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

FRC consent and Release form (hardcopy)

Hey guys!

As winter break approaches we have two really important forms that we need you and your parents to fill out.

The first is the Parent survey, where we get a general idea of how interested your parent is in helping out.  Print out the attached survey and turn it in at Mr. Cooney’s room.  OR download it, fill it out, and e-mail it to Amanda.

The second is the consent and release form that need to be filled out EITHER electronically or on hard copy.  The link is:

https://my.usfirst.org/frc/goteams/site.lasso

If you do hard copy, turn it in  to Mr. Cooney.

This is due by Dec 18th. Take 10 minutes or so and fill both out with your parents ASAP!

Saints Robotics Club Parent Survey Form

2009-2010 First Consent and Release Form

Hey everybody,

There’s a First Tech Challenge competition this Sunday at Bellevue High School from 8 AM to about 5 PM! This is a great opportunity for us to help out Kevin Ross (FIRST Washington President) by volunteering there. This is a ton of fun because FTC challenges are much closer to real FRC competitions than Vex or FLL. You get the whole package: the fun environment, free food at lunch, a cool t-shirt, volunteer hours and you get brownie points for Saints Robotics!

There are two shifts: about 8AM to 12 PM and from 12 PM to 5 PM. We already have four people signed up to go (Dmitri, Vivek, Dom, Daphna) and it would be super fun if more people showed up! Come on people, you have time, do something and help out the community and robotics! This isn’t even annoying or boring, you’re going to a FULL FTC COMPETITION! With tons of robots from other teams! Great sneak peak into FIRST competitions if you’ve never been to one :D

Send an email to Kevin or Olivier if you’re going and we’ll get in contact with Kevin Ross about it immediately so he knows you’re there. If you just feel like showing up, that’s fine too! You don’t have to stick to the shifts, but it would be preferable.

Thanks!

Hey everyone! This is Angela! :D

All t-shirt and pin designs are due in TEN [10] DAYS!!!! :O
Anyone who is interested in submitting a design, please email it to me by 11:59 AM, November 18th.
The “competition” is not limited to just graphics and all designs will be posted on Facebook over thanksgiving break to be judged/voted on!

Here’s a few things to keep in mind when making a design:
-Dimensions for pins are 2.25″ x 2.25″
-We need 1 general design as well as 1 design for build, PR, programming, graphics, and web design
-T-shirt designs may only have 3 values/colors including the background/cloth color

My email is tedbearluver@hotmail.com so email all submissions, questions, or comments through that.
I’m expecting some good and creative designs!~ :]

~Angela L.
SR Graphics Officer

As you can probably tell, I’m reworking the style-sheet for the site. Right now I’m mainly bringing the color scheme in line with our new logo etc. I will be getting much more in-depth over the next week or so. I’m using the Web Style Guide as direction for the redesign. Comments?

The Vex team prepared two videos to submit to the Vex video challenges – and would like Saints Robotics to critique the videos! We’d appreciate the comments =]

Vex Team 1899 Promo Video – Our entry for the Vex Robotics Team Promo Video

Trashbot 1899 – Our entry for the Product Design Challenge

Thanks!

To those who still don’t know, we are scheduled to appear in tomorrow’s Winter Sports assembly. Yes, we are being represented as a sport. GREAT SUCCESS! (Does that makes us all jocks now?) So be sure to wear all of your spirit gear tomorrow.

If you are helping out in the assembly (you know who you are), please try to show up at 7:00 in the morning at the gym for a practice run. Also make sure to get out of seventh period 10 minutes early.

-Hugo

For everyone who didn’t get to attend the last bit of the Wednesday meeting, we discussed the spring sports assembly on Friday. We’ll be preparing a skit for the assembly.

Here’s the current plan for the skit. In the skit, we’ll be “revealing” what people didn’t know about Robotics – that we built robotic teachers. We’re then going to have a few teachers wrapped in aluminum foil pretend to be robots, with “drivers” carrying the Vex remote controls. The teachers line up for a game – autonomous mode starts. The teachers can do whatever they like during the “autonomous mode”. After autonomous mode, drivers step forwards and pretend to control the teachers during the match, telling them to pick up space rocks, throw them at the other alliance, etc. We’ll have a few people dressed up as a crowd, cheering. They could hold the 1899 sign, wave around the flag, etc. During the match, the blue alliance robot “breaks down”. We’ll have people come with huge wrenches/etc pretend to fix our “robot”. We’ll then send the robot to another match, where blue alliance wins. The end.

Things to consider:

• Not everyone in Robotics will be up on stage. We’ll need some of us to cheer from the crowds – to get them fired up.
• Wear your Saints Robotics T-Shirt!
• Assembly rehearsal is tomorrow after school.
• Assembly is Friday after 7th period.

1899 Vex Team Picture

Congrats to the Vex team for their amazing accomplishments yesterday at the 2009 Washington Vex Competition! We finished the preliminaries with a 4-2 win record, ending in 5th place. We also managed to achieve 3rd place in the driver challenge with a score of 48.

During the finalist rounds, Team 420 “Mousebot”, 3rd place, picked us as an alliance partner. We accepted along with Team 690. Unfortunately, in our first match, Mousebot had some technical difficulties and was disabled during the round, so we lost. Mousebot fixed their technical problems, but 690 was subbed in for round two. Unfortunately, they lost and our alliance was eliminated.

However, we did surprisingly well for a first-year Vex team with only two weeks to build a robot. I’d like to point out some of the things we did really well. First, we had presets for our arm. That means that our drivers didn’t have to waste time getting the arm height correct for each goal – the robot assisted the driver to score. This is a good use of automation to help perform tasks and resulted in less time to score. Also, we had a few hours of driver practice at Exothermic’s field, which gave us an edge over some teams which did less driving.

Also, we got lots of good scouting practice. Over the course of 6 hours or so, we managed to obtain over 1700 words of scouting data! We used a good system and will definitely do that during FRC.

Vex team, Dennis will be leading the disassembly of Ctrl-C. We’ll most likely keep the base so that it will become a towing bot for our trailer.

4-7 at LexisNexis – Vex meeting – we’ll be driving, coding, and nothing else. Mandatory for drivers, optional for everyone else. See you there!