Team 931 Perpetual Chaos

World Championships for the 3rd Time in a Row!

2011-04-22T10:55:00.006-05:00

We built a robot in just six weeks, shipped it off, and competed twice. Unfortunately, we actually did not leave either one of those competitions as Regional Winners, but we did qualify for World Championships by winning the Engineering Inspiration Award at the St. Louis Regional. Despite not winning a Regional, we were invited to compete in elimination matches in St. Louis as Alliance Captain 2, ending as the finalist alliance, and at the Smoky Mountain Regional as pick 4, ending as a semi finalist. We also won the Delphi Engineering Excellence Award and the Coopertition Award at the Smoky Mountain Regional.

We have learned a lot about what we need to improve before we head to World Championships next week. After the St. Louis Regional, we realized that if we wanted a really competitive robot, then we desperately needed to improve our minibot design. We went from an all Tetrix bot to a Lexan body which cut out almost 4 pounds of weight from the bot. We switched to direct drive which leaves out the gearbox on the Tetrix motors making it extremely faster. The time of our minibot climb went from 5 seconds (including deployment time) to 2-3 seconds (including deployment time).

We felt completely prepared for competition in Knoxville, TN with our new and improved minibot; however, our deployment was too slow and inaccurate. Because of this we lost matches that were easy wins for our speedy minibot. We have spent the past two weeks working on making our minibot even swifter and improving our deployment mechanism.

Originally we had an arm that would swing out allowing the minibot to hit the pole and instantly climb. The drive team found it increasingly difficult for it to be perfectly lined up making it costly in some matches. Now instead of a side arm, we have a tail. This tail, made of thick plywood, will stand at the back of the robot. The tail has a "Y" shape making it easier to line up to the pole when it drops down. And at the press of a button, the minibot releases down a slide track and into the pole. Within 1 second the minibot is deployed and reaches the top of the pole, thus scoring us 30 POINTS! Of course this is only in theory, but theories can always be implemented perfectly.

Our team has worked very hard to make it here and are very proud of our accomplishments. None of this could be accomplished without the support of our coaches, mentors, parents, and sponsors. Our team is always grateful!

Oh wait how could I forget the light bulbs! Dean Kamen does it again by aiding the invention of an amazing light bulb that is environmentally friendly and way more healthier than the light bulbs that contain dangerous mercury. These bulbs are made using LED light and covered in plastic making them virtually indestructible and cost efficient saving a household with let's say 10 light bulbs (assuming all of them were replaced) approximately $50 a year! Our team has begun trying to sell these amazing light bulbs as another type of fundraiser for our team that will aid us in our efforts of spreading FIRST. Hope that we are successful in our final project of the school year.

-LIZ

.............

Beginning of Week 5!

2011-02-06T19:14:00.002-06:00

We have concluded week four and for the first time I think ever..... WE HAVE AN OPERATIONAL ROBOT! Of course it is not completed just yet.... It is just mobile. As build season nears its conclusion, our team is working even harder to make sure that it is complete before the end of week six.

Our programming is nearly complete! The parts for the minibot have arrived and will be put together to form a finally perfected racer. The most important aspect of the minibot project is the deployment arm that was worked on all day yesterday in inventor. Once it is perfected, it will be constructed and ready to work!

Work on the winch and tower are temporarily in waiting while parts are still being fabricated and modified. Hopefully, we will get the parts and have them put together within the next few days. The next and final big project for the robot will be the arm and gripping mechanism. The main concerm with an arm is damage that may come to it during competition. An idea that came up to make the arm more rigid was to put spray on insulation. The idea was generally well-liked and most likely will be put into play when the arm is constructed. The gripping mechanism will then be attached and tested (assuming there is time for us to practice).

A LOT of great work has been done by our team this year and will of course continue! The ten year anniversary of our team will definately be one of the best years FIRST Team 931 has seen yet!

~LIZ

Surviving The Snowdays!

2011-02-03T22:44:00.004-06:00

We are finally able to resume building after two snow days! The weather is never ceasing to try to halt our efforts, but it shall not prevail! Despite the students being out of school today, the team still managed to meet. With only six students and five mentors, we accomplished a LOT!

We began to fabricate the pieces to the winch we will use to power the arm based on the inventor drawings that were completed Saturday. Some of the parts and drawings need to be sent to Ranken Tech so that they can be made. Once we receive the completed parts, the winch can then be assembled and hopefully mounted before the end of the week.

Work on the electronics panel continues as the layout is being finalized. Once the layout is complete the wiring will begin! The side panels for the tower of the robot have been cut and polished. Now the plates have awesome swirls all over it and they are all pretty! Once the tower is complete, those plates will be mounted and proudly display the names of our sponsors.

We are coming to the conclusion of week 4 and have made great progress despite all the snow. This Saturday brings on our traditional Hispanic Week! Along with the food on Saturday, we plan to accomplish much with electronics, programming, and tower and arm assembly! Hopefully we will have a completed robot soon!

~LIZ

Build Season 2011 Begins!

2011-01-28T14:43:00.003-06:00

We are nearing the end of week three of build season. The excitement and ideas are continuously growing. The name of the game is Logomotion! The idea is to hang tubes in the shape of triangles circles and squares in order to form the FIRST logo. The coolest part about this year's game is that it incorporates components from FLL and FTC to make the game more fun!

Since kickoff, we have decided how we will hang the tubes, nearly completed our programming, finished many of our award submissions, and even gotten a head start on other things we plan to do. At first, the question was arm or elevator to raise the gripping mechanism high enough to score on the high post. The coolest thing ever is how we plan to grip the game pieces (the inner-tubes)! We are using tubing on rollers to grip them and fix their orientation in order to make scoring easier. After nearly a week of discussion, we found an arm design that nearly every one agreed on. The next challenge we faced was whether or not to go with the mecanum wheels or not. The major topic of the discussion was that each wheel was run with a CIM motor and would be a lot of weight and also force us to look for other types of motors and power sources to control mechanisms. We decided the amazing maneuverability provided by the mecanum wheels outweighed the weight issues we may face.

