Issaquah Robotics Log
2006 FIRST Competition

Build Period: Week 1 - Week 2 - Week 3 - Week 4 - Week 5 - Week 6
Competition Period: Pacific Northwest Regional - Fix-it Window - Davis/Sacramento Regional

Multiple teams met and were able to accomplish various important tasks. Kyle did four long hours of CAD work and unfortunately lost in all to an Inventor crash. It's always faster to CAD something a second time, but the lesson to save early and save often was learnt the hard way. Jim Culbertson made a trip to Lowes for both the mechanism and drive train teams, electronics continued to work on wiring the board, and the software team worked on the CMU cam. Drive train worked on weighing and assembling parts and upgraded the spacers on the center wheels and the mechanism team did some fabrication on the "elevator" frame (the part that will pick up balls).

A day of rest and recuperation, but hey, who needs that. We'll be back at it tomorrow.

Oh Monday! So much information in our team meeting. For one, meetings got moved to start at 3:00 so our beloved freshmen can make it, plus that gives the rest of us 45 minutes to goof around before getting serious. Also, it has been decided that our robot must be done by next Tuesday, as in a week from tomorrow, so we need to get crackin'. This will ensure that our programmers have enough time to program plus our drivers will have plenty of time to get their drive groove on. Next up was a quiz on this year's game. It was exhilarating. Linda from yearbook came to take a team picture, but sadly the freshmen could not be in it.

While the drivetrain team tinkered around (a.k.a. pretty much finished putting the chassis, wheels, and chain together), Kyle CAD'd some more in the hopes of reaching the ever approaching deadline. The ladies electronic team had a blast making more wires and crimping and other fun electronical stuff. Staff programmers, Kris and Chris, worked on the autonomous code. On the spirit side of things, Alex worked on the logo, while others worked on awards.

Today's genius ideas: 1) Bring food to share for late night's at school, like pizza for all! Or casserole, yummy; And 2) check out the article in today's King County Journal. See you tomorrow!

Oh how time flies, tomorrow it shall be February with the ship date even closer. There was a pretty good turnout today, but not surprising since our self-imposed deadline is only one week away. Fabrication worked on spacers as well as brackets for mounting the electronics board. Drivetrain got the glorious job of filing the spacers, quite a menial task but sometimes we all need a little mind numbing to fully recover from finals. Adrien succeeded in filing some very cute ridges into her nails. Kyle spent a few more hours on CAD, and as of 5:00 pm the computer had not crashed yet. Mechanism was going to have a late night, so in light of last night's great food idea, we had lasagna! And vegetarian lasagna made without a recipe! This could be very, very interesting.

The mechanism team worked until 9:00 and got technical drawings done for most of the shooter parts. This will be plenty to keep fabrication busy until the next mechanism meeting. The veggie lasagna was greatly appreciated by everyone who stayed late working on drive or mech. Many thanks to the spirit team!

Fabrication and software met today. So, all the spacers got finished, the chain got tensioned, and now drivetrain is done! Except not all the electronics are quite hooked up yet. Anywho, software did "theoretical code" for the autonomous mode. So we have an autonomous mode that we hope will work, but we don't quite know what it will do on the robot. But once the 'bot is done, we have something to test! Go software and fabrication!

Today fabrication worked dutifully measuring and marking to make more fun pieces! Other random team members painted the ball ramp a beautiful Issaquah purple. Electronics members made more wires to connect the drive motors to some victors, electrifying. And guess what Kyle worked on? More CAD! We called Kyle over around five though to test out the motors, and they moved in the same direction. It was marvelous. It's pretty un-drivable at the moment, but nothing a little software can't help. Chris was here again today to document these robot happenings, and let me tell you, it was an exhilarating day!

The late night mechanism crew cranked out plenty of technical drawings for the fabrication team. This should give us enough to assemble the shooter and do the final calibration for all of the tricky angles and spacing.

So, we basically have the weekend to finish up the robot, maybe a late meeting next Monday and Tuesday, but hopefully the brunt of the work will get completed this weekend. We shall see how that goes. Alex worked for 3 arduous hours cleaning up the logo only to save it in the wrong format; but Photoshop ended up working well and fixed it much more quickly than whatever she used the first time. Lots of marking and cutting got done for the mechanism tonight, but there will definitely be tons more to do tomorrow. Tonight software did more autonomous code and Kyle did more CAD, kind of a repeat occurrence with those groups. Software is saying the autonomous code now works better, but it's still untested. At around 6:45 we broke for pizza, Extreme Pizza was really, really good (I highly recommend Peace in the Middle East, hummus, feta, kalamata olives, and tons of other nummy stuff). Then we got back to work, sort of, and danced to crazy disco music while the folks in the shop cranked out more parts. Robots, disco, and pizza; what a way to spend a Friday night!

Build Period: Week 1 - Week 2 - Week 3 - Week 4 - Week 5 - Week 6
Competition Period: Pacific Northwest Regional - Fix-it Window - Davis/Sacramento Regional