Wooooow. We're on week two already!!! Time is flying and we may or may not even be having fun. Time stops for no FRC team!
On day 5, our leader said "Let there be proof of concepts." So our team worked and worked, and sooner builders had finished many contraptions. Basically what happened on Saturday for all you tl;dr - ers. We created a very nice pulley system (nicknamed the Guillotine), a couple claw contraptions, and a motor powered belt designed to pull totes into a robot. However, at the end of the day, we decided to devote our time in the build to a pulley system that pulls a set of hooks up to pick up totes and recycle bins. Therefore, today, we spent our time working on the claws, the elevator tracks that they would ride on, the pulley itself, the chassis, and a contraption that would pull totes in. (And as a side note, we took apart Twitchy, one of the robots from the preseason. What a short life it had. I guess it would be like 100 in robot years though.) As always, the programmers an electronics team worked hand in hand to practice coding and wiring on the kit bots, and also our robot from three years ago named Hank. Our CAD master is working hard to create 3D models of the weapons of mass destruction we have planned, and the chassis, of course. And we even have a team working on a mini model of Jonathan's Girlfriend (a cool electronics board)! We had a chow-mendous dinner provided by Alex's mom today, thank you so much!!! And on Saturday, we had Gayle's mom, Jafar's mom, and Eliza Sutton! (Sorry I forgot whose mom and augggghhh) Also HAPPY BIRTHDAY to team member Alison!!! Hope you had a great day! Someone told me that they thought we could be done with the robot by week 3. Now, I have some doubts about that, but with the current speed we are going, those doubts are really slowly going away. Never have I seen the team working on concrete ideas so soon! Augh, gosh, much too exciting for me to handle. Godspeed, Team Pronto! Hammers smashing. Saws slicing. The drill press' hum. The really disgusting, ugly sound of the handsaw on metal that makes everyone's ears want to bleed. We're finally back into the autoshop!
Today, groups finally got to make progress in making their ideas come to life in this prototyping phase. Chassis, pulleys, conveyor belt systems, and claws all made lots of progress. Many others also took tasks such as putting together gear boxes or organization. Tomorrow, the groups will continue protyping and hopefully be able to finish in time for presentation on Monday. Meanwhile, programmers and electronics people also got to do their fair share of coolness by getting the kit-bot from previous builds to work with the new electronics that FIRST has provided for us, namely the roboRio, Talons, and new switchboard thingymajig. There's new colors on the switchboard. It looks nice. Ahhh. It was quite refreshing to finally see some people getting their hands dirty and drilling holes into things and cutting pieces off of things. (No, I am not a serial killer.) The team has moved on from brainstorming, and is making fast progress, and it is only our first week! Work that metal, (or wood, in some cases) Team Pronto! Another day, another time to have our minds run. That's what this club is about right? This is "the sport of the mind" after all! So we continued to build upon our ideas with extensive peer reviewed pros and cons that spanned the whiteboards like sculptures of naked men sprawled out on your couch, telling you to "draw me like one of your French girls." Except, this made a lot more sense than the word vomit I just produced. We discussed two main ideas: a pulley system and a belt system for our robot. In the end, we could not choose the best of the two babies to work on, but we ended up decided to prototype these children and see how they fare as adults. (translation of my gibberish: we are going to test each individual part's proof of concept and ability to produce the results needed for the competition game.) The builders then split into five teams for prototyping: the chassis, the belt lift, the pulley, the rack and pinyon claw, and the belt claw. To wrap up the day, they planned what materials were going to be needed for the days allotted to prototyping: tomorrow and Saturday. Meanwhile, the electronics team was working on creating a board for their team and the programmers to work on. The programmers were reportedly "flashing the roboRios," which does not actually mean to flash any private parts, but to actually set up these electronics to receive Java coding, which is the type of code our programmers work in. So finally, we are going to start seeing not only our brains moving (or not moving, for some near the end of the days), we are going to see our hands building, coding, and putting things together! Yyyessssssss hhhahhhaasrehhahadudb *starts salivating* Everyone is super excited to test some ideas, learn how to work with mechanisms, and just in general use the wonderful auto shop our school has blessed us with. Hallelujah! Get pumped, Team Pronto! Due to recent events and concerns, Shorewood canceled school today as well as all after-school activities along with the rest of the Shoreline School District after the long lockdown. Therefore, we will not have a meeting today! Therefore, in the future, today we will have done:
Nothing. However, the Prontonians will continue think about ideas and brew coff-- uh, I meant their brains, during this time off of school. Like, brainstorming, right? I should really let that terrible play on words go very soon. Catch y'all on the flip side, Team Pronto! (the flip side, in this case, is tomorrow. Is that how you use that word?) Another day, and the storm still brews. We picked up from where we were yesterday, and discussed ways to improve and expand the details on the ideas we have thought of. Many others also discussed new ideas. All in all, it was a continuation of yesterday. Keep your brain storming, Team Pronto! Our first day back from winter break, and the team continues to work their minds like hamster wheels. Very fast, and with periodic lapses of complete exhaustion and despair. You can really tell the "storm" in brainstorming has yet to pick up. But all in all, it has hit the team's forecast radars and nOW I AM TALKING ABOUT WEATHER AND SHOULD STOP.