We have constructed a minibot! This one of the new components of the game where we construct a smaller robot out of TETRIX parts, that are normally used for FTC, that is made to climb a 10 foot pole in a race format. Once the bot was created, we decided to design custom pieces to perfect the design of the minibot. Surprisingly it was finished in barely a week. Once the parts are constructed and delivered to us, we will actually rebuild this bot in hopes that it will be lighter and work with amazing precision. The next problem we face is how we will transfer the minibot to the tower so that it can race. Designs began yesterday after days of prototyping! I believe that brings us up to today.

WE GOT OUR CHASSIS TODAY!!! Tomorrow will bring us to the halfway mark of build season and we plan to paint and get our robot running by tomorrow. We have started fabricating our electronics board so we can have an operational robot. Once that is done and we mount the mecanum wheels, the robot will be ready to drive. All that will be left is the tower to support the arm, the arm that will allow us to reach great heights, finalize our gripping mechanism, and the arm that will swing out and deliver the minibot to the tower. That will conclude our robot build, however, there is still many other things to do.

As we conclude week three tomorrow, we will not betray tradition of our lunch themes. This week you may wonder is Asian week. To continuously recognize the diversity represented by our team, we have these themed lunches. I am very certain that everyone is excited about ASIAN FOOD TOMORROW!!

~LIZ!

Update on Competitions

2010-05-04T15:19:00.002-05:00

On March 4-6th, team 931 went to the Great Kansas City Regional to compete as defending champions. The competition went very well and we went 9-9-0 in the competition, but don't let that fool you. We brought home the gold with Team 2345 and Team 525, qualifying us for World Championships.

Then on March 18-20th, we competed at the St. Louis Regional. There, we went 4-9-1 and lost in the quarter-finals. But instead of winning the competition, we took home the Regional Chairman's Award, also qualifying us for World Championships. Elena Wyllie was also selected as a Dean's List Finalist, to compete against 91 other Dean's List Winners for 10 Dean's List winners, she wasn't picked but she still got a backpack full of prizes!

We decided to go to World Championships, April 15-17th, in it's final year at Atlanta, Georgia. We were put in the Curie Division and went 6-4-0. We placed 34th out of 86 teams. Unfortunately, we weren't picked to be in the finals, so we got to watch the matches play out and enjoy the last few hours. The celebration was that Saturday night and we enjoyed a very nice display of fireworks!

Tuesday, February 2nd

2010-02-02T16:56:00.001-06:00

The second we entered the robotics room, work began on putting the pneumatics cylinder on the puncher. As the day progressed, we placed almost the entire latch and release mechanism, except for the part that connects directly to the pneumatics cylinder.

Prior to robotics, though, we also worked on how to put the electronics board onto the robotics with the gigantic jaguars that we are using instead of victors this year. With the amount of space we have on our robot, we decided to have a, three dimensional board. When we started working on the board, the lack of knowledge on wiring showed like a candle in a dark room, so while we worked on the board, there were random lessons on wire gauges and how much they can take. Then, as we went along, we were taught how to strip wires, put Anderson connectors on them and how to crimp wires.

Then someone asked a rarely asked question. What is a PWM? So we went into a nice ten minute lesson on what a PWM is and now most of our team is educated on PWMs, they might not be able to make one, but at least they can use one now.

And what a beautiful sight was bestowed upon us today. The main chassis was brought today from Ranken Tech. It looks really light and it was flat when we put it on the table. What impressive welders!

~ Chi

2010-02-01T16:59:00.001-06:00

It's the first of February and it's time to start actually building!

Continual progress is being made to the chairman's award essay.

Our photographers are taking some nice pictures, too! There are some new pictures on our picasa that you can get to from the right of this blogpost.

Wow, we got some nice memories from that thing! But unfortunately, it's taking up too much space so we had to finally take apart the trailer we made for last year's game. It's really sad taking it apart, though.... Now we have a large, 6 sided fan looking object! And of course, we've also got a lot more space in our back room.

A group of our members is also looking over the rules for the electronics board and laying it out on inventor.

Our righting mechanism is being designed and it can actually extend on both sides of the robot!

~Chi

Satruday, January 30th

2010-02-01T14:50:00.002-06:00

It's the beginning of the 4th week of robotics!!!

"Thousandths?!?!?...Hundredths?!?! what's the dif?!?!"

Apparently we all fail at using dial calipers.... Picture this, four "engineers" sitting around a table trying to figure out just why their measurements for the new gearbox are off.... by over four hundredths of an inch. We were completely perplexed. We measured.. and measured...and measured again. Then, Eureka! Chi caught it, our problem was, get this... we thought that five thousandths was actually ficve hundredths ...yes its sad we know but at least thats our first epic fail of the season...to my knowledge anyway.....

The reason we were even using the dial calipers was because of an attempt to figure out how to put together a gearbox to power our rollers and make them spin at the correct speed.

In the back of the aviation department, the arena is coming along nicely. All that's left to do is put up the plexie glass, which we probably aren't going to do anyways.

The Gurus are currently working on making an autonomous where the robot moves according to some buttons that we press beforehand.

~Tyler, Andrea, and Chi

Friday, January 29th

2010-01-29T16:50:00.001-06:00

"Guess what? GUESS WHAT?!?!?!?!...... ROBOTS!!!! " -Liz

Unfortunately, we don't have our final robot yet. But, and that's a big but, we are getting there! We now have wheels, motors, chain, sprockets, our shooter, pneumatics, and even a progammer! All we need now is our chassis... and a few metal parts from Ranken Tech that we haven't even created yet.

