June 19th)

  • Help put down the carpet

  • Setup the pits, field, and charging stations

• Queuing (June 20th)

  • Making sure teams are ready for their matches

 

Summer

• Drive rented truck with field to and from Ft. Worth June 25th-28th
• Drive rented truck with field to and from Austin July 30th - Aug 1st
• Plan or host a team bonding event
  • Party, Paintball, Sky Zone (trampoline park), etc

Starting Robotics Programs at Schools

• Do you know of a school that should have a robotics team? We can help teach them about the different competition options available to them and help answer their questions. There are competitions and programs for K-12. If you know principals and teachers at other schools this can be big help to us.

Presenters and tours

• We like bringing in engineers and scientists to the schools to speak. Do you know anyone who might be interested in coming to our schools and giving a talk about what they do?
• Do you know of a corporation that we could tour. These opportunities give our members an idea of how engineers work?

Sponsors

• Do you know of a company that may be able to help support the team? We have love sponsors that can help with manufacturing the robot, powder coating, or with costs for putting on some of our events, etc.

Events

• Are there opportunities that you know of us for the team to do demonstrations for the community? Parades, celebrations, conferences, etc are all good venues for the team to spread STEM to the community. Let us know about any potential events or demonstration venues.

Press

• Help get Spectrum in the news. Do you have any contacts in the media that can help us spread STEM and what we do to the community?

Texas Robotics Invitational

Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.) will be held June 19th and 20th.  T.R.I. is the off-season event that we host each year in the Strake Jesuit Competition Gym.  We will have 32 teams participate at TRI.
To Do List - This is the working to do list for the event.

District Events

District events will hopefully replace the regional system in Texas in the 2017 season. We run off season events in a similar way as district events are run in other parts of the country. The biggest difference between a regional and a district competition is that there regional events have a production company helping to run them and the districts do not. Our goal for TRI this year and next year is to prepare us for hosting an official Texas FRC District Event in the 2017 season.
District Event Resources
District System FAQ 
District Planning Guide

Summer Dates

• May 9th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• May 21st - Spectrum Banquet
• May 22nd-25th - Comicpalooza Demo
• June 3rd - ISA Scholarship Night (Small Demo)
• June 6th - End of Year Party (More information to come)
• June 13th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• June 19th-20th - Texas Robotics Invitational, Off-season event hosted at Strake Jesuit
• June 25th - 28th - RoboReboot, Off-season event in Ft. Worth, fun off-season event, and six flags trip on Sunday.
• July 11th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• July 13th - 24th - SPECTaculaR Course at Spring Branch Boys and Girls Club, great way to get service hours
• July 31st Aug 1st - Texas Robot Roundup, off-season event in Austin
• Aug 8th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• Labor Day Weekend - Off-season Event

There will be more dates added but these are the ones we know about now.

May 28, 2015

Spectrum News 5-28-15

End of Year Surveys

At the end of each year, we ask for parents and students to take surveys to let us know what we did well and what we can work on. There are always things we can do better. We also use these surveys to find quotes for our website and judge and marketing materials.
If you are a parent, team member, or alumni please fill out the surveys below.
Parent Survey
Team Member Survey - There is an option for a one on one meeting to discuss your role on the team, ways you can improve, and ideas to make the team better.I encourage each of you to do this. These meetings will happen over the summer.
Alumni Survey -  For new alumni and past alumni that want to keep us updated.

Texas Robotics Invitational Volunteering

We need volunteers for the Texas Robotics Invitational on June 19th and 20th in the Strake Competition Gym.
Setup is on the 19th and the competition is on the 20th.
If you have ever wanted to help run an event, this a great one to help run. Even if you don’t volunteer, we would love for you to come to the event and cheer on the teams.

We also need to get media coverage for the event, so if you know anyone in the media who would be interested, please get us in contact with them. If you want to help with press releases and things we would be very grateful.
VOLUNTEER SIGNUP FORM.

Banquet 2015

Thank you to everyone who attended our end-of-year banquet. We really appreciate your support.

You can find the photos from the banquet on our flickr page here.
Flickr Banquet Album

Comicpalooza 2015

This weekend, we had our biggest demo of the year at Texas's largest comic convention, Comicpalooza. Over 40,000 people came to the event this year, and many of them saw Houston FRC teams demoing their robots.

Comicplooza 2015 Photo Album

Summer Dates

• June 2nd - 4pm Life Lessons with Allen Presentation at the Strake Lab (Learn how to change a tire, open a bank account, etc)
• June 3rd - ISA Scholarship Night (Small Demo)
• June 6th - End of Year Party (Should have RSVPed with Will Smith already)
• June 13th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• June 19th-20th - Texas Robotics Invitational (off-season event hosted at Strake Jesuit)
• June 25th - 28th - RoboReboot (Off-season event in Ft. Worth, fun off-season event, and six flags trip on Sunday)
• July 11th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• July 13th - 24th - SPECTaculaR Summer Camp at Spring Branch Boys & Girls Club (great way to get service hours)
• July 31st-Aug 1st - Texas Robot Roundup (off-season event in Austin)
• Aug 8th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• Labor Day Weekend - Off-season Event

There will be more dates added, but these are the ones we know about now. I'm working on getting us a tour of the Johnson Space Center by the mentors from 118 which will probably happen around July 10th.
Here is the Spectrum Summer Sign Up form.

June 8, 2015

Spectrum LEDs

We are very happy to announce a new batch of resources that we are publishing, Spectrum LEDs (Luminous Educational Documents). Each LED will be a quick reference to some part of being an FRC team. Some of them will be very specific, some of them will be broad. The goal of these LEDs is to provide quick resources for teams to turn to when they need answers. Fill free to print them out and use them how you wish. We will printing them and giving out to teams at annual Mock Kickoff event each December. Some of the topics we plan to cover pneumatic and electrical components, WPILib common classes and methods, bolt sizes, and many more.

The first LED that we will be publishing is a quick reference to the 100+ Watt motors that have been legal the past few years.

We'll be posting more of these documents through out the year as we make them.

- Spectrum

“There's a big difference between not settling and not starting. “ - Seth Godin

June 18, 2015

Ryan Dognaux - This Is How I Work

This month we’re featuring the life of Ryan Dognaux, a mentor from FRC team 4329 who was previously on FRC teams 234 and 1646. Ryan Dognaux joined an FLL team when he was in middle school and went on to FRC from there. He then set off to improve his team’s scouting system. He is also an amazing MC and MC’s at many events including VEX worlds. Ryan Dognaux is a hard working mentor who strives to do the best for his team and spends most of his time helping his students to CAD and fabricate parts for the robot. If you want a more in depth look at his stories and advice, keep reading to see how amazing our FRC mentors are!

