Saints Robotics News

Congratulations! Most of you are probably done with testing! You have worked hard this year and its time to relax a little because school is almost out!
There are still some tests being taken so our next robotics meetings will start up on Wednesday May 26th! We have a lot to plan and get ready for, so rest up and get ready to end the year strong!

Also if you have any thoughts or opinions on how we can improve the team please post something on our team forum:
teamwork.saintsrobotics.com
Post something even if it is just an idea or suggestion!

LAN season has begun, and we are working on promotional materials as we speak. Keith and Clay are doing animations, Marc-Antoine and Adam are coordinating a dance for the assembly, and Josh Li is even making a page on the site where you can order tickets.

However, we need full team support to make this event a success. Members need to spread the word, and get as many people hyped up as possible. Unlike most events, we cannot rely on parent attendance. We need student support.

If you have a Facebook, go to our fan page and find the event listing. Invite your friends and make yourself an attendee. The more people who know about the event, the better. Best case scenario: we sell out all 64 tickets, giving us reason to make an even bigger (and more profitable) event next time around

Anyone ages 14-18 are invited to come, so bring people from other schools as well!

Thank you so much! This is gonna be a lot of fun!

In case you weren’t aware, FIRSTWA got it’s start in the Seattle Robotics Society a long time ago. The SRS is one of the largest and oldest hobby robotics groups in the world. Once a year, we have an event at the Seattle Center called Robothon.

A new game is coming this year for Robothon. A number of people have previewed and reviewed the game for us, and we are going to launch it after the Seattle Robotics Society meeting on May 15th at 1pm. The event will be at the Renton Technical College

Renton Technical College
3000 NE 4th Street
Renton, WA 98056-4195

The kickoff will be in the K-Quad building.

What is this game? It is very FIRST like (alliances of 2 teams, usual tournament structure). The robots are mid-sized (18″x24″x24″ max start size). A mix of autonomous and tele-operated. It has a few surprising new twists.

One big twist: This event is open to anyone. There are no age limits or requirements. We expect to see teams of adults competing against teams of students.

Big Twist Two: This event is suitable for FRC, FTC, VEX, or any other technology. We invite everyone to participate.

The game itself will be held October 23rd at the Seattle Center. We expect to have room for about 32 teams.

Come see the new game!

Kevin

We will be having our last robotics meeting before AP/IB tests this Wednesday (4/28/10). Out next meeting will be on Wednesday 5/26/10
VEX WORLDS IS OVER! Our VEX team has worked extremely hard this year and this weekend they proudly represented our team on the world stage. Congratulate them for their hard work if you see them in the hallways!

We have a lot of announcements and updates for this coming meeting because we won’t be having meetings for the next month. It is also very important that you come because we have now started officially taking attendance.

We now have a new Anonymous Message Dropbox where anyone can post messages anonymously. This is a drop box where anyone can put any message you want. The information is 100% anonymous. Information such as IP address is not recorded. Only Saints Robotics Officers will have access to these messages.

Come try it now and ask questions if you want. Remember, this is 100% anonymous.

On our forum at teamwork.saintsrobotics.com, we have just accumulated 1,000 posts. Thanks to all the people using the forums, it is starting to become a success. Hopefully, the forums will grow and become more active and become a central source of communication for Saints Robotics.

The VEX Challenge results are in!
Video: Unfortunately, despite being a finalist, our video did not place in the top 3. Regardless, a big thanks to Tyler for his efforts!
Website: www.saintsrobotics.com won 2nd place worldwide! As a result, we have also won a robot kit. Huge thanks to Josh and the website team!
Essays: The results of the essays are not in yet. Good luck to all of the Saints who entered!

Friday (4/2/10) there will be no robotics meeting because it is the day before Spring Break. I hope everyone enjoys the time off and comes back ready for VEX worlds and a lot of PR/FR work!

Hi Everybody :)

So the competition is over and we performed very well this year. I’m really proud of everyone: the scouts, the safety people, the spirit people, the pit crews, the mentors, the drivers, the programmers, the pit reps, the people who brought food to the pit people etc. Thanks to everybody.

Now, we have three things to do:

1) If you took pictures at the competition, please upload them on facebook (to the Saints Robotics page) if you have one. If you don’t have a facebook, send (or exchange through USB) the pictures to someone who has facebook (I think Marc-Antoine volunteered to put up pictures). We can all look at pictures and then upload the ones which aren’t inappropriate on the website forums so that we can still have a record but we can control who is able to view it.

2) We will have a meeting this Wednesday and we will go over the competition in what is called a “Post-mortem” – which literally means “after the death”. But for us it’s more like “after the win”. But in any case we will brainstorm and review the whole season and see what we can do better and what we can do better next year (I hope you’re all coming back!) We really need your feedback to improve the program!

3) We will start working on new projects! We have a ton of cool ideas for off-season projects, and we need your creativity and ideas too. It’s a great time to get more experience with engineering outside the crunch-time of build season :) PR/FR also needs to start working on budget for next year and Kevin and I need to find new officers!!

Great job to everybody, I’m really happy so many people showed up. I hope you had as much fun as I did!

Olivier

Hello Saints!
We had an extremely successful year this year at the 2010 Microsoft Seattle regional. Our robot finished qualification matches with a 4-4-1 Win-Loss-Tie record, and ended the competition as a quarterfinalist. We took home the Excellence in Design Award sponsored by Autodesk, as well as the Regional Best Website Award.

For the VEX Challenges, both our website and our promotional video has been selected to be one of 10 finalist entries eligible for winning the robot packages! Wish us luck in the formal judging!