Ever used a crossbow before? Neither have I, but our puncher looks just a bit like one and it is being assembled right now! If only we could find the right bolts... This would be much easier if we could, but progress on it is steady.

Want to see pictures of us in action? We know you do, which is why we've got a picasa account just click the link to the left of this blog post. Look, no really, you won't regret it, I'm not sure why you are even still here!

Our chairman's award essay "is going to be awesome," says Vince Estrada, rookie. You have to admire his enthusiasm, and he has a point, our essay is looking really nice.

~Chi, Tyler and Liz (The Captain Trio)

Thursday, January 28th

2010-01-28T16:59:00.001-06:00

ANIMAL CRACKERS!!!

Today's snack was animal crackers and fruit punch and the fruit punch was just amazing! It was probably a bad idea to give robotics students such a sugary drink!

Counting the teeth gears sounds like some sort of punishment for someone who was being a bad kid, but it seems actually fun... If it weren't for all that grease...(yuck)... To explain why people are counting the teeth on a gear, we wanted to know the ratio in the fischer price gearbox. And to explain why we wanted to know the ratio of the fischer price gearbox, because we want to know the speed that our robot will be travelling and compare it to the speed at which our roller will be spinning, so as to not go too slow or too fast and lose the ball.

Chief Delphi is a brilliant tool in discussing robotic ideas and share little teasers from our robots! Some of these teasers lead to interesting ideas. For example, we just saw one with a horseshoe like shape on it and we have absolutely no idea what it does, but it looks really cool.

Our mentor from Ranken came today with parts that his students made at Ranken Tech for our punching mechanism. You've gotta love the look of freshly cut and welded parts! They are looking really nice and I can't wait till they're green!

~ Chi

Wednesday, January 27th

2010-01-27T14:54:00.003-06:00

Don't you guys just love robots? We really do! Well, if we didn't, I doubt we would come everyday... Putting analysis of the reasons of why we do what we do aside, our meeting was kicked off with a quick board session.

The field was drawn on the board and explained to the team a second time, but this time, we had colors!! The discussion/explanation was effective and getting the basic rules and configuration oddf the field into the heads of all of the students and mentors. With this information fresh into our minds the group headed out to our field and role played for a bit.

Continue rollers prototype. Two different types. One with one roller that's slightly tilted upwards one with an upside-down "V." The V shaped roller design is having a large amount of difficulty getting both of the rollers to spin and not interfere with each other.

Inventor people are creating multiple different things. There is one person working on the bumper plywood blocks. Another person working on the bill of materials and trying to update the weight some more. Our current weight is now 75 to 78 pounds. We've got fifty pounds to go, and I have a feeling "we aren't going to have to worry about weight this season." - Coach

Our programing gurus began working on using the ultrasonic sensors.

Dr. Wallace, our old mentor came to visit us for the first time this season! We showed him our punching mechanism and how we are going to release it. He's giving us some nice tips on how to improve it. He was also shown the righting mechanism and the look on his face was good enough for us to know that he liked it!

"The rollers were really good at centering the ball! I think we're gonna be able to punch the ball really well!" -Ryland Forsythe, a rookie member this year.

~ Chi

Tuesday, January 26th

2010-01-26T17:43:00.000-06:00

2:14 is here and it's ROBOT TIME!!!!!!!

When we first came into the room we found Coach and a mentor on the main design laptop with a problem. They were trying to figure out if the robot will be able to go over the bump. We decided that it will be decided upon where the center of gravity is and we'll leave the issue for when we have the robot because if the center of gravity were too far to the front or back, we can just counter it with some weight on the other side. Speaking of the weight, our current calculated weight is 30.4 pounds.

We then "circled up" to brainstorm our schedule for today and got to work immediately! Quite an improvement from the past!

Our master carpenter began working on the drawing for the righting mechanism. It's simple and highly effective and it even fits on our robot! It's got everything going on and I can't wait to see it on our final robot!

Some intuitive minds also began working on creating a prototype for the slanted rolling mechanism for the front of our robot. WHOOPS!!! The rollers were too high and were ineffective, so they needed to change it a bit.

We also worked on the side pannels for the field and carpetting the bump. Quite a bit of progress has been made on it and half of a field has been completed! We even got to role-play the game today with humans as the robots and got a feel for the game. Some of the students even learned a few rules after getting a penalty or two each.

Some students also took the screws off of the omni-wheels so that we can put two omni-wheels side-by-side, which is our idea for the front of the robot.

~Chi

Monday January 25th

2010-01-25T14:07:00.002-06:00

Week three is finally upon us and we are ready to face it head on!

First thing into the meeting our inventor gurus began creating a chain tensioner, I'd ask what it's for but they're much too deeply concentrated on a pair of dial calipers and their computer screens to respond. I'm going to go on the safe side and say it's to tension the chain that we are going to have on our robot. The inventor gurus currently have a nice chassis mocked up with a feel for the placement of the components and mechanisms that we currently have designed. It's looking nice!

At the same time a massive body of students migrated to the aviation wing of our school where our soon-to-be arena is located, to lay out some carpet and the bumps. They have a nice assembly line going to create the bumps. They can now easily mass assemble the bumps. They've just got the tunnel, the ball returner, and a few goals to go and we'll have a complete field!

An hour into the meeting, a group of students and Coach got together and began assembling the kit gearbox to see how it worked and just for future reference just in case we did end up using it. Another group of students also branched off and worked on creating a blanket of air for the vacuum. The idea will be easy to implement if our rollers do not work out in the end.

Unlike previous years, we have even begun creating our bill of materials early and we might have an accurate estimate on the weight of our robot in a day or two.

