Home of FIRST Robotics Competition Team 1829.

We all know that frustrating feeling of last minutes decisions, that you are forced to make in front of all those who think “S/he knows what is the very best for the team”. Right, we’ve all been there? If not then…lucky you. For FRC team 1829, decisions for us are all “What? Why?” The normal response for us is usually ”Well, why not?” This most likely followed by a fake slap across the red faced team member. Red faced because, well you get all those teen boys in a small crowed room, it’s bound to get just a little warm. Anyway, last minute decisions are so…. aggravating.  You just want to…I don’t know, throw that constantly ticking clock out that ever cold window. Well, wrap all this info. into one of the well, weirdest teams, add a little mentor going crazy over the time, and you have us. The true 1829 welcome to the team newcomer. This blog being from a newcomer’s on the team perspective. Tonight, the craziness is just to….crazy for one to keep all lock up in one’s mind. Especially if one is about to collapse from being so tired, and not use to working quit this late into the night. Right eight minutes to go and the team is really feeling the pressure. It’s so different to see face’s of people who usually don’t care to look at the clock, look at the clock with a frustrated glance every two or even one minutes. The mentors are literally running around the room double checking the robot, just to be sure all is fine and dandy. Just a few more minutes, a few more test runs, confident yells from all around the room, as the robot is a huge hit.

After Tag: Yells are coming from all as the bag is finally well….zipped tied as all is well now, not even half the pressure in the atmosphere, and all let there breath slowing exhale, as the pressure is all relived, and all is good…..for now on team 1829.

NOT written by your usual …..Daniel but by a newcomer: Jasmine…..better get used to it!!!!

Hello all! Greetings from St Louis! Today we had 4 qualifying matches, and we won all of the matches. Our mini-bot has gotten first place in every match so far! Tomorrow we have some more qualifying matches and if we are one of the top 8 teams in our division, or one of the top 8 in our division picks us for an alliance, we move on to division quarter finals! I also uploaded the chairmans and carbon fiber video we have playing in our pit, it can be found on our video page. Well, that’s all for now.

Hi everyone, I just wanted to post the link here so that any one who wants to watch the championship online so, here it is:  http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/robotics/. Team 1829 will be competing in the Newton Division. How the championship works, is that there are four divisions and the winners from each division go up against each other to decide who wins the championship.

Do you like Call of Duty? Do you like the beauty of competing and competetion?…….. Then come to GAME RIOT! A high energy, high octane tournament for Call of Duty: Black Ops. If you want more information on ticket sale locations and ticket prices then follow this link =>http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/event.php?eid=181584538551703 or email me at kristiantrader@rocketmail.com or Amy at amy@esrobotics.org

Hey team!

For anyone checking the blog but not your email (and I seriously doubt that applies to anyone) we are having a team meeting this week on:

Thursday, May 27 at 4pm at the Cropper Center.

Important things WILL be discussed including upcoming events. See you all there!

Hello world!

just so you know that we (Evolve) haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, I thought I’d give you an update on what we’ve been doing since January.

On January 9th the team made the trip down to the Virginia Air and Space Center to watch the Kick-Off Event, streamed live from New Hampshire. It was on an Imax screen and it was very cool, and then of course we explored the museum afterwords. We were introduced to the 2010 game and got to see a mock-up of the field set-up. I don’t know about my teammates but I immediately started brainstorming robot designs.

For six weeks after that we worked every day to brainstorm, design, fabricate, build, wire, and program. We ate pizza every night and some of us still managed to lose weight (not me). We lost a lot of sleep and struggled to stay on top of classes and keep our grades up. In the middle of all that, we came out of our cave and managed to fit in a few public appearances:

• We spoke at the Exmore Rotary Club Meeting (later, they donated about 200 dollars to our cause- thank you!)
• We held a valentines day Bake Sale on February 13, in front of Onley’s Cato (thank you Cato!)
• We held a fundraiser at Freindly’s in Pocomoke and brought in about 100 dollars. (Thank you Friendly’s)
• and we held a similar fundraiser at The Upper Deck restaurant in Pocomoke (Thank you too, Upper Deck)

The First weekend of March, we competed in Washington D.C. That’s right, the Nation’s Capital. It was very exciting and we had a lot of fun. We didn’t see much of D.C., although we did walk through China Town to get to a SubWay restaurant. Our robot performed… well, not as well as we had hoped.  Although we hung from the tower in nearly every match, we never elevated high enough to gain points. Also, things broke quite frequently and we spent a lot of time in the pits frantically fixing wheels or pulleys or who knows what (we missed several early matches because of that).  Our hard work did not go entirely unrecognized, because at the end of the qualification matches, when we thought all hope was lost, we were all hungry  and our robot was broken almost beyond repair… a top-seeded team chose us as one of their final alliance partners. And you could’ve knocked me over with a piece of grass.  We played the quarterfinals with them, lost a match, won a match, went in for a tiebreaker.  It was EPIC. It was the most fast-paced game I was involved in, and we kept the score really close, but we still lost. So that was the end of Washington but it had been a lot of fun and we were ready for the next competition.

The very next weekend we were back in those government vans heading for Baltimore, MD. We saw even less of Baltimore than we did of D.C.  Baltimore felt great, we were all so proud of the robot.  we missed a couple of the first matches but overall we did well. We scored more points that weekend than we had expected. The one main problem was that we decided to make some major adjustments to our elevation system because we knew that it wouldn’t get the robot high enough.  In the process we lost some very important winch motors and had to replace them with similar motors that had a different gear ratio. I don’t know how they work exactly, but gear ratios effect torque and weight and speed, and without the right gear ratio on our winch the elevation system just plain would not work.  The rest of the weekend was spent playing with surgical tubing in different places, trying to make up for the incorrect gear ratio.  In the meantime, in none of our matches did we attempt to hang, because we knew that it would ruin the fragile elevation system.  We finished the system just before our last match on Saturday, tested it a couple times and it seemed to work.  We played the match and it was excellent because WE SUCCESSFULLY ELEVATED AND GOT POINTS FOR IT!!!!

Unfortunately, all the teams who were in the top eight-ten had already picked their potential alliance partners and weren’t watching the matches anymore.  So no one really noticed that we had very suddenly become a strong force on the field.  We were not chosen to play in the finals and we packed up our robot and watched the finals and went home. I think we were too tired to be sad.

We were on a wait-list for a spot in Atlanta, and as much as we wanted to go, we decided to turn down the slot if we were offered one. Because we were practically broke and could in no way afford the 5000 dollar entrance fee plus all the travel, food, and lodging costs.

Now that the 2010 season is over, Evolve is taking a bit of a break.  But we’re not gone.  We were at the Worcester Tech High School festival and the Princess Anne street fest, and we will be at the NASA Wallops open house on June 5th- come see us! We will also be at the Nandua High School Orientation next week (May 26th) and the Shore Christian Academy Family Fun Day (May 29th).

Right now, we are also conducting a programming workshop at Nandua Middle School and we’re hoping to start a Lego League team there in September.

We are looking forward to more fundraisers and events and can’t wait to see what the 2011 season brings us!

Thanks for supporting us everyone!

Team, the engineering team will meet today at the Cropper Center and the Business team will meet at Hawk. Both at 4 PM.

Thanks!
Travis

Team, please check your email!  To check your team email, go to http://mail.esrteams.org or if you want to set up fowarding, login to the same site, click Settings, and go to fowarding.  This can foward it to your regular email account.

Thanks!

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