Tuesday, January 19. 2010
Back to Tuesday! We’ve finished one full week of blogs and 11 days of build season!
What we ate for dinner! Our meal was provided by Alex R.’s family and was JAMBALAYA! With shrimp and andouille sausage! There was a veggie version as well. And salad and bread! It was delicious!
Supermom Val sat in the integration meeting and took great notes for me! Thanks!
Drive-train – It will be heavier than last year, but the center of gravity is very low.
Mech 1 – Calculations show that one 24″ cylinder won’t lift the robot and so they are crunching the numbers to see if two cylinders will work.
Mech 2 – Prototype kicker works good. They are trying to determine a way to keep from rolling over balls while still being able to go over the bumps.
Electrical – Members have started to work with the sensors to sense the position of the robot. They have started wiring the electrical board. They need input from mechanical to find the camera mounting position.
Controls – They will work on the mock-up of the drivetrain control features.
Field – They have a goal to have a goal done tonight! (sorry, I couldn’t resist)
Programming – They need a robot to test drive!!!
Just so you know, Val took more notes than that, but I summarized her summary.
I spent the better part of the meeting time sitting with social media expert and team Superdad Lee learning how to operate the new blogging set-up that Mentor-from-afar Eric E. had put in place. That’s why this report is extra late tonight. By the time I had my tutorial and picked up the “word about the town,” the evening had ended. So tonight, the blogger has homework!
Notes from the team meeting before dinner – official trip sign-ups were passed out. They are DUE no later than January 29. Miss that deadline and no trips for you!
Luna-Tecs (FRC Team 316) are trying to organize a RoboBall (semi-formal dance) on the Thursday of FLR (March 4). Interested students need to let Crystal know ASAP that they want to attend.
Build Season hours have been extended on Sundays until 9 pm and dinner will be served those evenings as well.
Here and there:
The drive-train sub-team had a lengthy discussion on Work, Power, Torque, Mechanical Advantage and Gearing in order to answer the question – why should we use a 16:1 transmission. It was followed by a discussion on who is better – The Beetles or The Rolling Stones.
Members of the leadership team were working on writing their bios for the website.
The electrical sub-team was learning about pneumatics. First lesson: know how to spell pneumatics. Wait! Why is the electrical team worried about the pneumatics? Mentors Dave B. and Dave S. explained that it usually falls between sub-team cracks and they wanted to be prepared. Mentor Dave B. also reminded me to send a thank you shout out to Simcona for the donation of 4 spools of wire to the team!
Mentor Larry was assisting our neighbor FRC Team 1405, the Finney Falcons, with their control system and robot code.
Also visiting tonight was a staff member (Cynthia) from Wayne Central HS, who stopped by to see what we were doing. Jacob, the student who has been shadowing us, has really been talking a lot about us and the program. We are glad she took the time to visit with us.
The mechanical team has the prototype basically done and is making adjustments to try to optimize it before finalizing the design.
The field team, as promised, was working on assembling the goal. They had finished the face, the “dog house” and needed to build the “corral” so it would be self-supporting. Theo and Jason were anxious to test it out with the soccer balls, but Mentor Amy was anxious to have it stand on its own legs. Mentors win, especially when their soccer skills are as good as those of the students! Score one for Amy!
On Tuesday’s, Mentor Leann takes some time to add up the build season hours. Students are required to log their hours and the mentors have been encouraged to log them in as well, at least the hours we are actually at the school (hours at home – like right now – don’t get included).
Counts recorded so far: Students have logged in 906 hours, while the mentor hours recorded stand at 471. Mike H. commented that he only needed 9.5 hours to finish his returning student commitment for build season!
That appears to be all of my notes from tonight! So all that is left to do is add…