At this time we'd like to take a short moment to thank our sponsors Continental Fabricators, Inc, Emerson, Boeing, and AT&T for the financial support and Ranken Tech for help fabricating parts like our chassis and other metal parts that we cannot fabricate with the tools we have.

~ Chi

2010-01-23T10:45:00.007-06:00

DONUTS! DONUTS! LET'S ALL GO NUTS!!!! Are you a cake donut person? Cream filled donuts? Jelly filled donuts? Chocolate donuts? Cinnamon rolls? Or do you just like glazed donuts the best? Whichever is to your liking, team 931 would like to report that we just had some!

The day kicks off, after we've had our filling of donuts, with some deciding on just what we shall do for our robot!

The first major decision was what kind of holder mechanism we want. The choices; a vacuum and a roller.

To prototype the vacuum, we gutted two household vacuums and put on a CIM motor to control it. When we tried, we found that a CIM motor wasn't nearly as powerful as the vacuum's original motor. To make up the speed lost by the CIM motor, we tried to up the ratio, and it did increase the suction and it could easily hold a ball. Even with the ability to hold the ball, it required an immense amount of precision to actually center the ball to hold it.

With the roller, I'd first like to go into where we got our inspiration for this idea. I'd like to give credit to team 1726 the NERDS and this video they put onto youtube. We'd like to continue on with this idea except extend on it and make it legal. We also plan to make the rollers so that it automatically centers the ball to our kicker. Want to see how this works? Come to the St. Louis Regional at Chaifetz Arena, March 18th-20th. Or, if you live closer to Kansas, come to the Kansas regional on March 3rd-6th. If you can't make it to either of these, I'm sure we'll defend our title as champions at Kansas, at the very least, so come to Atlanta to see us compete!

After our disposing of the vacuum idea, a few students and a mentor went to prototype... some more vacuum ideas. At least they're determined! It seems like they're making progress and it actually looks nice! During this display of determination, the other group working on the rollers begin designing the new mechanism and creating it. They seem to be having a great deal of fun! But that doesn't mean much, we always have fun in robotics.

Programming has been going on under the radar. They haven't told anyone what they're doing, and they are nose deep in that tiny little computer they have been given. Now I know why most of the programmers I've known have had very thick glasses! The task they have assigned themselves is playing with accelerometers!

As I am typing now, we have feasted quite ferociously on some incredible Italian food, courtesy of many of our team's mothers and students. Che era delizioso!

~Chi

Breakaway!

2010-01-16T13:45:00.003-06:00

HOLA! The build season has FINALLY begun. Sorry about the lack of posts. We have been busy at work prototyping and working hard this first week of the build season! Today it has been gloomy outside but inside we have been hard at work. We have started building the field and have been making great progress. We have completed some of the bumps for the field.

The biggest problem we seem to be having is how would we get the robot over the bump without flipping over. Lots of ideas were passed around including having a robot that was gender neutral. This way the robot will be the same on top as it is on bottom, so if it flipped over, it could continue as if it never even flipped in the first place! Which is TOTALLY AWESOME! Unfortunately, it was subtly placed to the side and was abolished as an idea. We decided that it would be easier to have a mechanism to flip us just in case than to have double the mechanisms.

We began testing ideas right away. We designed and prototyped everything from flippers... to a kicker... to a plunger... to a test chassis. We discussed using the kit chassis as the base of the robot, but the big worry was it may not be strong enough to hold everything and handle the bumps and bruises that come in competition. We are using it as our test bot so that when we get the actual chassis together, we will have the final design of the robot in mind making building take a lot less time to build. We started designing and building a kicker just to find out that it didn't have much of a kick. After rebuilding the kicker using a few different designs, we still realized that it still didn't have much power. We found success in a plunger mechanism which contained a lot of power and could easily be built.

So now that I have finally caught up to today.... We are fixing up the kit chassis to decide the style of the wheels and how many will be put on the robot. We even hooked up the electronics to attempt to run the robot over the bump. The robot successfully went over the bump, but the chain popped off in the process. One of the chains were too long and a link was removed giving the chain more tension. The field is almost complete!!!!! We even got a target made and hope to use it with the camera. We have done so much in a week. Can't wait to see what all we can accomplish in the weeks to come!

~ Liz and Andrea

Thursday, June 18th

2009-06-18T21:32:00.002-05:00

Today was a MARVELOUS day!

A high of 102 and a slight breeze! It was incredible walking weather, trust me, I know! But enough about the bright, sunny weather of St. Louis. Onto the more important stuff, like Mr. Dressel's office down in the depths of Gateway Institute of Technology, High School, with nice AC running, and the radio buzzing in the background, playing some songs that we couldn't resist just dancing to, and some, like Pokerface by Lady Ga-Ga, we just HAD to sing to.

When the meeting first started, we started out by talking about our famed mascot, GearMO (That's Gear-mow, not Giermo). Tyler, a student, soon to be junior, on our team, has been conceptualising GearMO for the past week. He has come up with some awesome ideas. You will see what we come up with in the future. Possibly near future, if I can get some pictures for you guys.

After perusing the options for GearMO, we began talking about how to connect the front and back wheels, while still having a spring. We thought of possibly doing a tube around another tube, where the smaller tube can go in and out of the bigger tube, comfortably. Then we visualized the concept, along with the spring, and found it looked very nice.

After the discussion on the wheels, or rather, during the discussion of the wheels, we also conceptualised and visualised ideas of the actual frame of the robot, outside of the conveyerbelt/tank treads. First, the idea was brought up, of a circular chassis, that was connected at the bottom of the circle and could tilt forwards and backwords, but that idea could get very top-heavy. Then we thought of a fairly flat rectangle, but that one was too, unappealing! So then we managed to combine the two ideas into, AN EGG SHAPE!!!

