Hello everyone,
The VEX team not only constructed a fantastic robot to compete in this year’s competition, they have written a number of essays as well! We have a good chance this season, but we need everyone to vote in the VEX web, video and essay competitions this week! Hopefully, we can win an award for at least one!
VOTING INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Register an account at http://forum.robotevents.com/register.php
a. Type in your user name, password and e-mail address
b. Type in the verification code
c. Click “Complete Registration”
2. Log in to your new account here: http://forum.robotevents.com/design/
a. Click the “LOGIN” button in the upper right hand corner of the page.
b. You may already be logged in after registering.
3. Vote for our video
a. Visit the following link to view our promotional video: http://forum.robotevents.com/design/entry/detail/1189
b. Push the play button on the video link at the bottom of the page.
c. Under “Entry Voting” on the right hand of the page, drag the three red sliders to give us a score. The farther right you drag, the more points it gives us. Please give us a high rating.
d. Finally, click “Submit” to send your score.
4. Vote for our website
a. Visit the following link to view our website: http://forum.robotevents.com/design/entry/detail/1426
b. Click the “Saints Robotics” link under the category named “Entry Files” to visit our website: http://saintsrobotics.com
c. Under “Entry Voting” on the right hand of the page, drag the three red sliders to give us a score. Please rate our website high.
d. Click “Submit”
5. Click the “LOGOUT” button at the top of the page.
Register here: http://forum.robotevents.com/register.php
Vote for our video here: http://forum.robotevents.com/design/entry/detail/1189
Vote for our website here: http://forum.robotevents.com/design/entry/detail/1426
Vote for Larry’s essay here: http://forum.robotevents.com/design/entry/detail/1021
Vote for Kevin Tam’s essay here: http://forum.robotevents.com/design/entry/detail/1171
Vote for Isaku’s essay here: http://forum.robotevents.com/design/entry/detail/13
Congratulations to the VEX team for being the alliance captain of the finalist alliance at the Sandy High School tournament today!
Thank you to all who entered the VEX challenges. We had a team website entry, and team promotional video, and about 4-6 essays. If all goes well, we can win up to $2000 worth of parts. Wish us luck!
“Interlake High School ninth graders Dennis Liao (foreground) and Eric Sun (directly behind him) and 12th grader Edward Jiang (behind Eric) watch as their robot, The Omnibot, goes through its moves, lifting blocks and dropping them at different goals spots. The three Bellevue students are part of the only team from the state selected to go to an international robotics competition Wednesday in Dallas. The team of about 34 studetns built tabletop-size robots designed to pick up blocks. All five of the team’s robots qualified for the international competition, which will feature 280 robots from 12 countries”
The Vex team has appeared in the Monday issue of the Seattle Times! If you have a copy, please save it – the picture is on the back of the “NW News” section.
Tomorrow, the Vex team will leave for the Vex Worlds tournament in Dallas, TX! The competition will be from Thursday-Saturday.
If you’d like to watch the Vex competition from Seattle, you can view it on NASA’s website: http://robotics.nasa.gov/
As the Vex team nears worlds, the meeting schedule is ramping up! If you’re not part of Vex, you’re still welcome to join us in our meetings at Lexis Nexis (2445 140th Ave NE, Suite B200, Bellevue, WA 98005).
Also, Mr. Cooney got back with the field trip status. Basically, this trip will have similar status to any other out of school activity. As a result, you’ll need to get a note from your parents and get the attendance office to give you a prearranged absense form. Do this soon!
Wednesday 4:30-6:30: Programming Autonomous and Driver Practice (optional)
Thursday 4:30-9: Driver Practice
Saturday 10-6: Scrimage
Sunday 12-5: Scrimage
Monday 5-8:30: Scrimage, and Team Meeting (to discuss the trip details) MANDATORY Parent meeting at 7-8
Tuesday 5-7: Final Packing Session, additional trip details.
Wednesday: DALLAS BABY!
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!
Thanks for everyone who has shown up for the Wednesday meeting today. Vex is doing well. The rest of our meetings (besides the Wednesday meeting) will be held with the Exothermic Robotics at LexisNexis, 2445 140th Ave NE, Suite B200, Bellevue, WA 98005. Here’s our schedule:
- Saturday: 10-6
- Sunday: 12-6
- Tuesday: 4-7
- Wednesday: 5-9
- Thursday: 4-9
I can help provide rides after school. You do not have to be present at all of these meetings, but the more the merrier. Over the weekend, we will make our arm perfected, modify the robot so that there can be two drivers, polish up some rough areas, and get some programming done for the sensors. Over the weekdays, we will do some extensive driving to get experience, strategizing, and make design modifications as necessary. It should be fairly relaxing.
This will culminate in our competition at Redmond High on Saturday, March 14th. I’ll post more info about that soon. Thanks for the great work, team!
We will have a meeting with Redmond High tomorrow at LexisNexis from 4-7. I’ll be in the room next to Mr. Cooney’s room around 3:45 if anyone needs a ride.
We’ll work on perfecting the arm and drivetrain. We’ll also test drive.
Thanks to everyone who attended the Exothermic meeting today! I hope it was a rewarding experience – I definitely learned a lot. I’d like to give a thanks to Exothermic Robotics for inspiring and helping us greatly today. We recieved two giant boxes of parts thanks to the help of Rick and John. Thanks to Preetum for giving us a great overview of 575’s awesome bot and its programming.
Anyways, lets discuss plans again. Tomorrow, I’m not exactly sure how much we will be able to accomplish. But we will meet during tutorial.
Sunday, we will be building a design inspired by Team 525’s bot. Meet at Dennis’s house from 8-5.
After the sunday meeting, we’ll plan how we want to do weekday meetings. Exothermic Robotics has mentioned that we could do build at their place from 4-7 on Tuesday/Thursdays – which could be great because we can get their expertise and practice in their field. If everyone’s interested, we could do that + Wednesday meetings.
Homework: Finish reading the Vex Inventor’s guide by Sunday. Chapter 1 Introduction – Chapter 2 Structure – Chapter 3 Motion – Chapter 4 Power – Chapter 5 Sensors – Chapter 6 Control – Chapter 7 Logic
The Vex Meeting will still be happening – Redmond is on a 2-hour late start and will still be meeting. As such, we’ll still be meeting them at LexisNexis today.
If you need a ride, call me 425-749-8411. Please let me know if you can still make it. Otherwise, I’m assuming that you have a ride to LexisNexis (not Interlake).
Map to 2445 140th Ave NE, Suite B200, Bellevue, WA 98005
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