[Responses from May 28, 2015] 

Name: Ryan Dognaux

CD Username: Ryan Dognaux

Current Gig/Job: Process Engineer at The Boeing Company

Alma Mater/Degree: Purdue University – B.S. Computer Graphics Technology – Virtual Product Integration

Current Team(s): 4329 – The Lutheran Roboteers – St. Charles, Missouri

Former Team(s): 
High School – 234 Cyber Blue
College – 1646 Precision Guessworks / Purdue FIRST Programs
Post-College – 357 Royal Assault

Location: St. Charles, Missouri

Hobbies / Interests: Robotics, Homebrewing, Woodworking, Indianapolis Colts Football

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

I’ve been involved with competitive robotics now for about 15 years in one way or another. My initial involvement is probably a little different than most. I got hooked by joining my middle school’s FLL team with a few of my friends and met some of my future mentors and teammates that way. I knew coming into high school that I wanted to join the robotics team.

When I got there though, the actual building of the robot didn’t interest me all that much. The thing that actually kept me around for my first build season was FIRST’s animation competition – yes, FIRST used to have an entirely separate competition for 3D animation. After my first ‘build season’, I was asked if I wanted to help lead the team’s scouting efforts. That first scouting effort consisted mostly of myself and a mentor watching every match and recording data. We ended up being in a picking position and I distinctly remember choosing a rookie team over one of the better robots that year. We lost in the quarter finals and suddenly scouting meant something to me and to the team.

From that moment on I made a decision to never put our team in that spot again and really worked to improve our scouting. We actually started using our scouting data to influence drive team strategy and developed a culture on the team that made scouting viewed not only as necessary, but important and actually fun. Having the ability to completely lead this effort as a student really inspired me; mentors honestly listened to me as an equal on how to play to win and it’s something I’ve tried to do as a mentor today.

I went on to Purdue University and mentored team 1646 through Purdue FIRST Programs – making a lot of friends along the way. After getting my first job at Boeing in Philadelphia, I joined team 357 and again had a chance to meet more great mentors and students (see a pattern here?) If it’s one thing I’ve learned, there are some of the smartest, most inspiring people involved in the FIRST & VEX robotics competitions and I’m just happy to be able to be in the same room as these people.

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

I work for The Boeing Company. My job title is Process Engineer but it really doesn’t describe what I get to do on a daily basis – which can be all over the place. The group I work for is called Immersive Development and we are charged with evaluating new and emerging technology to see if it’s ready for use on production programs. This means I get to try out and develop uses cases for things like 3D Printing, motion capture, immersive head mounted displays, mobile devices, 3D visualization technologies and more.

I got the job by originally being hired to do process and tools work. I had always wanted to work for Boeing and once I got my foot in the door I made it my mission to search out the job I really wanted. Back in 2009 the job market wasn’t too great and I felt very lucky to have the opportunity to work at my dream company. I actually learned a great deal from my first position and became recognized as a subject matter expert in visualization technologies which helped me transition to my current job in St. Louis.

What is your favorite story to tell about robotics?

It’s hard to pick just one. I’ll go back to high school on Cyber Blue 234 though. It was 2005 during the Triple Play game at the very first Boilermaker Regional at Purdue University. This was also the first year we had 3 vs. 3 matches – a HUGE improvement that made FIRST’s games all the more exciting. Triple Play was basically a giant game of tic-tac-toe using tetrahedron shapes. Whoever had the highest tetra on or inside a goal claimed ownership of that goal.

234 picked legendary team (even for back then) 16 – Bomb Squad – and team 393. 393 no longer exists, but they were actually ran by our lead mentor’s wife. It’s one of the only times I’ve ever heard of a husband and wife running separate FRC teams (Shout out to Scott and Libby Ritchie!)

We had a tough matchup going up against an alliance of 71, 269 and 1024 during the elimination rounds. Back then, team 71 was the team to beat and struck fear into the hearts of every FRC team on the other side of the glass. We won our 1^st elimination match by having 393 play some incredible defense on 71, but lost our 2^nd match. In the end, it came down to a game piece being propped up partially by the field, dropped by 71’s robot, that gave 71’s alliance ownership of a goal – and the match. It was a brutal way to lose but it’s also strangely one of my favorite memories – the time we nearly beat 71 and lost by an inch.

My close second would have to be being asked to be the MC for the St. Louis regional in 2007 when the actual MC had to back out. This would set me down a path of game announcing and MC’ing for years to come and I’ve been incredibly honored to be asked to continue to do it over the years.

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

There are so many cool robots that get built every year. Here are just a few of my favorites, I’ll try to pick a few that don’t always get mentioned –

-       Team 71’s 2002 file-card drive robot – I know everyone says this, but I actually got to see it in action! And it was incredible! The only chance you had at beating it was getting to the goal first and that almost never happened. It’s not every year that your robot causes a rule change the following year.

-       Team 68’s 2003 mega wall robot – Okay, it’s also very rare to have a rule clarification by FIRST during the season because of your robot. 68 managed to make that happen in 2003. I’m always a fan of teams that make the ‘shutdown machine’ – a robot that breaks the game i.e. 469 in 2010.

-       Team 190’s 2004 hanging bar-blocking ball-blocking robot – This thing was nuts. Not only would it hang from the bar but it also had wings that prevented other robots from hanging. Then they would block you from capping your goal with their giant arm.

-       The alliance of 190, 177 and 987 in 2007. Really just the Einstein Finals 3 match. Tubes were pretty useless during this game but they found the real best use for them – denying a team entry to their alliance’s ramp.

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

For robotics: Autodesk Inventor, a 3D spaceball mouse and a laptop - being able to take CAD wherever I need to go helps during the build season. An air compressor with a rivet gun for fabrication – makes assembling a robot a breeze.

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

We have a pretty small shop on 4329. It used to be an old weight room but we’ve tried to make the most of it. Last year we made 2 robots for the first time on this team and we did it with a band saw, a drill press, a pneumatic rivet gun and some smart design decisions.

The attached photo is a little outdated but shows the facility that we work in.

What do you listen to while you work?

All kinds of music – almost anything except country music. If I had to pick a favorite band, it would be MuteMath.

What’s your schedule like during build season?

We meet 6 days a week and take Sundays off for family, church and school. This year we probably met almost as much after the build season for programming development and driver practice in-between bag & tag and our week 2 regional. I’ve overseen most of the CAD work during the past 2 years with 4329 and have been involved heavily in the shop while parts are being fabricated and assembled.

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

Be humble, work hard and show enthusiasm in everything you do.

Also you are your own biggest advocate, so don’t sell yourself short!

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

Sweet Tea. 

Fill in the blank. I'd love to see Chris Fultz from 234 answer these same questions.

Anything else you want people to know about you?

If you get the chance to volunteer for an event, do it. I was lucky enough to be an MC at the St. Louis regional in 2007 and that set me down a path of MC’ing and game announcing for many other events including VEX Worlds. It’s a blast and I’ve been able to meet a lot of great people by doing it. 