Our first point on the agenda was to recap the team on the three main ideas we talked about: forklift, conveyor belt, and "pac-man," a variation of the forklift. We then proceeded with the dreaded manual TESTTTTT. Everyone seemed to pass with flying colors and got to vote on which big idea we were going to go with first, which ultimately was the forklift concept. The builders then split into three groups: two groups which brainstormed ideas on the lifting mechanism, and the last group which brainstormed ideas for the chassis. At the end of the meeting, the ideas were presented, and they included conveyor belt lifts, human player loaded systems, drive trains, robots shaped like oddly shaped pizza slices, and gear and pinyon claws. The members of the team that were not builders continued to prep computers with software and other programming thingamajigs (as you can tell, I am not a programmer), but the majority of the team's brain power went towards brainstorming as well. And just some random comments: oh my god. There are so many people on the team right now that there aren't enough seats in the classroom for everyone! Wwooooweee! Things are finally starting to pick up and I'm glad there are so many Prontonians this year. I love everyone. Everyone loves everyone. We're a happy family. (Is that from Barney? A quick Google search confirms.) Great job on your first after-school build day! THERE'S ONLY 5+ WEEKS LEFT. LONG LIVE PRONTONIA (cue "God Save the Queen") ARE YOU REAAADDDY TOOOO RUUUMMMBBBLLLEE? I mean, RECYCLLLE??! Tomorrow, everything will start to pick up!
For lack of anything better to call it at the moment, the game his year is all manner of interesting. They weren't kidding when they said "change" was coming. No buMPERS? NO OPPOSING TEAM INTERACTION? GAH. However, I have faith that we will do amazing this year, or die trying. (That's how we weed out our weak. Everyone must put the robot above their LIFE.) After the kickoff, we met back up at the auto shop to understand the game and brainstorm! It was amazing. I don't think so many people have ever read the game manual on our team! We even came up with a new initialism. RTFM. Read the (insert word of your choice that starts with f. Like flippin'!) Manual! We also got snacks provided to us by Ms. Fenske and Ms. Ricord. They were super tasty! Thank you so much! Honestly, I kind of feel like my life is falling apart right now. End of our semester is coming up, I'm going to be at school to 6 or 8 everyday, saying farewell to relaxing weekends. It's always so anxiety inducing in the beginning. But time after time, I get to make some of best memories in the autoshop that I'll end up spending more time in than my actual home. And then I can finally feel my life being built again, along with a super cool robot. I mean, robots. C'mon. #omgrobots, right? TEAM PRONTO! LET US RALLY AND RECYCLE! The name of the game is Recycle Rush. Frank wasn't kidding when he said change was coming. Students. Mentors. Volunteers. Parents. Pets. Please read the game manual. At least 20 times.
Today was NOT the day to miss. Actually, no day is a good day to miss. But this one in particular. The team spent a couple hours reading the manual, clarifying some rules, and discussing possible game strategies to score points. The team split into 8 mini groups each led by a mentor. Each group was responsible for drafting up a rough concept design for a robot. We then took a much deserved lunch break. After that, we identified the reoccurring robot concept ideas and archetypes, consolidating all 8 ideas into 3 basic concepts. Each of the mini-team ideas was some variation or combination of the 3 archetypes. IMPORTANT!!! On Monday, we will be finalizing the robot concept. We will also be having a game manual test. If you do not pass the test, you will not be allowed to vote on the final robot concept. SO READ THE MANUAL. |