We drew all these things on the whiteboard, so we took pictures of them. They shall be uploaded onto our team album today! Check out our awesome drawings and view some of our buildseason photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/PerpetualChaosTeam931.

So far, I haven't gotten many suggestions for the purpose of this robot, other than climbing stairs. If you guys don't think of something soon, we might just make a can crusher!! It will, of course, be usefull in recycling cans, and be quite a great show, but we want to actually NEED a design matrix! So please, email us any suggestions at perpetualchaosteam931@gmail.com

Thanks for reading,

~ Chi

Summer UPDATES!

2009-06-11T19:48:00.007-05:00

Hello, all!

A few of us students got together today with a mentor and our coach, Mr. Dressel.

We started out cleaning 'The Robotics Room' back in the Aviation Wing of Gateway Institute of Technology High School. Boy, did we find a LOT of stuff!! We filled about six of those boxes that we normally get from kick-off and then some!

Even though we moved all six of those boxes to Mr. Dressel's version of 'The Robotics Room,' you could tell that we STILL needed to do a large amount of cleaning. It seriously looked like we hadn't done anything at all! Except for the fact that our pile of spare aluminum gained some size, and the far corner of the room is missing some boxes.

Along with the six boxes that we moved out, we also moved a whole cart load of spirit gear that we found in there. Wow, we are pack-rats. Along with the box of 500+ brochures that we had just freshly put on the table this past season, we also found some posters, old scouting sheets, old brochures, electronics guides and tutorials, and even some awesome bobble-heads, I decided to keep one of those.

But enough with what we DID today.

Now for our plans for Summer and Autumn!

We have always had a want to recreate our shipping crate, so we are going to be redesigning that and building it in the off season. It's going to be awesome!

We are also planning on redesigning and building a battery cart. We have already redesigned it, all that is left is to follow the drawings, and build it, holding the right side of the drill, and it will be great!

We also decided we want an off season project that we can work on. Some members of the team showed interest in building a robot that can climb stairs. At first, I was thinking that it would prove to be a very difficult challenge. Then, later, I realized, DUHH!! This is supposed to be a difficult challenge! So, instead of dwelling upon the realization that it was a difficult challenge, we started brainstorming. Ideas were brought up and we have an idea in mind. You will just have to wait a little bit to know which idea we picked. (Hahahaha, thought I would tell you, didn't you?)

A stair climbing robot was not what we had originally planned for the off season project, it was a side goal to our real project. Our real project has still not been decided. We cannot figure out which we want to do. What should we do, a bubble blower, or a soda can retriever and crusher? The soda can crusher will also make the cans more easily recycled, because the cans will take less space. We are also looking for more ideas, so if you have any, please email them to us at perpetualchaosteam931@gmail.com. Whichever one it is, it shall climb stairs!

Thanks for reading,

Chi

Team Spirit!

2009-02-19T09:00:00.006-06:00

Come Support your favorite FIRST team(s) at the Greater Kansas City Regional. The Regional is from Thursday February 26 to Saturday February 28.
It is being hosted at:Hale Arena1701 American Royal CourtKansas City, MO 64102
The event is free to the public.

If you cannot join us at the Kansas City Regional, we will also be going to the St. Louis Regional.

So we started packing up the bus around 1:30ish close to 2 pm for KC. Pretty much went smoothly. We left Gateway High at 3 pm, wide-awake, excited about the trip. ^_^ Everyone had a blast on the bus eating, watching Dark Knight, playing cards, and chit-chatting about what Regional is gonna be like.

We made a stop at Columbia, Missouri for a quick lunch and such. Majority rooted for Taco Bell (woot!) Mr. Blair and other members went to Burger Kings for their awesome crown hats. Only Mr. Blair was cool enough to get it. =P

We then headed back on the bus and continue our way to KC.
We got to the hotel around 8 pm, tired but happy. We all chilled out for awhile before attending our team meeting. We went over the Rule Book once more to make sure we were all on the same page. We got a lot down, but there were still some "what if.." "what about this/that...", etc. We are definitely gonna get those "what.."questions answer before tomorrow is over.

We set out what we plan to do the next day and how things were to be done, set certain rules to be follow. but most of all how to have fun and learn! Tomorrow will be use as "testing". Test out different members for different positions. Start our scouting. And just get a feel for how the it's really gonna go down.

I almost forgot. So far we have two people that are going to have GREEN hair at the St. Louis regional, if we bring home the gold from KC. I just wanted to know if anyone else wanted to give our team any more incentive?

Well have pictures and more blogging tomorrow night. ^_^
Good night Everyone!

- Phuong/ Elena

We have Shipped!!!!!

2009-02-18T07:12:00.002-06:00

Sorry that this is a few days late.

It's off and out of our hands now. Once we get to Kansas City, all we need to do, for the robot, is attach the gear box and CIM motor and pray that we are under weight. With the close of the build season we have now moved into pre-Competition. As part of our spirit give-a-ways we are making buttons and bracelets. Last year at one of our competitions the girls on our team fell in love with another team’s cool bracelets, so this year we wanted to make our own! As far as I know we will also have temporary tattoos.

Yesterday, we worked on the scouting sheets, as well. With help from Theresa Garland (Tyler’s mom) we have created a nice color brochure that will give judges and other teams a quick look at our team and our robot. This is such an improvement from last year when we made both our brochure and scouting sheets the Thursday night of competition.

Last year we also realized that our mascot needed to be reconstructed. During build season we kind of got an idea of what we wanted and started working on part of it. Now that we no longer have the robot to build and perfect, Merv, Sarah and Tyler worked on a more comfortable head for our furry GEARMO. It looks great so far. Since we have a mask we worked on during build we GEARMO might have a handler this year.

Well that’s all for now. We will be working on spirit stuff this week and next.

Only 6 days left until Kansas City,
Elena

Only Two Days To Go!!

2009-02-15T19:25:00.002-06:00

Three! That is the magic number right now. That is the amount of weight we can add onto our robot to make sure we do not go over.
On the other hand, we worked on our side panels, they look great! Watch out fellow team members of 931, Gearmo might eat you up with his awesome-ness, courtesy of Tyler and Sarah's drawing abilities.
We also added a small pocket for our empty cell. Hopefully, this will be beneficial to our game-play.
The robot's top support was also worked on today, so that we fit inside of our bumper zone. We made some angle brackets that allowed us to do so.
Some programming was done by Will, Chi, and our amazing mentor, Nathan Dudley, from Boeing. We now have a functioning autonomous mode that we can control by pressing certain buttons in a certain pattern at the start of each match before we are required to move away from our driver station. While programming, we got a chance to get some driver and payload specialist training in.
The only thing left to do is mount our CIM motor, side panels, and make final tweaks to our code. One more thing we also need to practice, practice, practice!!!!!!!

We have also added some videos to our youtube, so check them out!

Two more days till the inevitable ship date,

Chi and Elena

Only 3 days To Go

2009-02-14T10:13:00.006-06:00

Other teams have visited (Parkway and Bishop DuBourg) to practice on our replica field in aviation. Along with that, the team drove the robot around to test the intake and shooting mechanism. Netting was attached to the top portion of the robot to serve as the hopper, which worked out wonderfully! Only problem we had was that one of the pulleys fell off during our testing, which wasn't too hard to fix. We created supports for the robot on the superstructure. In addition to the robot, the robot cart inserts were painted.

Here is the video, from last night, of us driving, shooting, and picking up the balls.

Don't forget, we are also on youtube, so check out all our random videos there, too.

Have Fun,

Wheeler and Elena

Day 36

2009-02-09T15:07:00.001-06:00

We put together the bottom of the robot cart. We secured the electronics board. We checked the fastenings and bolts on the robot. We vacummed the electronics board and worked on programming the robot.

-Elisabeth

Day 35

2009-02-06T15:04:00.003-06:00

We got right to work, finished putting the tubing on the conveyor. We began installing the motors. We repaired holes in the mounting plate. We attached the super structure to the chassis.

-Elisabeth

Day 34

2009-02-05T14:56:00.001-06:00

We began working on the bumpers. We designed the cart in inventer. Many students began working on the super structure and cleaning it. We finished the rollers, worked on the sliding bars for the super structure, and put the tubing on the conveyor.

-Elisabeth

Day 33

2009-02-04T16:12:00.007-06:00

We are NOW in crunch time! We have been doing a lot lately, such as Organizing the manual/rule book, putting the chains on the robot, and wiring the control panel and using zip-ties to organize. We attached spider couplings to the globe motors and attaching the motor mounts. We cut green tubing to put on the rollers and began assembling them. We assembled the conveyor, fixed the gear box, and finished the control board.

- Rebecca and Elisabeth

Day 32

2009-02-03T16:25:00.006-06:00

Sky, Kyle, and James worked on shining the St. Louis Arch display. Will prepared the wires and other components for the control board. We went over the updates to make sure we were keeping to the rules. We actually were breaking a rule which Mr. Blair and Will fixed. Merv, Tyler, and a few others worked on the chassis placing the wheels and motors onto the base. The Chairman’s Award Committee worked on drafts. We added some of the bio's on to the website, as well.

-Elisabeth and Elena

Day 31

2009-02-02T15:38:00.000-06:00

Things moved a little slower than usual today...

We checked our conveyer supports and found a few problems. We arranged, finished and assembled items on our electronics board. We began assembling our super structure on inventor and made drawings to have the parts made. We drilled holes into the base for under our chassis. We mounted the base to the chassis.

-Elisabeth

Day 29

2009-01-31T14:34:00.002-06:00

Today we got right to work. The rings for the conveyor were sand-papered. Majority of us began working with the conveyor side bars. Mr. Ely and some students made the end caps for the conveyor ends. We constructed the base ply wood to place under the chassis. A few got together and cleaned the conveyor supports so they could be painted. James cut inch long 10/24 threaded bolts for holding the spokes on the beater bars. Merv cut the wheel holes for the plywood support. Wheeler created the super structure for the robot on inventor.

In Aviation, we used the lathe to make more rings for the conveyor. Will worked on the control system board and layout of components. After lunch, we went straight to last year’s chassis and took off the control system to mount it to our new board.

-Elisabeth

Day 26

2009-01-28T12:22:00.003-06:00

Snow Day, again.

Last night we got even more snow and since the SLPS are being nice there was no school. We met today, anyway, because we need to get the robot done. I was unable to attend todays meeting so I'm quoting Mr. Blair:

"Well, we worked on the Fisher Price motor to see if we could get the gear ratio right and speed it up enough. We made it work, but it wasn't fast enough. Sarah worked on the Arch and city skyline for WaterJet Tech to cut out. Minh took apart one of the old Globe motors to see how it was modified to make it faster. We finished up all the mounts for the bumpers. Mr. Dressel worked on the superstructure. That is about it."

Hope you enjoy the snow,
Elena

Day 25

2009-01-27T12:25:00.003-06:00

Snow Day!

We don't have school today. We have about 4 inches of snow out side. It's so pretty. But it makes getting to school kinda difficult. So, today we will all be working at home. Or playing in the snow, either way.

Have Fun,
Elena

Day 24

2009-01-26T07:58:00.004-06:00

Due to the forecast of snow by 6 tonight, a lot of our team had to go home early.

We did manage to spray paint the chassis. It's a vibrant green now. Once I get the pictures they will be up on the slide show.