I wasn’t on a team that won a regional until my 10^th year in FRC. It takes a lot of right choices during the build season and a little luck on the playing field to come away with a blue banner, which is always one of my goals each season.

I've started an off-season event in St. Louis - the Gateway Robotics Challenge. St. Louis has a long history of veteran FRC teams but was one of the few cities that still didn't have an off-season event for teams. Some teams in this area only play at the St. Louis regional and are 'one and done'; With this in mind, I saw an opportunity to provide those teams another chance to play in the Fall that would let brand new team members get some FRC exposure prior to the build season.

We went from the idea to actually holding this event last year in about 3 months - which was pretty crazy. Everything was rushed but with the support of some amazing volunteers and the Hazelwood School District we were able to pull it off. 25 teams attended including 4 pre-rookie teams. Many teams here haven't been exposed to the district event style of play and I think it helped open some eyes on what an FRC event can be.

This year we hope to make it even better - www.gatewayroboticschallenge.com

"Far better it is to dare might things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." -Theodore Roosevelt 

June 24, 2015

TRI Presentations 2015

We just got the 2015 TRI Presentations uploaded to YouTube. Aren and Andrew did a great job providing valuable information to the community.

From Design Requirements to Robot Design by Aren Hill FRC#1296 
Discussion and examples of how to handle the transition from what strategy dictates to what your team can make. I will be sharing my experiences and what has worked for me in the past for this step, in addition to discussion regarding “how far to reach” mentalities based on team resources.

Building a Sustainable FRC Team by Andrew Lynch FRC#2587
Building a successful team is difficult but making a sustainable team is easy. The presentation will overview recruitment to fundraising and everything in between that creates a sustainable team.

CD Post
Thank you to both our presenters this year.
- Spectrum
“Learning never exhausts the mind.” - Leonardo da Vinci

July 6, 2015

Spectrum News July 2015 - Off-season recap, Food Distribution, etc

SPECTaculaR 

Summer Programs Enriching Children Through Robotics

Hello everyone! SPECTaculaR is coming up in mid-July. Any amount of help is appreciated (you don't need to volunteer on all the days), and you can get up to 90 service hours for volunteering. No prior knowledge is needed to volunteer. Sign up here:

 

http://goo.gl/forms/sFBP8mdjGi

 

For those of you who don’t know, SPECTaculaR is Spectrum’s summer camp aimed toward teaching STEM to disadvantaged elementary & middle school students. It is located at the Spring Branch Boys & Girls Club (8575 Pitner Rd, Houston, TX 77080) & takes place for 2 weeks (July 13-24) from Monday to Friday, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. We teach participants how to program LEGO Mindstorms Robots using slides like these:

This year, Alex Lednicky (one of my fellow St. Agnes seniors) & I will be running the camp. Thank you!

 

Sara Baltz

TRI 2015

The 2nd installment of TRI was a great event for our team and the other 23 teams in attendance. Thank you to all of our members and parents that volunteered to support the event. All the feed back we have gotten from teams and volunteers is that it was an excellent event and that we made it even better then last year. In the end CRyptonite FRC#624 (Cinco Ranch) repeated as TRI Champions, along with High Voltage FRC#231 (Pasadena), & Discobots FRC#2587 (Lamar, Carnegie Vanguard, etc). We are planning to hold TRI 2016 on Jun 24th, & 25th 2016.

More Photos

Mobile Pantry: Monthly Food Distribution 

Every month Spectrum is assisting the Houston Food Bank with a Mobile Pantry in our Strake Jesuit parking lot. This takes place the 2nd Saturday of each month from 8am to 11am. If you are interested in volunteering please let us know, there is plenty of work for everyone.
In the past two months we have distributed food to 215 families, a total of 889 individuals

RoboReboot

Last week the team traveled to Ft. Worth for RoboReboot. We use this largely as a practice event where we have all of our participants drive the robot. This year it was a small event with only 14 teams in attendance. In attention we spent a day at Six Flags Over Texas.

More Photos

Summer Dates

• July 11th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• July 13th - 24th - SPECTaculaR Course at Spring Branch Boys and Girls Club, great way to get service hours
• July 31st Aug 1st - Texas Robot Roundup, off-season event in Austin
• Aug 8th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• Labor Day Weekend - Off-season Event

There will be more dates added but these are the ones we know about now.

July 14, 2015

Spectrum News - Summer is coming to an end

Parents Meeting

August 4th 5:30 to 6:30 PM

RSVP at this link: https://goo.gl/XgXGy1
We are going to start having parent meetings roughly every other month on the first Tuesday of the month from 5:30pm to 6:30pm.
There will be a meeting on August 4th, October 6th, November 3rd, January 5th,,  March 1st & May 1st. All these dates are on the Spectrum Calendar Calendar.spectrum3847.org
This month's meeting will be pretty quick just talking about the new year and the things we have planned and things we can do better.
 

Texas Robot Roundup

July 31st-Aug 1st

We will be leaving the morning of Jul 31st at 6:30am.

Staying one night at
COMFORT INN
700 Delmar Ave, Austin, TX, 78752, US
Phone: (512) 302-5576 Fax: (512) 302-4828

 

And returning the evening of Aug 1st, probably pretty late between 10:30pm and 11:30pm.

 

If you aren’t signed up please sign up on this form.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfCRMTYQ7J7rGONhtgOCj8p4vO6U_DZ7nkYbzpKlmV1-tZlVg/viewform ’
For the event schedule and more information please visit the main event page here.
https://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2015txrr
During the event you can watch the webcast on TheBlueAlliance.com

SPETaculaR

Our summer robotics camp is in progress. If you need service hours please volunteer to help.

End of Year Surveys

If you haven't filled out the end of year survey's please do so.

Parent Survey
Team Member Survey
Alumni Survey -  For new alumni and past alumni that want to keep us updated.

Summer Dates

• July 13th - 24th - SPECTaculaR Course at Spring Branch Boys and Girls Club, great way to get service hours
• July 31st Aug 1st - Texas Robot Roundup, off-season event in Austin
• Aug 8th - Food Distribution Volunteering at Strake
• Labor Day Weekend - Off-season Event

There will be more dates added but these are the ones we know about now.

July 30, 2015

Improvised hubs for McMaster-Carr Wheels

McMaster-Carr sells some very nice wheels that are used in industrial applications for moving products, sheet materials, and more they are called “Drive Rollers” on their site. These wheels have been shown to have many applications for FRC teams such as collector and shooter wheels.
These wheels are great but they don’t come with any hub and they can be difficult for teams that don’t have access to a lathe or a hex broach to use with standard FRC gearboxes and motors.

