What a productive meeting! Last week we had a staggered schedule and worked on attaching the ball lifter to the linear slides. During the team meeting portion, we discussed what progress was made since the week before and compared everyone's psuedocode. Along with this, we learned that even with the great shape and angle of the lifter design, the balls still get locked up and won't come down. This will be an interesting task, putting some kind of divider in the lifter so they will indeed fall. Other than the divider for the ball lifter, The Robot is done!

Successful meeting

Last Week we had a great meeting! Our team split into subgroups and worked on multiple tasks to work more efficiently. Two of us worked on Linear slides, two of us worked on a holder for the IR beacon detector, and the last two worked on the scoop attachment for the robot. This was a very successful meeting because now we have a better grasp on the final design! This week we were also tasked to write pseudocode for all of our programs this will be very helpful for when we program.

Decisions Decisions

This week we tested our prototypes and came to a decision. Testing was entertaining, creative, and tricky, as we did not have a robot available. It was being reconfigured. Our original ideas were an arm vs. a conveyor belt-type device. Because of the accuracy and simplicity of the design, we picked the latter of the two. We also decided on sub-teams for building the different parts of attachments. This will help us use our time wisely. The game field is almost done thanks to everyone's efforts. We are very excited not have to build in the cold anymore, and to test our designs on the field. A great feast of pretzels, cupcakes and goldfish was an enjoyable way to celebrate our accomplishments as the meeting concluded.

Team Meeting October 29th - We Finished the Field!

Congratulations to all our hard-working team members! The main Game Element is complete!

An Ode to the Engineers

From those who worked with will

To those who braved the drill

With hammer and saw

Labored we all

And now we have finished with talent and skill.

Micahel Waltrip Racing Demo

With our mentors at Michael Waltrip Racing

 Sharing about FTC and our robot

                                                              

The team in our new shirts!! 

Super-speedy-build-a-bot-in-'bout-an-hour Night

October 15th - Team Meeting

We had four crews of team members all working to get a robot ready for our demo next Wednesday!

Crew #1: Build Chassis

Crew #2: Set up wiring and batteries

Crew #3: Build arm scoop attachment

Crew #4: Program the robot for Xbox controllers

Chassis Team

Chassis Team

Arm attachment

The Servo Arm Team

Sir Scoop 

The Productive Programmers

The Xbox Expert

Last week we had a fun time making the center piece base of the game, and prototyping different attachments.

Progression Session

Team Meeting 10/01/2014 was an exhilarating mix of building the robot's field, sketching out robotic arm ideas, prototyping the ball-gatherer, beginning the T-shirt design contest, and enjoying each other's quirky ideas.

The Sawing of the Perfect-Measured Board

Go Team FIRE!

We have chosen a team name! By unanimous vote, this year's FTC Team #6972 name is 

F.I.R.E. -
Fantastically Inventive Robotic Engineers!

This past team meeting we also began to plan out our strategy for CASCADE EFFECT.

First team meeting

We had a productive first meeting Wednesday September 10th! Reading the manual and creating team names was tons of fun. We also constructed a model of the "Cascade Effect" playing area out of LEGO pieces.

Materials Sponsor

A big thank you goes out to Home Depot for donating all the plywood our team needs to build the field!

Team Kick-Off Party: Cascade Effect!

We've just received this year's FTC Challenge - Cascade Effect! Our robot will have to herd balls around and get them up into big tubes. (We get to discuss how this is to be done at next meeting.) Here's a link to the Challenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABmBxCwHV94

At this afternoon's Team Kickoff Party, we watched the challenge video, played "Family Feud" over the game manual rules, and narrowed down our team name choices to three top winners. (We'll choose one at next meeting.)

Until then, happy September 6th to everybody and have a great week!

Hanging the welcome banner

Family Feud - Robot Game Manual

Family Feud - Rage 

Team Name Selection

2014-2015 FTC Season: Summer ROBOTC Training

building gear sets

learning to code in ROBOTC

testing ROBOTC code with the Lego model

building with TETRIX

Tonight we will be having more driver's ed, and having a practice judges' interview. Also we will be writing a little more code for the autonomous period. We are almost ready for the tournament!!

FTC Qualifying Tournament in 5 days!

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Triad Math and Science Academy

700 Creek Ridge Road

Greensboro 27406

10:15 am Opening Ceremony
10:30am-12:00pm Qualification Matches
12:00pm-1:00 Lunch
1:00pm  Qualification matches resume
3:15pm Alliance Selection
4:00pm Elimination Matches
5:30pm Awards Ceremony

9 Days til Tournament

The ICE Crew

Tonight we will be writing code for our robot. We will also be having "Drivers' Ed" so that the people driving the robot at the tournament will know what to do.