Every year, the FRC organisers try to create a fun event near the competition’s area for the team members to participate in. This year, the social is at the Pacific Science Center. Kevin Ross sent us the following email:

Hello,

Friday evening March 27th, 2009 from 6pm to around 10pm, we have options for your teams entertainment. We have an organized team social at the Pacific Science Center. The Pacific Science Center is a facility on the same grounds as Key Arena in Seattle. It is about a 1500 foot walk from Key Arena to the PacSci.

We have secured access to the Eames IMAX theater, the Laserium, and also the Boeing IMAX theater.  There will only be about 1200 tickets available for this event.

All of these events are on the Seattle Center property. Food is available at the Center House food court, or any one of a number of surrounding area restaurants. You will be responsible for your own food.

We will be showing two Laserium shows, two IMAX films, and have 400 tickets to the new animated movie Monsters vs Aliens. The least expensive ticket allows your team to hang out at the Pacific Science Centers Boeing Lobby where we will have an area for the teams to socialize, plus see 1 laser show and 1 IMAX movie in the EAMES theater. The higher price ticket gets you into Monsters vs Aliens 3D plus 1 additional show.

Doors to the PacSci will open around 6pm for FIRST students. The schedule looks like:

Laser Shows: 6:15 pm, 7:00 pm, 7:45 pm, 8:30 pm (30 minute shows)

IMAX Movies: 6:15 pm, 7:15 pm, 8:15 pm, 9:15 pm (45 minute shows)

Monsters vs Aliens: 7:30pm  www.monstersvsaliens.com (about 100 minutes)

We have use of the Boeing IMAX lobby area from 6pm to 9pm. This will be a good place for the students to mix.

Cost: Admission to the team social will be $7.00 per person, which allows you to attend any of the laser and IMAX movies. If you are one of the 400 people who wish to attend the Monsters vs Aliens, there is an additional $5 per person charge ($12 per person total). The ticket agency adds a little to this price, so the real prices are $8.17 and $13.29. These are the advanced purchase prices. If you wait until the day of, the prices will be $9 and $14 respectively.

It is highly probably that this event will sell out. We apologize for that, but it is difficult to find places for more than 1200 students to hang out!

Another option if you are looking is the Experience Music Project has an event called EMP After Hours. You can find information about this event at http://www.empsfm.org/programs/index.asp?categoryID=249 . FIRST and FIRSTWA are not associated with this event. It is an event open to the public.

Advanced tickets are on sale now via Brown Paper Tickets (an online ticket vendor). All tickets are will call, and will be distributed on Friday of the event in the pit area. Advanced ticket sales are until about 4pm PST on Thursday, March 26th 2009. For this event, we can only handle credit cards for advanced sales, and cash for onsite sales. We WILL NOT process purchase orders.

To purchase tickets, visit http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/60323 

Feel free to contact me with questions.

Kevin

FRC Microsoft Seattle Regional Chairmam

If you can come, please respond to this post.

Hey guys. Since the general email didn’t work very well, I would like to remind all those that did not write to me about going to the competition to do so ASAP so that we may know some accurate data. If you have already told me, you don’t have to again.

The competition is march 26-28 (Thursday-Saturday) at Key Arena and we would like to know if you want to stay at a hotel or not. Please send an email to ma-fontenelle@hotmail.com and tell me. Officers too, please.

Thanks,

Marc-Antoine

Going into the competition we will have designated photographers, cameramen, livebloggers, and writers. We would like volunteers but we will draft people if we fall short. If you are given a job, you will be expected to produce pictures, videos, notes etc. that give insight into the competition experience. These will be posted on the website and used again next year, so do quality work.

To volunteer, leave a comment on this post saying what you think you can do. Be realistic and only sign up if you plan to follow through.

Hey everyone!
So Hugo has asked me to design a banner and since a lot of you have been dissapointed by the fact that our robot doesn’t have fire anymore, I put that into our banner instead.
The banner is seperate from the flag which is in the process of being ordered (yay Olivier! =D)
The ratio of width to height is currently 4:13

If you have any comments or suggestions about the design, dimensions, etc. feel free to post here and I’ll edit it.
Thanks pplz =3

Due to the unanimous decision today, we will purchase and register one kit of VEX parts. The whole thing, including the kit, registration, and extra materials, should average about 700$. Please note however, that this is being done under the condition that the team shall participate in sufficient fundraisers to makeup for the kits. There are numerous ways in which that can be done, and there will be plenty of time to worry about that.