It's very common for teams to use hex shafts to transfer torque from a motor to a wheel. Using hex hubs is one option to accomplish this and works well for most wheels designed for FRC. Once you want to use an industrial wheel for some application it become much harder to adapt them to hex shafts.

VEXpro hex collars and aluminum tubing can often allow for teams without a lathe or a hex broach to use these types of wheels.

Tear Drop Sure-Grip Drive Rollers

For the Sure-Grip wheels we have been able to use two VEXpro shaft collars as a hub for those wheels. The built in hub is a 1" diameter and the shaft collars are slightly smaller than this about 0.96 inches. We use the included set screws to tighten the shaft collar down on the shaft. This worked very well for us this season and we never had an on field failure.

Blue Urethane Drive Rollers 

We haven't used these wheels in competition yet but they have been popular with other teams such as 1114 and 2056 in Ultimate Ascent as their Frisbee shooter wheels.

These wheels have a 1.25" inside diameter (ID) which is too large for just the shaft collars. To solve this problem we used a small aluminum pipe cut to the correct length. For these wheels we used a 1.25" OD and a 1" ID aluminum pipe from McMaster-Carr: 9056K37 and we cut down the piece to around 0.92" long. To assemble these we used a small arbor press. An inexpensive arbor press can be purchased at Harbor Freight. 
With both wheels it's important to remember you are trying to get the hex hubs to be flat inside the tube so the wheels will turn close to true (flat without wobble). These hubs will work better at low speeds since at high speeds the fact that the hubs aren't completely true can cause heavy vibrations.
These wheels can then be installed directly on a 1/2" hex shaft such as the output shaft of a Versa Planetary gearbox.
The other benefit of this method is that all of these are COTS parts and the assembly can be completed easily at an event without counting to your withholding allowance weight.
- Spectrum
"If necessity is the mother of invention, it's the father of cooperation." -John Ashcroft

August 9, 2015

China Travel Log Day 1

5 members of Spectrum are in China and Hong Kong for next two weeks along with our friends the Robonauts and Appreciate.

We started of our journey with a 12+ hour flight to Beijing airport for a short 13 hrs in the city, giving us just enough time to go out to the great wall and back in time to catch our flight to Hong Kong.

The Great was a wonderful experience. The size, complexity, and details and amazing to witness. The engineering invoked in building such a sprawling structure is mind blowing.

Our guides took us to a small local restaurant for lunch. We didn't fit in the dining area so they open up the attached living room of the owner for us to eat. The food was fantastic, Kung Pao chicken, fries potatoes, a flaky cross between a pancake and a tertiary, and much more all of it was fabulous.

After that is was back to the airport to catch our connection to Hong Kong.

We'll be here for a couple days then on to Shenzhen were we will meet up from teams from around China and the US for workshops and the 2015 China Robotics Competition.

- Spectrum

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” - Henry Miller 

August 28, 2015

August Update

Spectrum in China

Five members of Spectrum are back from two weeks in china from August 8th to 21st. We were there participating in the China Robotics Challenge alongside our friends teams 118 and 2468. In all there were 10 teams from the United States, 1 Brazilian, 1 Australian, and 28 Chinese Teams at the event.
Photos from our trip to China can be seen on our Flickr.


China Trip Photos

SPECTaculaR

Spectrum completed our 4th year of running the Summer Programs Educating Children Through Robotics at the Spring Branch Family Development Center Boys and Girls Club. 
We teach students about the basic principles of engineering and programming using Lego robots.
Photos can be found on our Flickr.

SPECTaculaR Photos.

Fall Dates

• Sep 10th - SAA Interest Meeting
• Sep 12th - FLL Kickoff at SAA
• Sep 14th - SAA Club Carnival
• Sep 15th - Strake Club Fair
• Sep 17th - SAA Interest Meeting
• Sep 19th - VEX Houston Kickoff Volunteering
• Sep 24th - Engineering Presentation: Amanda Reineck at SAA
• Oct 3rd - HISD VEX Kickoff Volunteering
• Oct 10th - SJ Food Distribution
• Oct 24th - Remix Off-season
• Oct 31st - Mock Kickoff at Strake Jesuit
• Nov 7th - Canstruction Build Day
• Nov 14th - Houston Maker Faire
• Nov 15th - Decanstruction
• Nov 21st - Space City VEX Tournament Volunteering
• Dec 5th - Spectrum FLL Qualifier at Strake
• Dec 12th - HISD VEX Volunteering

There will be more dates added but these are the ones we know about now.

September 12, 2015

September News: Fall Events, Regional Dates

Start of the Year

We have started a few projects and recruited new team members for this year.
SAA's Club Carnival is next week, as well as Strake Jesuit's Club Fair. We will be at both events.
We are also holding interest meetings at SAA (since we don't meet at SAA anymore) and bringing in Amanda Reineck, an engineer from Exxon, to do a presentation on her career and what it's like to be an engineer. This will happen after school on Sep. 24.

VEX IQ

This fall, we will be running an internal competition among subgroups on the team using the VEX IQ system. This will start on Sep. 22 when we go over the game and divide up into teams.

The Remix, October 24

This is our last off-season event of the 2015 season. It will take place in The Woodlands and is hosted by our friends Texas Torque and CRyptonite.
All students, parents, supporters, etc. are invited to attend this event. It's a fun event and a good introduction to FRC for our new students.
Signups will be sent out in the next few weeks.

Mock Kickoff, October 31

We will be hosting the 2015 FRC Mock Kickoff on Oct. 31 in the Strake Dining Hall. It's a event designed to give students an introduction to the FRC season and engineering design process.
Here is the full description of the event, its RSVP link, and some of its workshop descriptions.
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/t/houston-mock-kickoff-oct-31st/145113
All spectrum team members should plan on attending this event. It will end before 4 P.M. so people can enjoy their Halloween evening.

Spectrum FLL Qualifier, December 5

We are hosting our second annual FLL Qualifier. The event will host 24 teams of 4th-8th grade students competing with Lego robots.
The event is from 7 A.M. - 4 P.M., and we would love if you could volunteer. We need students, parents, teachers, and more to volunteer as referees, judges, concessions help, and more. We will provide training for any job that you would like to help with. We need a few key volunteers to help coordinate the event and get things prepared. If you would like to help with that, please let us know.
VOLUNTEER REGISTRATION (Please volunteer if you can!)
Information about the event:
http://ift.tt/1imdrIm

Fall Dates

• Oct. 3 - HISD VEX Kickoff
• Oct. 24 - The Remix
• Oct. 31 - Mock Kickoff
• Nov. 7 - Canstruction
• Nov. 14 - Houston Maker Faire
• Nov. 15 - Decanstruction
• Nov. 21 - Space City VEX competition volunteering
• Dec. 5 - Spectrum FLL Qualifer
• Dec. 12 - HISD VEX event

There will be more dates added, but these are the ones we know about now.

