Sorry for the late notice, but Mr. Eden has stepped up to the occasion and will be our mentor for the meeting. As such, the meeting on Wednesday the 18th will be in session. Hugo is out sick, so Kevin Kimura will be running the meeting.
Tasks for Wednesday:
This is an announcement to SR Members that there will be no meeting tomrrow, Wednesday 18th. Mr. Cooney is sick, and Mr. Moore can’t come, so we don’t have an advisor for our club on that day.
Just wondering – who here is interested in VEX Robotics? I showed people the video on Sunday and Monday at the Robotics meetings, and Redmond Robotics came to STI Optronics to show us their VEX robots last Monday. See the video on youtube. Post a comment on this if you’re interested!
Thanks to everyone who participated in the Saturday meeting today! We definitely got a lot done on our robot “Freshman 15″.
Objectives Accomplished
The robot is currently at 130 lbs, ten pounds overweight. Tomorrow, we will be working as hard as possible to reduce the weight by another ten pounds.
Tomorrow’s Objectives
Reducing the weight will take quite some effort. Tomorrow, we will split up into three groups to reduce weight. Group 1 will remove the back panel with the electronics and remount the electronics on to a lighter piece of wood. Group 2 will take the frame of the robot and cut holes in it to reduce additional weight. Group 3 will unmount the conveyor belt contraption and reduce the weight there.
Robotics Mission
I’d also like a chance to talk about Robotics’ mission. What you get out of Robotics is directly proportional to what you put in to it. Like we learned from Dean Kaman’s speech during the opening session, Robotics is not about winning, it’s about learning. Thus, I encourage everyone to try to participate and learn about the robot by working on it. Whether you drill a hole, cut a piece of wood, or help another student work on the robot, take initiative and do something.
Today, we had an incident where a student was discouraged by a mentor from working on the robot. Leadership has talked to the mentors involved and will attempt to make sure that similar situations do not happen again. Tomorrow, we will try to ensure that everyone is involved with the build process. However, we do need your active participation to accomplish this goal. We encourage you to take risks. If you never used the jigsaw, try using it for the first time. If you make a mistake, don’t worry about it – it’s part of the learning process.
The leadership and mentors are here to teach you skills useful not only for building a robot, but useful skills about the design process, engineering, power tools, and working as a team. We want to build an encouraging environment, not a discouraging environment. This weekend is your last opportunity to work on our competition robot. As such, I encourage you to come to our two weekend meetings to learn, build, and most importantly, have fun!
So I would like to make it clear that we will be meeting on saturday, sunday, and monday. This is because we have concluded that to have time to test the robot, we need saturday to work. So we will be meeting at STI on all three days at these times:
Saturday: 9:00am-4:00pm
Sunday: 9:00am-6:00 pm
Monday: 9:00am-4:00pm
I know its a rigorous schedule but we really need the time. Please bring food too! We are all growing teenagers!
Bonnie and Katie cutting out stencils
I went to Kinko’s yesterday and ordered the robot design.
My mom picked them up this morning and they look REALLY awesome but I’ll need a lot of help cutting out the shapes, taping, and painting them.
Here’s the painting schedule for this week unless anyone has suggestions or comments (we can adjust it depending on how long it takes for the paint to dry. Also, I checked the weather and, lucky for us, it shouldn’t rain the entire week except tomorrow, when we’ll be cutting out the shapes ^^):
So if you’re going to help paint, make sure you bring clothes that you wouldn’t really care if they got painted on because the spray paint DOES NOT COME OFF (very easily). You can also bring gloves or something since the spray paint doesn’t come off your hands very well either (I still have specks of spray paint on my hand from Sunday ._.”’). That’s about it for now but I’ll repost/resend if there’s been a change or something. Thanks pplz! =]
Even though there is no actual meeting tomorrow, I will still be getting the paint and materials tomorrow. If you want to come along you can, but you’re not required to.
Also, depending on whether we finish building or not, the painting day will be either on Sunday the 8th (this Sunday) or Wednesday the 11th (next Wednesday). So if you want to help out, make sure you leave time for both days!
Thanks everyone!
~Angela Liu =3
Sorry about the duplicate email – Hotmail users were having problems with font sizes – it should be fixed now.
Robotics will be using the website for more communication from now on – and so email announcements will now be sent directly from the website.
To prevent emails from being marked as spam, I suggest that everyone add noreply@saintsrobotics.com to their address book. Simply reply to this email with a blank message to do so.
All replies should be made as a comment on the site instead of a “reply all” to the email.
Thanks!
Officers:
To send an announcement, just log into the Saints Robotics website, compose a new post, and click “publish” when you’re done. An announcement will be sent just six minutes after you click “publish” (this is to prevent you from accidentally sending an email or gives you time to correct typos in your announcement).
Hi guys!
Sadly, we did not have a meeting the week last week or this week because of the stupid snow! However, we got a longer break at the expense of spring break (YAAAAAY, not). Anyways, about Robotics again…
You guys should already know about the kick-off that is happening on Janurary 3rd. This is the most exciting part of the year apart from the competition itself, and it is where the game will be uncovered in front of more than 100,000 other students like you and me. Starting on that day, we will have around 6 weeks to build the robot, which is not a lot of time. The kick-off is being held at Interlake High School, which means that it will be really close to us and you wont have to 
travel for three hours like some people will have to to get here. Because we are hosting the kick-off this year, we will need to organize everything. The officers have been working on that very hard, but we will need volunteers on Friday January 2nd to help set up chairs in the gym so we can seat everybody on Saturday. So, on January 2nd, come to Interlake from 5PM to 9PM to help us set up for this huge event. On Saturday January 3rd, i recommend you come around 6 AM at Interlake High School (no I am not crazy, for I will be there at 5 AM) so you can be there to welcome other people from other teams and do any last minute preparations. The presentation, broadcasted from the east coast, will start at 7 AM and will last until probably around 10:00 AM, maybe 10:30. After that, we will have breakout sessions where we will discuss this year’s game and the possible robots that we might build.
Because this is such a huge event and we need you to be here, it is now MANDATORY for you to come on Saturday. Unless you are not in the state, you have no reason NOT to come. This is really the beginning of one of the most fun periods in high school and you have to be there to find about the game, see 1200 other FRC students, and have a really fun time. Don’t come telling me you have homework cause you have had WAY too much time to finish your homework due last Wednesday and Thursday…
Anyways, remember to come to the kick-off because it is going to be huge. If you can, drop by on Friday to help.
Thanks!
P.S. Wear school colors at the event, since our team t-shirt is not here yet. Send me an email anyways if you cant come.
We will be meeting on Tuesday November 18th, to talk about and go over the Workshop, share information etc. We will also begin to meet more frequently as the season slowly begins and we are quickly approaching the build season. We will start the meeting quickly after tutorial ends, so 3:05.
The Interlake High School Robotics Team 1899, located in Bellevue WA, competes in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition (FRC). Founded in 2005 and supervised under James Cooney, an Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate technology educator, Saints Robotics consists of enthusiastic students, parents, teachers, and other mentors to whom we are deeply indebted.
The 2008-2009 school year has started, and the 2009 FIRST season will be underway before you can say “gracious professionalism.” Good luck to all the graduated seniors, welcome back to the returning team members, and welcome to the new members — freshmen and mentors alike!