Every year we get these plastic Fisher Price gear boxes and every year we wonder how to use them. This year we are actually going to try use them! I think Will found some talk on CD about just using the gears. We have decided that it's best if we remove one of the stages and make our own box for them. Hopefully, that will give us the ratio we want.

Hoping for a snow day tomorrow,

Elena

Day 22

2009-01-24T13:14:00.006-06:00

Today, with it's frigid temperature, perfect day to stay inside and work on our robot.

Right away we started with a team meeting about controlling our conveyor belt with a globe motor. Currently, the issue with the motor is that it does not fit within our chassis. We thought of many ideas to solve our problem. Eventually, It was decided that we will shorten our conveyor to 5 or 6 conveyor belts instead of the original 8 and make it 12" long instead of 15". After that was done we tried running our prototype conveyor belt with a globe motor and found it was too slow. So we are removing a stage of the gearing to increase the rpm 3 fold.

After finishing up with that, our incredible programmers started testing out different autonomous modes and working with the camera. They are doing a great job figuring all of this out, kudos to them.

Then we all headed down to aviation to have a nice Asian feast. It was amazingly awesome.

When lunch was over and we had all filled our bellies to the best of our abilities, we brought our robot and trailer to our practice field and started testing out drivers and payload specialists. We had some nice payload specialists and drivers, with practice, they'll be perfect!!!!

- Chi and Elena

Day 21

2009-01-23T22:33:00.005-06:00

I'm pretty sure it's day 21.

Today we work a lot on the trailer and the orbit balls. Not so much on the robot.

We completed the trailer hexagonal base and finished gluing on the poles into the base. We need to leave it overnight for the glue to dry, no payload specialist practicing yet folks! The conveyer prototype was, for the most part, finalized by correcting all the dimensions and making sure it worked with the orbit balls that we made!

I wish to reiterate, Mr. Wilson is amazing! Thank you for the orbit ball help, and of course the help on the robot design.

That's pretty much all we did.

-Elena and Chi

Day 20

2009-01-22T15:33:00.008-06:00

We final got our chassis! It’s finished, beautiful and in our possession! Our team is so thankful that Ranken and Tom Ely were able to complete it so quickly. With the many updates to the rules about the bumpers and the chassis we had to change our design. I think it was revision number six.

I'm happy that we all seemed to have something robot related to do today. We had the mathematically talented people trying to figure out how much chain we will need. As part of the beater bar/conveyor belt prototype (NUMBER 2!) we needed a threaded rod, so someone threaded about 7in of it. After the rod had been threaded we were able to assemble the full beater bar we worked on yesterday. Then we put all the parts together on the wooden supports. We used the surgical tubing and it worked really well.

As we worked on the beater bar, we had another team putting the last of the trailer together. We have had the frame made for a few days already. Tom Ely, Mr. Dressel, and Minh went to work on mounting the gearboxes and motors on to the chassis.

We also had the chance to start on the remaining 8 Orbit Balls. With help from Mr. Wilson, aka the Master of weaving Orbit Balls, we successfully wove 4. One we completed and the others just need have the other rivets put in and then glued.

Thinking of the sleep I could be getting,
Elena

**Note**
Here is the link to our short video of the prototype of the Beater Bar/Elevator mechanism from Wednesday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBPj2H9XbgE

No, nope, nevermind...Day Five

2009-01-07T07:16:00.009-06:00

The reason for today's title is that yesterday I said we had made a key decision about this years chassis, well I guess someone must have said lets sleep on it. The agreements made today change our chassis arrangement to a longer "portrait" style chassis.

To begin with today we did another team game play. The purpose of this was to give all team members an idea of how the game will be played. Also, we tried to come away with any flaws with our robot concepts thus far.

Mainly today we had our presentation, which really turned into a series of discussion and then quick hand-in-the-air votes. Mr. Wilson helped to mediate and direct our discussion. We started by talking about the pro's and con's of the different aspects of the robot. The first topic on the list was the decision to have either a robot that can score or a purely defensive robot. After a vote it was found that the team preferred a robot with the purpose of scoring. Next on the list was chassis shape/orientation. With a 15 to 2 vote, the "portrait" style chassis was chosen. Our last decision was to go with a 4 wheeled robot with a similar drive train to last year’s robot. We realized that before we finalize any of our mechanisms we need to prototype our ideas for the maximum efficiency.

Hopefully after today's outcome we will soon have a machined chassis for this year’s robot.

-Elena

Elena was right for once. =) In other news it's Day Four!

2009-01-06T07:20:00.009-06:00

Why yes, the title is correct. I, Elena Wyllie, guessed correctly that the "moon rock" would break before the fan blades would. Although, it might have been the long bolt attaching the blade to the CIM motor, that brought about the demise of our teams only game piece. Luckily everyone left unscathed, because of the Safety Captain gently prodding to keep back and keep those safety glasses on! I'm slightly surprised that the "moon rock" in our procession had lasted as long as it had.

Another reason today was particularly awesome: we made a decision about the chassis! We agreed that a wide or "landscape" chassis would work the most effectively for this game. Hopefully we will be able to send off a CAD drawing soon and then we will have a chassis to build with.

As promised yesterday, we did some test to see which model air plane propeller would be the best to use. To get a better understanding of the forces we would need to move our robot, we did a quick test of the robot on the "Regolith" floor. We measure the force it takes to get the robot to start moving and it took about 8 lbs of force. The force it took to stay in motion decreased to about 6 lbs.

After we had something to measure our success with we rigged up a scale and a CIM motor with a propeller on it. It was hooked up so that the propeller was parallel to the floor and the CIM motor was attached to chain attached to the ceiling. As a safety precaution we held the motor down and stood back. These are the results from those tests:

15x6 propeller................................................... 1lb of force
15x 12 propeller................................................ 1.5 lbs
14x9 propeller................................................... 2.5 lbs

If everyone agrees to have a propeller on the robot, we will probably do more tests with larger propellers.