September 14, 2015

Versaplanetary Integrated Encoder Build

Two weeks ago Nate Lavedure from FRC#2363 posted a fantastic white paper on making an integrated VersaPlanetary encoder. They had a very creative and simple approach to a problem many teams have been wanting to solve for some time.
Read their entire paper HERE and the forum thread about the paper HERE. All of the rest of this post is going to detail our implementation of the same setup. Thanks and credit should all go to FRC#2363 for their fantastic idea. You should read through their document first, as we will be pointing out our modifications but not detailing the entire process.
We started by analyzing their setup and seeing if there are ways to simplify it or make it cheaper. The first thing we looked at was the gear they used for the sensor setup. 2363 used a 21 teeth, 24 pitch, 14.5° PA gear from McMaster Carr. This is a good choice as it fits in the space vacated by the bearing very well but it also costs about $20 making up the majority of the cost of this modification. We realized that we could use the gears from the VersaPlanetary Dual Input adapter hardware kit for a more inexpensive solution. Each kit can yield 3x 30 tooth gears that fit nicely in the required space.

We looked at possibly using other sensors as well but after researching, the Allegro ATS605LSG is one of the best values for a gear tooth sensor that has quadrature output and can run off of 5v DC. When you buy x10 from Digikey the unit price drops by nearly $2 to only $6.70 each; this is a great value for an accurate encoder.

Team 2363 also used a potting epoxy to seal in the encoder. The item they quote is very expensive and only sold in large quantities. We substituted the STYCAST 2850FT with ordinary sensor safe RTV silicone gasket maker. This item is only $6 and can be purchased from Amazon or your local hardware store. Make sure it's sensor safe RTV silicone so that you don't short out the contacts on the encoder when sealing it in the VersaPlanetary.

For the drill bit we also looked at a low cost option. The requirements are a 17mm drill bit. The high quality McMaster versions run around $26, a cheap import drill bit from Amazon is only $11. If you are willing to wait a similar model to the Amazon item can be imported directly from China on eBay or Aliexpress for around $7. These inexpensive models will not last very long but will get the job done and allow you to test the process.

We did most of the machining in a similar way to FRC#2363 but we also intentionally tried to do it somewhat quickly to see how imprecise you could be and still get a functional system. To drill the holes in the VP input stage we use a hand drill and hand marked the holes. 

These holes were very imprecise. We ended up using a file and another drill bit to widen them until the sensor with the bent legs would fit.

We attempted to also drill out the gear with a hand drill but that was not going to be possible. The VEX gears appear to be some form of hardened steel and were very difficult to drill.

We ended up needing to use the lathe and to step up the drill bits in a similar fashion as FRC#2363 did. However because the gears are different there is no need to use a cut off tool because the ends of the gear that need to be removed just popped off during the drilling process since they are smaller than the final diameter of the 17mm hole. This means this step of the process can most likely be accomplished on a mill or a drill press as well, making it accessible to teams without the use of a lathe.

Here is the before and after photos for the gear that we used.

We used a Loctite retaining compound to secure the gear to the VP input coupler; but honestly you could probably use an epoxy or super glue since the gear does not have to transfer any torque.

The RTV silicone gasket material worked just fine for our purpose.

We left the RTV to dry over the weekend and came back on Monday to a fully cured product.

Here is the full working assembly.

We tested it today and are getting what appear to be good distance values out of the basic WPILIB encoder class. The rate function isn't giving consistent results but that is somewhat to be expected with an encoder generating this many counts per second and the way that the WPILIB rate class operates. Writing a custom rate method that looks at the distance traveled over a certain amount of time will likely lead to more consistent results. 

Overall this is a very inexpensive modification to make to the VersaPlanetary. 

Simple Bill of Materials

Gear Tooth Sensor: $6.70

Gear: $3.33

RTV Silicone: $6 for a tube that can dozens of sensors

17mm Drill Bit: $11 can be used for multiple gears until it will need to be sharpened

Wire, heat shrink, Loctite, other drill bits: already owned

Total cost for initial sensor addition ~$27, each additional gearbox will only be ~$10 for the sensor and gear.

This is an awesome modification and we are very thankful to FRC#2363 for posting this for everyone to use.

Comment below if you have any questions about this process. We think it's within reach of most FRC teams to accomplish these mods.

- Spectrum

Help one another; there's no time like the present and no present like the time. - James Durst

October 15, 2015

Kristine Atiyeh - This Is How I Work

This month we are looking at Kristine Atiyeh, an inspiring mentor who helps kids learn in all sorts of ways. She is a teacher and mentor to many young kids, from her art classes to her work with Lego Robotics for the Latino STEM Alliance. She shares her knowledge of robotics gained from years of experience of being on FRC team 175 Buzz Robotics. She is now a mentor on 125 NUTRONS and was recently on GameSense to present the 2016 game hint! If you want to know more about this incredible mentor and her experiences, read the article and see how our amazing FRC mentors work!

[Responses from July 28, 2015]

Name: Kristine Atiyeh

CD Username: Katiyeh07

Current Gig/Job: Elementary Art Educator- Norwood Public Schools / Robotics Educator – Latino STEM Alliance

Alma Mater/Degree: BFA Art Education from Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Current Team(s): 125 NUTRONS

Former Team(s): 175 Buzz Robotics - Student / 126 Gael Force - Mentor

Location: Boston, MA

Hobbies: Taking care of my class pet, Tacos the Leopard Gecko and the occasional art making.

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

When I was in high school I went to my freshman open house and saw the ceramics teacher throwing on the potter’s wheel. It was one of the most mesmerizing things I had seen, so I signed up for all of his ceramics classes. I didn’t think about going into teaching until one of my mentors on 175 sat me down to help me figure out what I wanted to do beyond high school.. Mike Sperber made me see the importance and value of working directly with people on a regular basis. He also made me see the parallels in art education and STEM world. I was/am horrible with math, so I knew engineering wasn’t exactly up my ally.

Teaching art allows me to integrate other subject areas and teach it in a different way that makes more sense to some students. We do a lot of science and math based projects in my curriculum, and my students sometimes don’t quite realize they’re doing something with really strong math concepts until I point it out. Which sometimes makes them mad, but they’re usually pretty excited and interested when they can apply math, science and writing concepts in their artwork. I’ve also realized that comparing any sort of learning concept to food makes any kid understand what’s going on. For example when we do clay I typically tell them to roll it out to the thickness of a fluffy pancake, or fold in the shape of a Dorito.

I started teaching Lego Robotics for the Latino STEM Alliance after joining the NUTRONS in the spring of 2014. This was really rewarding for me to work with elementary students doing robotics, and we even managed to integrate some art into it during our summer program. I really love doing this because my NUTRONS students help me learn the skill sets that I teach my students. It’s also a nice break from being covered in art materials and anxiously hoping no one dumps paint water all over the place (because school paper towels, yes the brown ones, are AWFUL). However we do usually get our robots to draw, it’s a great way to challenge the students by having to create a mechanism that will hold a marker and program their robot to create certain shapes.

