Evergreen Valley High School EVHS Robotics – The Prototypes

• Finished our bump
• Robot can maneuver over bump

Today we went back to NASA for the first time in a while…I think.

We started designing stuff, modeling, drawing, and arguing about stuff.

Like Oh my Gawd!

Anyway, Live Long and Prosper

~Jeffrey Yu

Happy Holidays to all from us over at EVHS Robotics!

Seeing that there wasn’t a post since the first of November, I would hope that everyone had a wonderful holidays season full of food and parties and gifts and robots.

As it is now 2010, it seems fitting for there to be some sort of celebration, but there is no rest for hard working robotics club members!

Speaking of which, since the Research and Design Challenge deadlines loom ahead, I hope you all (EVHS Robotics Team Members) have been working on your stuffs!

But remember, as a wise man once told me, don’t get lost in the work, but don’t get lost in the fun either.

I hope his words are applicable to you in some way.

Until next time, all I have to say is Live Long and Prosper.

~Jeffrey Yu

“Halloween over here is pretty standard…It involves little kids, cool costumes, lame costumes, and autonomous robotic hands giving out candy to unsuspecting trick-or-treaters.”

If only that were the case, Halloween would be so much fun…Oh well, maybe next year we can hide the Prototype in some foliage, then pop it out in front of random people. That could end badly though…

However, this Halloween was particularly special to us at EVHS because it was the night of the Homecoming Dance! While some members attended the cool (lame) dance, others were hard at work off in Gilroy performing a marching band show for the crowds…

And with that, Live Long and Prosper!

~Jeffrey Yu

This past October 10, 2009, the Evergreen Valley Robotics Team trekked down to Woodside High School to participate in the first competition of the fiscal year, Cal Games!

Team hard at work...

The team in the teal – blue shirts took Woodside High by storm as they burst through the floodgates like a torrent of water. Though it was SAT day and most of the seniors were gone, there were plenty of rookies to fill the void! The rhythms boomed as the team rolled in the polycarbonate and aluminum creation, the Prototype!

Team working on the bot

While the newly recruited freshmen, sophomores, and juniors were virgin to the experience of a FIRST robotics game, they soon learned the rules of the game, and began coming together as a team.

After the satanic SATs were done with, the rest of the members rolled in to help out. While the other teams battled, the EVHS robotics team accompanied by Leland High School and the Cheesy Poofs (Bellarmine) swooped down like an eagle capturing its prey and eliminated the competition!

The awesome alliance!

In the end, the collaboration of these three illustrious teams snagged EVHS a win, and their first gold medal prize at Cal Games!

EVHS, Leland, Bellarmine

The one Plaque to Rule them All!

The experience itself was good, as it introduced many of the new members to the heat of competition. In addition to this, it allowed the team to make new acquaintances, and further the team’s sense of gracious professionalism!

For now, the team is in hiatus, but 2854 will soon be back, harder, better, faster, stronger.

Live long and Prosper.

~Jeffrey Yu

Summer has come and gone, the innocent have gone so long….or something like that.

As summer comes to a close for us EVHS students, all of the members of the robotics club are becoming seniors! That should be a good thing, but that means that we need to get more doods and doodetts to join the club!

It should be fun doing college applications and taking ap classes, but not that fun…In fact, i don’t see how that is really fun at all. I suppose you can just disregard the first comment of this paragraph.

Regardless, I hope everyone had a good summer; I know I sure did!

Live long and Prosper! c\\//

~Jeffrey Yu

This past Thursday was also the Freshman Orientation here at EVHS, and we were there to recruit new members to the team. It was a nice, sunny Thursday afternoon when the team got there, and the Link Crew at the school was busy hustling around with final preparations for the orientation. When I got there, I had been doing marching band camp, and I had a horrible farmer’s tan going on. After Eric arrived with the precious cargo, we set up some caution tape and moved some tables into position.

Finally, a few hours late, the freshman began to stream out of the auditorium. One by one, the Link Crew tour guides began to disappear and take the nubile young children away for tours of the campus. Before long, the incoming freshman began to notice the giant piece of metal and plastic making a ruckus in the middle of the quad. Unfortunately, as the line for buying PE clothes began to open up, all the freshman flocked over like a herd of deer and quickly left our area for the scent of the one-hundred percent cotton shirts and the aerated nylon shorts.