We also worked on the trailer we will use to practice with. One of the mentors came to us with a prototype of a roller bar/beater bar/drum. It is essentially a wooden box with carefully spaced rollers that when near a ball it will pick the ball up effortlessly. Just for the prototype we attached power drills to the axles of the bars to control the movement.

Towards the end of the meeting we discussed the pro's and con's of the different chassis orientation/sizes. We decided that chassis with a wider front would be the most effective for all types of game play this year. Tomorrow, we will make a group decision on the type strategy we will use out of bulldozer, pickup the balls & score, and a robot that picks up to deliver to the human player. We still have some questions on how we are going to achieve maximum traction control and whether a fan will be beneficial or not.

Hope that everyone is enjoying the FRC season so far,

Elena Wyllie

Also, This was graciously edited by Rebecca Mick.

Day Three...

2009-01-05T07:18:00.001-06:00

We didn’t have that many people here today, so we work as one large group. We talk about using a hopper or an auger. Other possibilities were to use a netting to capture/hold the balls. The netting could also come together to push the balls out. A roll-top side that comes up like a garage door that lets all the balls out. We looked up some of the information on how to construct more game pieces. Just for the concept we put together a smaller paper version of a "moon rock".

We have, also, made some progress on the team video/Vlog that we are doing. Hopefully that will be up and running soon on the team youtube. Once it is I'll let everyone know.

Even with some of the talk on CD [from here on out Chief Delphi will be called CD I'm pretty sure I won't be talking about a certificate of deposit or the music kind] we prototyped different fan blades on a CIM motor. The smaller fan size worked pretty good, tomorrow we will try to get more testing done. We also want to prototype the beater bar system.

That is All For Now,
Elena

P.S. If anyone has any corrections please let me know in the comments or send the team an e-mail. Thanks again.

**UPDATE: Slideshow has now been added to the right side under Team picture. Just click on it and it will take you to the web album. For right now only two pictures are there. Starting tomorrow, I'll update them regularly. And also if you guys have pictures you wanna add to the album email us at perpetualchaosteam931@gmail.com and we'll update it to the album.

^_^,
Phuong

Day Number Two! Only 44 days to go!

2009-01-04T16:09:00.004-06:00

I have a little more time to write today. Look at the beautiful layout and banner that Phuong made for the blog. I really love it.

We met at school today for hopefully our only Sunday meeting. To begin with we put the new rover wheels on the robot from last year and drove around on the linoleum floor. So far the skid steer drive from last year is working fairly well. Once we get some on the moon-like surface we'll be able to determine the drive trains ability for the year’s competition.

To refresh our minds of the game and get a human perspective on the game we did a role play with people as robot, trashcans as trailers, and people as people. After coming to the realization that the game will be a lot more chaotic with actual robots and the proper number of game pieces we decided to hold off for now.

For the remainder of the day we worked in two groups to discuss the leading designs. Team Co-Captains Will and Minh headed up a group over by the chalk board.
Here are some of the main points covered:

Methodology: A robot that does one thing better than all other teams.
They want to be able to score by picking up the ball, immobilize the an opponent, get the balls to human players, and possibly de-score balls in their trailer.
With this strategy they would use a the widest side of the robot as the front of the robot.
Strategy: Drive and Drive well.
One team mate had a question about the accuracy of the human players throwing the "moon rocks", so for a quick demonstration they headed down to the practice field armed with regular balls (from a previous years competition) and a trash can or two.
They came to the quick realization that with intensive practice our human players would do just fine.

Day One!

2009-01-03T20:57:00.000-06:00

Ahhh. The start of a new season! The constant yelling of Mr. Dressel to think of strategy and not design, then being scolded for not helping the design team. The daily meetings, sometimes lasing later then 6, the rewatching of the IDEO video on improving the shopping cart, the many paper cuts from going through the printed game manual in search of a rule, and of course, the constant snapping of the Safety Nazi to "put on your safety glasses or get out"- in the nicest way possible.

I have to make this one a quickie since I have a thousand more Chief Delphi pages to go through and I was supposed to do this last night. Better late than never I suppose.

These are the most important things that happened yesterday:

We went to the St. Louis Science Center and Planetarium for Kick-off. It went great, except for a few connection problems where we missed small bits and pieces of Dean's speech.

As part of our tradition, immediately after receiving the code for the Game Manual, we raced to the A and B meeting room of the Science Center, which is where we meet every year after kick-off.

The required Adult team member and two students picked up our kit-of-parts and brought it to the room as well.

Students and mentors got the room ready for the inventory of the parts and the strategy session.

The team from Bishop Dubourg, a rookie team, came with us to the A and B rooms to sort out our kit-of-parts'.

With the anticipation of the new game we worked up quite an appetite, luckily last year we made a deal with another team that entitled us to free pizza.

Shortly after lunch the Bishop Dubourg team headed off to strategize at their school and we broke in to three groups to develop our ideas.

Sky's team: Chi, Simon, Nicole, Thao, Merv, Mrs. Haxhia, and Jevion.
Sky's team ideas: 3 wheels, "U" shaped chassis, and a rotating PVC w/a motor inside.

Minh's team: Wheeler, Kyle, Elisabeth, Zera, Denise, Kevin, Mr. Dressel.
Minh's team ideas: Hook design, block the opponent's robot in one of the corner autonomous mode.

Will's team: Tyler, Phuong, Ismael, Rebecca, Elena, Mr. Blair, Joe Wilson,
Will's team ideas: 4 wheel drive, Fan for force, similar chassis to last years, capture w/rotating paddle then control with rotating belts that move the balls to the top and an oscillating head that shoots the balls out.

At about 2 o'clock we presented our ideas, cleaned up and went home.

-Elena and Chi