BBQ & WELDING PARTY

Today some of Team 812 members and mentors went to Mr. Rupert's house to weld parts of our robot together AND eat Mr. Rupert's delicious barbeque. It was a very productive day.

We welded the robot frame first, then I took out the robot arm material and I welded the round bars to the arm sliding plates. It was my first time welding, and I must say, I'm pretty excellent :)

During lunchtime there was, of course, the bbq, and everyone on the team had a good time talking about past FIRST competitions.

I was going to just go for the morning shift, but we got the robot almost shaping up and everything, it was so exciting, I didn't leave until around 7:15pm. by that time, we had the drivetrain going! The ramp hinges were also welded on. Like I said before, very productive day. We also had a lot of parent help, and the mentors, like always, were awesome.




-TRANG DINH
webmaster, financial officer

Arm Group

We've started building the actual arm (no more wood!). Arm group was lucky to be able to gather up the right amount of metal scraps and iron bars. We did some measurements (using the wooden model) and cut some metal. Whooo today is the first building day that we saw sparks fly (I mean when we cut the metal). I really do have to learn the name of those tools. We have our sprocket all ready for our motor too, key-ed up and everything.

I feel like I could build a birdhouse right now. But I won't, because I have to work on the website.

-TRANG
webmaster, financial officer

WEBSITE

Over the weekend I've been working on the new website...A LOT. I even find myself dreaming about working on the website. It's important to get the website as soon as possible so that students, mentors, community members, etc can go on it if they need information. Right now the new url is not up, the public can only see the old website which I have not updated in forever.

I'm creating a new website for Preuss Robotics because the old one is too confusing. First, since I'm now a senior I will have to pass on all this website stuff to someone else in Team 812. With all the codes and iframes in the old website, it would be too confusing for anybody to pick up where I left off. Also, this new website I'm creating, I believe, is more easily navigatable and more asthestically pleasing (I've been doing a lot of graphics and so my fingers are stiff).

There is a lot more information to be put up, so I'm off.


-TRANG
Webmaster, Financial Officer

Arm group

A week and some days into the building season so far, so here's an update on the robot building process:

After a couple days of designing and sharing ideas, the team has voted to build a robot that has emphasis on the ramp (particularly one that can carry two robots at a time). However, the design for the arm-based robot sounded really good, too, so we have a B-Plan robot that has emphasis on the arm. That's the group I'm in, along with our new mentor, Scott, who's done very well in guiding the students with the ideas, etc. In the arm group, we went through several ideas for our design--one we scraped was using a piston to control the arm (pneumatics would be too heavy and the game this year has set weight limits depending on robot height). We decided to use gears (64:1 ratio) to create an arm which hooks the donuts (name?) from the inside. Today we played around with the wood mock-up of our arm. We wanted to motorize it but we need to order some extra parts. Below is a picture of the pre-mock-up we did with legos and a sketch of our robot arm.


Though I'm a fourth year member of the Robotics club, this is my first time on a mechanical group, so I feel like a rookie (before I've been electrical/public relations). Though I feel like I am out of my element, I'm also surprised at what I'm learning everyday. For example, I'm getting acquited with the building process, like going from designing, to blueprint, then mock-up, and final build. I have to say that the mechanical aspect is much more fun then electrical.


-TRANG
Webmaster, financial officer

Kickoff 2007

We finally found out the challenge this year: Challenge Rack N' Roll.

A brief summary of the challenge: There will be a large 10-ft tower-like contraption in the middle of the field called a "spider" with "spider legs" sticking out. The goal of each alliance is to get as many donuts (blue or red) on the legs as possible. There is also a black donut which can be placed ontop of a red or blue donut to "erase" said donut.

This promises to be a fun building challenge, my team and I are already strategizing. All of Team San Diego came together for this event, promoting the FIRST spirit even more by providing us an environment where a large group of people are also interested in math, science, and engineering.



-TRANG DINH
financial officer, webmaster

Leadership Day

Robotics officers stayed after school today to have a mini leadership secession with out old mentor, Rob Mainieri. We discussed a lot of issues with him that us officers had not even thought about or knew we had to think about. Some of the things were technical, like the deadline for renting hotel rooms or when we have to pay for competitions. Other things were issues that the officers have to decide on, like who gets to travel, our communication methods etc. I learned a lot today about how we should lead the team (more discussions and interaction) and future steps we can take to bring robotics to the next level.


-TRANG DINH
Financial officer, webmaster

The San Diego LEGO Challange

After two months of planning, the FIRST LEGO League Competition has come and gone! We are free! Though I am happy to have the competition done with, I will miss working with my LEGO Planning Committee. They are hardworking and cool people and I'm glad I had this opportunity to get to know them in the robotics pre-seaon.

As the competition went on yesterday, several complications turned up that are worthy of noting for improvements next year. Some of the problems were out of our hands, such as unexpected judges and members not showing up which left the robotics member in attendence in a scurry to fill up job positions. Minor things we should remember for next year are: remembering to buy pens and nametags for judges & refs, opening a classroom nearer to the gym so that we won't have to run across campus if we need to print someting (I know I was all musty and dirty from running the entire day), and caution-taping off the entire school because the middle students were running about everywhere. The biggest problem though was organization. For example, some students were not clear on their jobs while several had to do many jobs at once. We also have to double-check the schedule next time. All of this could have been prevented with better organization and delegation.

Even then, I think the competition went as smoothly as anyone can hope and I am proud of the LEGO Committee. After staying after school for days on end to bring this event to life, it's an imazing feeling to see the middle school students on the LEGO teams shout with excitement when their bot does good in a match.

Being that I am a senior, this was my last year working on the competition. I hope that I have lead the LEGO Committee well enough that they have a good idea of what they have to do next year to host the 5th annual Preuss LEGO competition.

-TRANG DINH
Financial Officer, Webmaster, LEGO Competition Director