The task list that we must complete before the competition is:

1. Build all the spare/replacement parts (Build, headed by Kevin)
2. Finish all the flag/banner/button stuff (Graphics, headed by Angela)
3. Present a Parent Meeting (PR, headed by Olivier)
4. Buy spirit Gear (Joint PR-Graphics effort)
5. make a sign (probably made of cloth) that says “Saints Robotics since we’re required to have our team name on our robot (Graphics, headed by Angela)
6. gather/prepare extra spray paint, paint, cloth, etc. to bring to
   the competition (Graphics, headed by Angela)

If I missed anything, email me so I can add it into the list.

Hey everyone, I designed some buttons that we can wear/hand out for the competition.
I’m hoping that each member of Saints Robotics can recieve a pin showing which division (graphics, web design, build, program, or public relations) they are in.

There are two designs that have a black background and fire; these are to hand out to other teams.
On one design, the font is curved. On the other, the font is straight.
Please choose which one you like so I’ll be able to print them.

I also recieved the suggestion of making a pin with our SR symbol.
I will also be adding that to the gallery once I resize it and find a background color.

I posted the designs in the graphics media gallery so it wouldn’t take up so much space on this page.
Please take a look at them and comment here.
Keep in mind that these pins are 2.25″ in diameter (which is actually pretty small).

Also, although I finished designing them, I’ll need help making them.
I’ll be showing people how to make the actual pins tomorrow during tutorial and during the next Wednesday meeting, please come and help out, we need to make A LOT of them.
Thanks everyone! =D

~Angela L.

Thanks for all who showed up to today’s meeting to help clean up! As we get closer to the FRC competition on March 26-28, there are a few things we need to start thinking about:

Hotels

The FRC competition is in Seattle. However, as it is over several days, many of us will be staying in a hotel. You should start thinking about if you will be staying at a hotel or staying at home.

Spirit Gear

We should start thinking about buying things to show our school spirit at the competitions. Start thinking about them and start sharing ideas soon.

Vex Robotics

There seems to be some interest for Vex Robotics. At today’s meeting, both Angelas, Larry, Darian, Dominic, and Eric expressed interest. I believe that Kevin, Vivek, Dennis, Teresa, and a few others showed interest during the monday meeting. If we do Vex, we need to decide whether or not we will participate in the upcoming competition at Redmond High. The competition is on March 14th, so we will have an effective build season of around three weeks. However, the robot will be much smaller and thus easier to build. If you are willing to show the dedication and put in the time needed to build the robot, it should work out just fine.

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!

I edited the new flag and t-shirt design.
The fleurs and shield are now larger and it’s in two colors (helps save $$$ this way)

The flag is going to be the horizontal one and the t-shirt the vertical unless anyone has any suggestions.

If the colors for any reason seem messed up, please give me your email and I’ll send you the designs.
Thanks everyone ^^

~Angela (w/ the teddy)

New Shirt Design:

New Flag Design:

Our meetings have been going well: our robot drives reliably and we are working with sensors to program traction control.  Another segment of our build team has also been working on bumpers.  We chose to program in C++ instead of LabView because our programmers and mentors have more experience working in a similar environment.

My dad and I recently finished building the trailer, so here are some observations and tips that would help with building the trailer.

  First, hot gluing the pipes into the trailer does not work.  Instead, we cut bigger rings of PVC and glued them to hold the pipes in place.  The bottom ring prevents it from falling through the bottom layer of the trailer and the top ring prevents it from wobbling up and down. This design works well, but it requires the pipes to be put in the trailer before the bumpers are attached, because they can’t be put down through the top later.


  Next, the design that holds the trailer tongue with three wood screws seemed flimsy because the trailer would be dragged around by it.  I attached additional brackets around the pole so that it would not be broken off on accident.  The wheels were supposed to be attached by a long bolt to a bracket on only one side, so I reinforced that by attaching a metal bracket on the other end.  The image on the right shows both of these improvements.

Here I am with the finished product: