Feb 12, 2017 • Caroline M.

Happy Sunday Narwhals!

We have had quite the week, as many of you know. In one week we saw: the downfall of an intake, a broken CNC, and a struggle with the gear mechanism. Later in this email will be the mechanical update, accounting for all of these difficulties. We are rounding the corner of build season into Week 6. Bag day for the robot is on Tuesday, February 21st. So, a few things to remember.

Workshop Hours

• Monday-Thursday: Usual hours, except Tuesday will have extended hours to 8:00pm
• Friday, February 17th: Meeting from 10am-4pm
• Saturday, February 18th: Meeting from 10am-4pm
• Monday, February 20th: Meeting from 10am-4pm
• Tuesday, February 21st: Bag day!

Competition Dates

• San Diego Regional: March 9th-March 11th
• Sacramento Regional: March 22nd-March 26th

Schedules will be released in the next few weeks

Logging hours

Don’t forget to keep scanning in and out. Even if you’re not part of the competition team, workshop hours still do count and are used to determine eligibility for leadership positions. Ronak has actually made the thing work, so please remember to sign in and out every meeting; if you forget to bring your ID or scan in and out, or if you just don’t trust the scanner, fill out a Time Log Worksheet and get it signed by a mentor so we know you’re doing something and not just watching the 3D printer do its thing.

Sector Updates

Submissions (by Sarah C.)
For the past two weeks Submissions had been working with everyone on the team to review all our essays and applications before the deadline hit on the previous Thursday! I am here to say that all went well and that Chairmans, Entrepreneurship, and Woodie Flowers are all polished up and sent. All that needs to be done is the Chairmans presentation, as well as a brief review of team history and important fact checking before the San Diego Regional coming up in March.

Business (by Jannie Y.)
We are well on our way to our last week of build season! These 6 weeks are going by so quick! Chairman’s Award video is in steady working progress during these last couple weeks, and we hope to complete the Chairman’s Award presentation soon. Next week, our team will have a table set up for Student Info Night for prospective 8th graders, so we are busy making sure that we have our robot, flyers, and poster prepared. Likewise, on Wednesday, a couple members will be at a Industry Advisor Event to represent our FRC team. There will be attendees from various companies in the area, and we hope to gain more corporate interest from the event. Soon, we’ll be preparing the team’s first robot design poster board to showcase and explain the robot mechanisms that our mechanical team have designed this year!

Mechanical (by Christian C.)
This week just didn’t want to go down without a fight. On Tuesday we figured out that the elevator that brought balls from the hopper to the shooter didn’t work for a multitude of reasons. This was incredibly unfortunate because it meant we would need to do what is essentially a full redesign. Sadly this wasn’t the only thing that went wrong. We got the back of the robot fully assembled only to realize that our logic for how we wanted to get rid of gears was completely flawed and our gear mechanism also required a full redesign. Things then started to look up as we assembled a fully functioning shooter and climber. But this week couldn’t let us win, we managed to destroy the VFD that controlled the spindle on our CNC router. This means that manufacturing of the competition bot won’t be able to start until Monday at earliest. That means that this coming week we are going to need to kick it into high gear and be as efficient as possible with what little workshop time we have.

Controls (by Jamie S.)
This week, controls has kept working hard on getting our robot running. We worked for many hours on the competition electronics board, and got it finished, cleaned up, and ready to go. At first, we had trouble with the CAN, but after I excised a couple of bad connectors, it started working great. We also worked hard on our autonomous programs, and got them closer to finished. In order to be able to recognize both the gear peg target and the boiler target, we modified our vision app to support multiple sets of target recognition settings which the robot can select. Finally, once Mechanical finished building the shooter, we calibrated the PID loop and tested it out with the competition electronics, giving you the video posted on Slack last night.

Strategy (by Daniel B)
This week has been transitional for strategy as we worked to finish up our regional databases, the drive team matchbook, and scouting training. In the following week(s) we will likely reach out to Team 2102 (Paradox) to exchange ideas and spend a couple more days conducting scouting prep. The lead data analyst system is nearly finished and strategy will be working with controls to convert the scouting sheets into bubble sheets that can more quickly be uploaded into a central database during competition.

In the spirit of Raylen’s previous emails, here are some quotes of wisdom.

“Concealed talent brings no reputation”
-Erasmus

“A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last”
-Jeff Bezos

“The answer to every history question is geography”
-Mr. Stiven

Thank you, Caroline M.

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