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

I’m an elementary art teacher for Norwood Public Schools, and have approximately 760 students between in grades 1 through 5 at two different schools. I got there by applying for a million jobs, my interview in Norwood went really well and they were super interested in my robotics background. What I absolutely LOVE about my school district is how local businesses display student artwork and how unbelievably supportive my Fine Arts boss is of my robotics endeavors. We’re hopefully (fingers crossed) starting a Jr FLL team this year at my schools, and at the very least a robotics after school club. I also teach Lego Robotics to a group of elementary students in Dorchester through an amazing Boston nonprofit called the Latino STEM Alliance. They bring robotics programs to students of all ages in low income areas.

One of my absolute favorite things about being a teacher is seeing a student do something or figure something out for the first time on their own. I’ve gotten to see a few kids tie their shoe on their own for the first time, and the look on their face is pretty much indescribably awesome.

What is your favorite story to tell about robotics?

At World Champs this past year, I had ordered a giant box of WE ARE NE sunglasses to hand out to teams. It was last minute, but they were slated to be delivered to my hotel (which is an entire circus of a story in itself) on Wednesday of the event, which was perfect timing. Wednesday came and went and a message on the FedEx tracking page said “No attempt made, delivery scheduled for next business day”. The next day the same message popped up, so I tweeted at FedEx with a screenshot of the weird message, and then bumped into a group of FedEx employees in the pits. I asked if they would know anything about it and they took down my tracking number and information after apologizing and being really nice. Within 30 minutes of speaking with them, they found me in the pits again and told me they were working on it and had located my package. Within an hour of first speaking with them, they came by my team’s pit and had 2 tote bags full of FedEx selfie sticks since we didn’t have our package of sunglasses yet (there are few things more exciting to a NUTRONS team member than a selfie stick), which blew me away, they definitely didn’t have to do that. Then within about an hour and a half of first speaking to them, they delivered my box of sunglasses TO MY TEAM’S PIT. Somehow managed to locate the package, get it to the dome, and then get it to my pit. It was hands down the best customer service experience of my life so far, the FedEx employees at Championships were unbelievable.

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

It’s a tie between 25’s robot in 2000 and 118’s Chainzilla in 2005.

As a 5^th grader in 2000 I was obsessed with Toy Story and claw machines, and that robot was a gigantic claw machine. Their strategy to park themselves on the bar and just pick out the black balls was a great compliment to a lot of alliances and something I was mesmerized by as a child. I still to this day want to drive it and pick out every ball in the scoring troph.

118’s Chainzilla in 2005 was unlike any other robot I had ever seen before. The combo of their gigantic arms, elevator and ridiculous amount of intricately placed chain was something I was in complete awe over. My team at the time, 175, played them in the semis on Curie that year at Champs, and I didn’t think we were going to beat them. Their two tetra autonomous can be seen here.

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

My Play1 is something I use a lot in my classroom and at home. Sharpies and block erasers are the two art supplies I keep stocked up the most in my classrooms, my students rip through them at an unreasonable rate. I also finally just left the stapler out next to the pencil sharpener in my room. If there’s one thing I’ve realized about kids, it’s that they will break their pencils just so they can sharpen it again and again. And they love stapling things. I’m was once told I’m a “cool teacher” because I let them use the stapler whenever and have a big basket of scotch tape rolls for whenever they’re needed.

At the NUTRONS lab we can’t live without our SONOS speakers and finely tuned Pandora stations, they keep things fun. Also after this season I don’t think we could live without our HP mega printer. We were fortunate enough to receive a grant that allowed us to purchase a super nice printer that has a large spool of paper on it. We used it to create red carpet- like backdrops for districts and also make a 4ft by 6ft poster of the NEU District Volunteer of the Year (waddup Marc Polansky).

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

This photo was taken late at night when I was finishing the assembly of a 5th grade collaborative sculpture. But it’s one of the only photos of one of my classrooms. This is my larger school that I’ve now taught at for three years.

I’m incredibly lucky to have a classroom to myself at both schools. In both of my classrooms in Norwood I have a designated reading space with a lot of different books for reference and for students to check out if they finish early. At one of my schools we have Tacos the leopard gecko, after receiving a Petco Pets in the Classroom Grant last year. The students love her, I often get random drawings of her doing ridiculous things like wielding swords in space, sledding and walking through paint.

Tacos is a 7 year old Leopard Gecko we adopted, she’s currently growing her tail back, we’re not sure what happened to it before we adopted her. She smiles all the time.

 I have a lot of awesome photos of astronauts in this classroom along with a giant photo of a praying mantis. There’s a lot of cat things in my classroom, and a giant conch shell on my desk from Cayman Brac (yes you can hear the “ocean” in it).  We’ve also got a lot of cheesy motivational posters I’ve made that my students love, and next to them are the anti-Seahawks posters my students lovingly made me during the superbowl.

A new addition to my classroom/curriculum this year will be a Makerbot 3D printer that was funded through DonorsChoose.org! Pretty excited for that.

The NUTRONS lab is a really interesting space. We share a shop several other Northeastern Engineering groups such as Solar Boat, Baja Racing and Steel Bridge and the occasional cockroach. The students get an inside look at what the college groups do. We have a space we share with Steel Bridge where we do a lot of assembling, an office, a shared machine shop and a storage room. We tend to work in the hallways, unoccupied classrooms and do large group brainstorming sessions in lecture halls. We don’t have an actual practice space, but we sometimes can find a room or two with a tall ceiling and some carpet to test the robot before it heads into the bag. One of my favorite things about our team is that we turn just about anything into a challenge, game, or competition with students and mentors.

This is our shared cage space where we do most of our assembly

I currently live in Jamaica Plains with Jess Boucher. It’s a quiet part of Boston where you can always see someone walking their dog or running regardless of the weather and a yarn bombed tree or lamp post. It’s a great community with a nice pond, great food, and lots of fun animals.  There’s also a ridiculously fat cat that lives across the street. Literally the fattest cat I’ve ever seen in my life.

What do you listen to while you work?

I have the absolute pleasure of listening to my students say the best and most ridiculous things while I work. Here are a few of my favorites:

-2^nd grader: Miss Atiyeh, do you believe in ghosts?

-5^th grader: I think this marker is pizza scented! (she was smelling a Sharpie)

-1^st grader: Is it ok if I accidentally draw on the tables with crayon?

-2^nd grade boy: I collect Pokemon cards. 2^nd grade girl: I collect money

-1st grade boy: I don’t care about snakes anymore, I only care about Jurassic Park.