Luckily, we managed to attract the attention of a few stragglers. Amongst them was a boy with an infatuation with LEGOs. I mean, what a dork!…Oh…wait a second…

Anyhow, the demo was fine, but we could have rcruited more freshman…Hopefully we will be able to when school starts.

Note: District 9 was awesome!

Glar *click*rull *click*clack*ar*click*pre*click*eer (‘Live long and prosper’, in Prawn-ish) c\\//

~Jeffrey Yu

This past weekend, we attended the Take Flight for Kids event.  In this event, several community organizations gathered in a single, dense conglomeration at the Ried Hillview Airport in San Jose, California. Wondering where the name comes from? Take Flight for Kids is a day-long ‘festival’ of sorts where volunteer pilots take mentally disabled children on flights in thier very own planes! The event had several volunteer community bands, as well as a bunch of cool booths, like a steampunk mail service and a blue-shirted group of robotics demonstrators…

After arriving on the airport’s dusty fields, the EHVS Robotics team unpacked thier things and set up camp on the field. Suddenly, without warning, a chair flew overhead at near relativistic speeds and nearly tore a hole in the space-time continuum! Wait…wront event. Instead, the team decided to help set up the tables and chairs. While it was tiring for the team members to tread back and forth in the giant dustbowl, they felt warm and cozy on the inside afterward…mostly.

After getting kicked off of the field and onto the parking lot, the day really began.  People started arriving, exhibitors began exhibiting, and the opening ceremony was about to begin. After shooting off the Bellagio of Diet Coke and Mentos with the Oak Grove team, the EVHS team headed back to thier booth, ready to take on anyone who came by.

Exhibiting alongside the EVHS Prototypes were the Leland Robotics Team, the Insomniacs and the Apes of Wrath. For their amusement, the Apes of Wrath brought along with them their robot chair. Essentially, the device was a lazy-boy recliner with two joysticks attached to its arm rests as controls. While it was an interesting diversion for the bystanders, the real meat of the booth was in the robots themselves.

After a few hours of presentation, the team rolled out to go get lunch. The place provided free lunch of burgers and hot dogs, which came in very handy when we were in need of food. The only real problem that we encountered was the endless mounts of vitamin water. Although some shop ‘generously donated’ several hundreds of flats of vitamin water, they failed to inform us that all of it was expired. Luckily, the drinks were only a few days expired, and the team only had a few anyway…although that would explain how we suddenly got super powers…

All in all, the event was enjoyable, and even a little bit productive. Some of the cooler things were:

~Foot-pump action porto-sinks (next to the not-so-foot-pumped-porto-potties)

~California Insect Bots, a neat little organization that sports small but deadly remote controlled robots that go around trying to launch the other bot into a discard bin

~A LEGO jeep! Some (incredibly intelligent and handsome) guy decided to glue a bunch of lego boards on his jeep and deck it out with bricks!

Live long and prosper! c\\//

-Jeffrey Yu

If you are wondering, GCER stands for Global Conference on Educational Robotics.

After several hours of practice and working out the kinks, the finals began!

The reason why the tournament process is called ‘double elimination’ is because if you lose one match, you are put into a second bracket. Once you are in this bracket, you have a chance to win by beating everyone in that bracket and facing the winner of the other bracket, essentially giving you two chances at winning.

The finals were going fine. Team 115, the Neo-Assassins, were beating thier opponents with ease and flavor. However, on the third match of the afternoon, one of the robots wouldn’t start.

3pik Ph4il.

We were knocked out, but it was fun having four days of free, awesome food! I have to leave soon, so I won’t be able to fill in on the awards ceremony until later.

Live long and Prosper! c\\//

-Jeffrey Yu

EDIT: July 7th

We didn’t manage to snag any trophies *sad face*.

All we got was a ‘Finalist’ award.

Oh well, as i said before, the trip was definitely a fun time, and it was all worth it for the food and fireworks!

Live long and Prosper! c\\//

-Jeffrey Yu

After a day of rest, practice, and Beyond Botball, the actual Botball double eliminations began! Seeing that it is one in the morning, I will try to make this quick.

Team 115 was knocked out fairly quickly, but we still love em!

Team 116 was able to own and move on to the finals!

We went to see fireworks and it was twenty minutes of heart-pounding ear-exploding AWESOMENESS!!!!!!

Finals start later today.

Stay tuned for the final part!

Live long and Prosper! c\\//

-Jeffrey Yu