1/8: Saturday: We went to San Jose State University to be at the kick offs for the FIRST Robotics Build Season of 2011! There, they showed us this year’s game- Logomotion, in which the robot has to place inflated tubes on tall pegs- the tallest being approximately 10 feet tall. After this game play, the robot has to deploy a minibot that has to race up a pole.

After the the game was revealed, we picked up the Kit of Parts, which holds the parts needed to build the robot, and then went to Prospect to discuss game plans with other schools.

Lastly, we went to Rohan’s house to go over the game manual in depth.

1/9: Sunday- Game on! We started building the game pieces that’d be used in the competition for our robot to test on when we have it built. We worked on the base for the pole, racks, and frame for the racks.

1/10: Monday- After countless, grueling hours of drilling, sawing, measuring, and cutting, we finished constructing most of the game pieces compartments! We started brainstorming what kind of gripper to employ- either the prong or clasp. Also discussed whether to use swivel wheels or tank drive for the drive train.

1/12: Wednesday: We assembled the rack together, and started some members on Labview and Solidworks.

1/14: Friday- Had all the programmers and CADers install Labview and Solidworks. Had a session on how to use it.

1/15: Saturday- Our awesome team member Brendan’s birthday! Rick came by to answer any of our questions, gave us advice, and updated us on other team’s progress. We finally decided on a design for the robot! We decided to use a roller gripper, elevator lift, and swivel wheels, and sketched out the basic model.

1/16: Sunday- Prototyping start! We started constructing the prototype for the elevator lift out of wood. Sadly, it wouldn’t lift smoothly. The CADDers started modeling the other parts of the robot.

1/18: Tuesday- Perfected the elevator lift! We worked out the kinks by adding pulleys. Also started making the spool for the wire used in the elevator lift.

1/19: Wednesday- Started assembling the electronics board, frame for the robot, dissembling the old 2009 robot for parts, along with more programming and CADing.

1/20: Thursday- Intense CADing and programming session! And this blog is finally updated after a long hiatus thanks to an awesome person

1) With the help of Mr. Rick Ricardi, the mentor of Prospect High School Robotic team 2813, we had participated in a couple hands on robot repair workshop of our 2010 robot along with Westmont High Robotic team.

2) Our team had also taken The Java programing workshop offered by Saratoga high’s Robotic team.

3) Yesterday, NASA had informed us that we are one of the lucky 278 teams across the country to receive their grants! Hooray!

Beginning C++ programming on the cRIO.

• Basics of driving, motor control, sensors, and autonomous mode. Experience in programming (C, C++, Java, PHP, etc.) is helpful but not required.”

Instructor: Gary Koerzendorfer, programming mentor for 668, 2643, and 3256.

LabVIEW and cRIO-based FRC control system:

• Tips on using LabVIEW to develop robot software for the cRIO-based FRC Control System: configuring the various Control System components; creating an FRC cRIO Robot Project in LabVIEW; using the WPI Robotics Library VIs; deploying code to the cRIO; debugging your robot code; and creating an FRC Dashboard Project. If possible, attendees should bring a laptop with the 2010 FIRST Competition Software installed to work through examples along with the instructor.
  Instructor:  Laura Rhodes, Software Engineer, Pyxis Engineering Corp.  Mentor, FRC Team 100, The Wildhats, Woodside/Carlmont/Sequoia Robotics

Introduction to Robot Sub-systems

• presented by Team 846 (2010 CalGames host), students provide an overview of all key robot sub-systems.

Basic Electronics + Intermediate Electronics

• instructor, Mike Schmidt, mentor for Team 1351, VP of WRRF B OD, and program manager for AMD.

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

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

Today the Evergreen Valley High School quad experienced something that it had never experienced before. It was touched by the angelic wheels of the Prototype…or something like that. Essentially, the team had its first ‘official’ lunch demonstration!

After sneaking out of first period with Jeff and Jackie (and David Yang, for some reason…) to talk to Leadership a few days earlier, we were ready to get all of our assets out on the cold, hard asphalt. Yesterday, we wheeled in all of our assets into an unassuming computer science class while some kid kept on bothering Jeffrey about his bike. After we got everything ready, we went to sleep and got ready for the day ahead of us.

When lunch came around on that Wednesday, the weather was fine, and the team was assembled. The bell rang, and students came running out of thier classes trying to snag the front of the lunch line. The demonstration area was taped and chaired off, and we were ready to begin.

We flipped on the Prototype in the sunny summer weather. Eric wiped the beady drops of sweat off of his brow. The quad was loaded with thousands of beady little eyes, ready to see and critique anything and everything that was about to go down. Eric grabbed the joysticks, Jackie and Jeff threw out some of our orbit balls, Hubert kneeled down slowly, and Jeffrey wheeled away the cart.

Eric yanked the sticks forward and the robot was off! The machine gave off a loud whirring noise as it came to life. The leadership representative grabbed a mic and shouted “Whooo!” and we were off. Eric drove around the quad, picking up balls and shooting them off into our trailer. The crowd cheered, and a line of people who wanted to drive the beast started. One after another, people wrapped thier clammy fingers around the joysticks and ran the robot around in circles, lines, and squares (oh my!). There was even a dance off between the robot and one of the members of the Four Elements club (The robot won, of course). After thirty-five minutes of non-stop action-packed demonstrating, we packed up our things and left, heroes.

Luckily, none of our balls were stolen. There were a few characters who tried, but Jeffrey and Brian beat them down with their iron knuckles. The drivers were from all walks of life too. There were the nerdy, reserved type who tentatively inched the robot forward milimeter by milimeter and the pompous, ‘cool’ type that went into dizzying spins right away! All in all, the event was a success, and hopefully we got some well-deserved media coverage in the process!

Live long and prosper! c\\//

-Jeffrey Yu