Sometimes we listen to Jazz or music without lyrics. Despite never seeing Frozen, I know 80% of the lyrics to every song thanks to my first and second graders and Amit, our NUTRONS 2015 student captain. The teacher next door also will randomly play Take Me Out to the Ballgame really loudly around 2pm, it’s weird.

What’s your schedule like during build season?

Pre kick off I always tell my friends and coworkers “See you in May!”. They laugh, and then they realize I’m not joking.

I go directly from work in Norwood to the NUTRONS lab at Northeastern. We meet at the lab every week day 5-9 and 10-3 ish on the weekends. Last year I managed to balance leading the Non Technical side of our team with being the UMDD Committee Chair, NEUD Committee Event Manager, NE FIRST Social Media Manager and doing some other side committees for NE FIRST. Two nights out of the week are “Meeting Inception” nights where there’s a line up of call in meetings for district events and sub committees after my school staff meetings.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

I think I’m really good at getting my students to laugh.

I’m also pretty good at tricking leopard geckos into taking medicine.

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

Be open to collaboration, surround yourself with people who will challenge and inspire you. Spend a lot of time with them, and it’ll change your life.
 

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

Netflix and french-fries.

Fill in the blank. I'd love to see Jamee Luce the FRC Team Advocate answer these same questions.

Anything else you want people to know about you?

It definitely feels weird sometimes being an Elementary Art teacher in the FRC community where most everyone is not quite doing that at all. I used to jokingly following up most of the things I’d say at robotics to people with: “But what do I know, I’m just an elementary school art teacher”. But then I realized I know more than I give myself credit for when it comes to non technical related things, and it took some time to really see the value of that. People and teams who had asked me for help with grants, awards, judging, fitting my narrow wrists into awkward small places and other things that didn’t involve math, made me see that the non tech knowledge I had was valuable and almost as useful as technical things. So if you’re out there feeling like you’re less valuable than the person who can do all the crazy geometry and programming to make the robot score the points and do the things, you’re not. Especially nowadays when district rankings rely heavily on award points, and money doesn’t grow on trees so grants need to be applied for. Just do you, be open to feedback, advice, read /ask up on what others are doing regardless of their team number or number of green dots they have on Delphi. Keep striving to learn more, do more, do better and help others.

“Great people do things before they're ready. They do things before they know they can do it. Doing what you're afraid of, getting out of your comfort zone, taking risks like that- that's what life is. You might be really good. You might find out something about yourself that's really special and if you're not good, who cares? You tried something. Now you know something about yourself” – Amy Poehler

October 27, 2015

October News [Remix Finalists, Upcoming Events]

Summary

• Planning Meeting Next Tuesday Nov 3rd, Parents and Team Members RSVP
• We were Finalists at the Remix on Saturday! New members did very well.
• Mock Kickoff is this Saturday. Team members RSVP HERE
• We are Hosting our FLL Qualifier on Dec 5th and we need students, parents, teachers, and anyone else to volunteer. Sign Up Here
• Lots of Dates at the bottom both Spring and Fall

Spectrum Planning/Parents Meeting

Nov 3rd - Next Tuesday 5:30 PM

 

We will be having our first big planning meeting on Tuesday, Nov 3rd at 5:30 PM. This meeting is for all students and parents. We will be talking about the FLL qualifier on December 5th and some of the logistics of the spring semester and the FRC build season.
If you have any questions about the team, schedule, events, etc this is a great time to ask them. It’s also a good time to meet other parents, etc.

RSVP HERE

The Remix Finalists

This weekend Spectrum was runner up at The Remix off-season event held in Conroe, Texas. We were allied with teams FRC#2468 Team Appreciate from Austin, Texas, and Team Lambot from Mexico. 
Many new team members were experiencing their first event and were able to experience driving, operating, maintaining and improving the robot.
We used some quick improvisation at the end to build a simple hook to grab two of the recycling container from the step area. This allowed our alliance partners to score more points.
We lost in the final rounds to our friends FRC#624 CRyptonite from Katy, TX, FRC#3735 Kleinbots from Klein, TX, FRC#5427 from Thompkins HS.
This extends our current streak of placing at The Remix to three consecutive years. We won in 2013, and have finished in 2nd place in 2014, and 2015.
 

Watch the Finals Here

Mock Kickoff This Saturday

We will be hosting the 2015 FRC Mock Kickoff on Oct. 31 in the Strake Dining Hall. It's an event designed to give students an introduction to the FRC season and engineering design process.
Here is the full description of the event, its RSVP link, and some of its workshop descriptions.
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/t/houston-mock-kickoff-oct-31st/145113
All spectrum team members should plan on attending this event. It will end before 4 P.M. so people can enjoy their Halloween evening.
Please RSVP Here: https://goo.gl/auZX6b
Workshops Include

• Electrical Layout and Construction Techniques for FRC– Phil So, Discobots 2587 
• Building a Robust Safety Program and Shining at Competitions– Team 624 Cryptonite Safety Team 
• Arduino Programming Introduction– Karl Fleischmann 
• Competition Success: Robot, Drive Team, and Scouting Management to Compete Consistently and Effectively- Logan Farrell, Robonauts FRC#118
• Forming a 501(c)(3) charity for your robotics team - Tom Chorba, TaRDIS FRC#5416

Spectrum FLL Qualifier, December 5

We are hosting our second annual FLL Qualifier. The event will host 24 teams of 4th-8th grade students competing with Lego robots.
The event is from 7 A.M. - 4 P.M., and we would love if you could volunteer. We need students, parents, teachers, and more to volunteer as referees, judges, concessions help, and more. We will provide training for any job that you would like to help with. We need a few key volunteers to help coordinate the event and get things prepared. If you would like to help with that, please let us know.
VOLUNTEER REGISTRATION (Please volunteer if you can!)
Information about the event:
http://ift.tt/1imdrIm

Fall Dates

• Oct. 31 - Mock Kickoff
• Nov. 7 - Canstruction
• Nov. 14 - Houston Maker Faire
• Nov. 15 - Decanstruction
• Nov. 21 - Space City VEX competition volunteering
• Dec. 5 - Spectrum FLL Qualifier
• Dec. 12 - HISD VEX event

There will be more dates added, but these are the ones we know about now.
If you haven't RSVPed for the Fall Dates you can sign up here.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSflK6g7OfUFtE-xIKvqUsasdLHAXnwiPO17mly2CTBLQH_XvA/viewform

Spring Event Dates

• Bayou Regional
  • March 16th - 20th (End of Spring Break)
  • Pontchartrain Center
  • Kenner, LA
  • Hotel: We have rooms booked at the Hilton Garden Inn New Orleans Airport
• Lone Star Regional
  • April 6th - 9th
  • George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston, Texas
• FIRST World Championship
  • April 26th - May 1st
  • Edward Jones Dome, St. Louis, MO
  • We have rooms at the Residence Inn St. Louis Downtown

Parents are welcome to travel to the events and help cheer on the team. We also can always use help arranging meals during the events, etc. Most of the time parents provide their own transportation and hotel rooms, for the St. Louis trip it may be possible to have some parents ride the charter bus (however it's a really long bus ride).

November 5, 2015

Grab Bag: new driver station, color coding allen wrenches, etc

There are a lot of little things we do or discover through out the year that don’t really justify a full blog post. Here are few items we purchased over the past few years that have come in very handy.
New Driver Station Laptop
We purchased a Dell Inspiron 11 from MicroCenter. We had been looking for a new driver station to replace the class mate we had been using from 2012-14.

Features we were looking for

• Small & light
  
• Good battery life
  
• Fast enough to run the driver station but didn’t need it to do anything to complicated
  
• Touch screen is a plus but wasn’t required
  
• 11“+ screen
  
• Multiple full size USB ports
  
• Ethernet Port
  
• 5 GHz wireless
  The Dell Inspiron 11 doesn’t meet all of these requirements but for $300 it was a good deal. The only two things it’s missing are the Ethernet port and the 5 GHz wireless. These are both easily fixed.
  
• USB Ethernet port
  
• 5 GHz wireless
  Here is a good review of the laptop and it’s features from HotHardware.
  Power Strips
  12 outlet server power strips allow you to plug in all of your batteries and other devices when you are at events. The plugs are spaced far enough apart for large power bricks to be plugged in.
  We have two of these
  Tripp Lite RS1215-RA Power Strips
  

They don't cost that much more than a standard surge protector but they are worth it. They also each have a 15 foot cord so they act like an extension cord as well. Their own internal 15 Amp circuit breaker will prevent you from tripping the breakers at any of your venues as well. Look on eBay if you want to find some inexpensive used models.
PA Speakers
If you run any events (Off-seasons, FLL, VEX, etc) at some point you are going to need a sound system. We found the Harbinger Vari V2112 to be great speakers for these types of events. We purchased ours on sale for $130 each over Labor Day in 2014. Pair them with a couple speaker stands from Amazon and you have a very nice sound system that can fill a regular basketball gym. You can pick them up from Guitar Center here.

The VS2115s are a bit bigger but you can get them on sale some times from $150. We've heard good things about them as well.

Hand Vacuum
We bought  Black+Decker BDH2000PL MAX Lithium Pivot Vacuum on sale and it has been a great addition to our tool kit. Keeping this around in the pit at events allows us to easily and quickly clean up shaving and drilled out rivets, etc. We used to bring a full sized shop vac to events but that was far to cumbersome. This little 20 volt vacuum is a lot easier to handle so it gets used more often.
Color Coding Allen Wrenches
Finding the right size allen key has always been a frustration on the team. You find one the correct size but then finding the 2nd one for someone else to help takes just as long. This year we solved that problem by adding a small piece of heat shrink to all of our allen keys. We didn't have enough colors for every size so we settled on allowing a large, and small of any color. That way you at least only have two choices if someone says grab a red one and if you know it's for a small bolt you can grab the correct one every time.
This is the heat shrink pack we bought to do this. There are probably plenty of other options available as well.
Below are a few charts that make finding the right wrench even easier.

- Spectrum
"The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious." - Marcus Aurelius

November 22, 2015

Spectrum Solidworks CAD Library

We have been working on a parts library for a number of years.

It currently includes most COTS items from standard vendors like AndyMark, VEXpro, WCProducts, and more.

Many sections are still incomplete but we will be updating them as the season goes on.

Very little of this content was created by Spectrum but instead it’s a curated collection of freely available items. Thank you to the many people and organization that have made and released CAD models such as Solidworks, VEXpro, AndyMark, Team 610’s Part Library, MVRT CAD Library, McMaster-Carr, Andrew Lawrence’s gear library and various vendor websites. If we forgot someone whose files we complied into our collection please let us know, we have been building this for several years so a few people/groups have probably slipped through the cracks.

Spectrum Library

- Spectrum
"Energy and persistence conquer all things."  - Benjamin Franklin

November 30, 2015

November News

FLL Tournament This Saturday

Our biggest event of the fall is this Saturday, Dec 5th. We will hosting the Spectrum FLL Qualifier.
This event will take place in the Strake Jesuit Dining Hall.
We Need more Judges
We are still in need of a few more adult volunteers to help with judging at the event. If you can volunteer please sign up here. Students are also welcome to sign up as well. You don't need any training to help with judging, we will send out documents for you to go over and train you the day of the event. Judging lasts from 7:30am to 3pm.
Event Volunteer sign up

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd4EzsR9b0UKSff-vsfrFsBC57yF4UFo5wwuW8bLJz5ViaY1w/viewform

FIRST Volunteer Management Sign up 

If you are volunteering please register with the VIMS by going to this link. Creating an account and registering for the Spectrum FLL Qualifier. http://ift.tt/1QQyPUe
More information about the event can be had on our website Spectrum3847.org/FLL
 

FLL Jr. Championship

Spectrum is hosting the South Texas FLL Jr. Championship on Dec 12th. This is event is more like a science fair for 40+ elementary school teams from around the state.
This event will be happening in the St. Agnes Cafeteria.

Build Season

Build season starts January 9th. That means we will start meeting a lot more and for longer hours as we work to build a successful robot. That means we will also need parent support in bringing in food, helping with building the field elements, and helping at events.
Sign up on the spring sign up list for events like kickoff, your planned build season hours, and which events you are planning to attend. I know this is a long way out but it helps us plan transportation and things if we can know early.
SPRING SIGNUP LIST (MEMBERS FILL THIS OUT)
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/19Tc97rs8QaRqexg0hqKTmHIxOsjkPxOWJn-9BUHewZA/viewform?edit_requested=true

Allen on Behind the Lines

Allen is going to a guest on FIRST's Behind the Lines program this Wednesday. He will be discussing shooter designs as part of a panel of experts talking about transforming prototypes into functional robots. Watch live Wednesday night at 8pm CST. 
https://www.youtube.com/user/FRCGameSense

Spring Dates

• Jan 5th - Solarcraft Tour Tentative 1pm-4pm
• Jan 9th - Kickoff
• Jan 17th 1-6pm - Boot Camp Build 1 (Helping other teams)
• Jan 31st 1-6pm Boot Camp Build 2 (Helping other teams)
• Feb 7th 1-5pm Superbowl Bumper Build (Helping other teams)
• Feb 20 & 21, 10am-6pm Houston Scrimmage in Strake Dinning Hall
• March 16-20 Bayou Regional
•  Apirl 7th-9th - Lone Star Regional in Houston
•  April 26th(PM)- 31st(AM) - FIRST Championship event in St. Louis

There will be more dates added, but these are the ones we know about now.