| End of Week 1 | [01.11.03] |
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Congratulations you survived the first week! Take a look at the
pics.
We got a lot accomplished Saturday: A special thanks goes to Matt for drawing the playing field in Inventor and Mr. Foley and Mr. Stephenson for aquiring scrap meterials.
Enjoy the day off.
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Ok, I know I am a couple of days behind in the news, but a lot is happening. Only IMPORTANT
information will be posted in the news section. It is extremely important that everyone is
attending as many meetings as possible and that everyone is keeping an eye on both the
WI Robotechs Forum and the
Chief
Delphi Forum. When you find Team specific information please post it to the WI Robotech's
Forum. I hope everyone is busy desiging for tomorrow's meeting!
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Happy New year!
Please make sure you read the e-mail about the Kick-Off Webcast on Saturday at 10 am.
You can also reach the NASA webcast via this link:
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I hope everyone is enjoying their 2 week vacation :-)
Please keep an eye on the team forum and on Team Delphi's FIRST Forum.
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Today's meeting was a success! We were pleased to see how many parents came down to find out about our FIRST Team. Parents,
family and friends are always welcome to come in and visit while we are training and building.
The training sessions worked out great, we had programmers working with the EDUrobotics prototyping kit, the electrical team was busy creating prototype boards for electrical and pnuematic system testing, CAD members drawing and mechanical members learning how to Weld aluminum, turn aluminum on the lathe and mill aluminum on our vertical mill. Student turn out was fairly strong, I think we have a good feel for our core team. There will be meetings Tuesday 12/17, Wednesday 12/18 and Thursday 12/19.
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Today's Mini-Competition went great! The trip was kept low key, because only a few members were allowed to attend.
Out of six teams that attended, our robot performed the best! We didn't encounter any mechanical failures during the competition and we ran for 8 strait matches (2 minutes each). We only had to swap the battery once. It was a complete success as far as robot perfmance goes. The other 5 teams wish they could have had the same success rate. How well did we do point wise? Speak with Huendy... :-P Last year we set out to build a simple and industrial strength robot and we did it! Our 2002 robot does exactly what it is supposed to do each and every time it performs. This year we must keep that same goal in mind. Whatever task we set out to accomplish, we must be able to do it well each and every time. Reliability, accuracy and repeatability are our strong points. |
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From today, 11.23.02 till 01.04.03, is the same amount of time that we will have to design, build and test an award winning,
first place robot.
The forums, along with with web site are our main source of communication. I know there are still quite a few people who did not give valid e-mail addresses. If I do not receive a valid address you will be left out of the loop. Attendance at the next few meetings is extremely important. So far we have had training sessions with the Mechanical, CAD, and Programming teams. The web team members have been in for introductions to various resources, as have the photographers. Starting after Thanksgiving weekend, we will have Electrical, Mechanical and Programming meetings. The Electrical team will be reviewing the current robot electrical system and planning changes for this years wiring (materials, improved design, etc.). The mechanical team will be learning how to use a lathe for turning aluminium parts, welding aluminium and how to use our new milling machine. The programming team will be practicing with the robot code on both the 2002 Robot and the new EDUrobotics kit. Please keep an eye out on the forum for team information, and your ears open for the next team meetings. |
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Ok, team; homework assignment. I need everyone to sign up for our Team Discussion Forum. Please pass this around to anyone on the team who may not have seen this message.
The forum has been in testing for the past week, and everything seems to be running pretty well. So
now we need every member to REGISTER for the forum. Please follow this link and select the "Register" link
at the top, right hand side of your screen. When registering, please use either your: I won't be able to approve any crazy user logins. We need to keep the forum a team member only area. So I will not authorize any users that I do not recognize. If you have any trouble, just e-mail me and I'll help you out. There will be demonstrations of all the forum's features at the next few meetings. This week there will be a Mechanical and CAD meeting Thursday, 11/7/02. Other meetings will be sent via e-mail and/or announced in the morning announcements. |
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Even though it may seem like not much has been happenin the past week or two, a lot has been happenning behind the scenes. Quite a few members have been helping with getting donations for the 2003 Season. We are also looking into attending a Mini-Competition on December 2, 2002. So we've all been pretty busy.
Mr. Kozloski, Mr. Petraco, Mr. Zuhoski and myself have all been working on preparing for sub-team training. Training will begin the week after Halloween. We will start with the CAD (Computer Aided Drawing) team, which will begin learning AutoDesk Inventor 6. We are also beta testing a new forum for Team communications. I will send out a message as soon as we are ready to "go live" with it. That is all for now. |
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For those of you who I don't see everyday, I just want to let you know that Mr. Zuhoski and myself are busy
getting funding for the 2003 Season. Mr. Stephenson (our electrical engineer) and a few students have been able to provide contacts to various companies for financial funding. The year is definitely off to a good start.
The next team meeting will be next Thursday, 10/17/02. Be prepared to stay a while and sit in on a brainstorming session with your sub-team (Mechanical, Electrical, Driving, Programming, Web, Photography, etc.) Enjoy the three day weekend! I know I will ;^) |
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Just to keep all the newbies up to date, the 2003 FIRST Season Registration begins today. This year we are really lucky to have a "little surprise" to help us get started. Last year we prepared for the 2002 Competition with very little materials. This year the wonderful people at FIRST are supplying all teams with a small surprise to help boost the training process. As you can see I want to keep it a secret until it arrives, but trust me, you will will be very excited when it arrives. You'll get more info about this year and what we need to do to rais ethe necessary funds for the 2003 Season.
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You'll see some slight updates happening to the web site over the next few days. All input is welcome, just drop me an e-mail.
We will be demonstrating our 2002 Robot at an Engineering Conference this Wednesday. Any new team members who are interested are welcome to stop by Rm 153 to help get this ready before Wednesday. Unfortunately we were only able to bring 5 of our veteran team members to the demonstration. They will give an update about the demonstration at the next meeting. Don't forget to start planning out which sub-team you want to participate in and start thinking about potential sponsors! Ideally all sponsors should be West Islip businesses, but we are open to recieving financial and technical assistance from outside sources as well. Enjoy the weekend! |
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Ok, time to do it all over again!
We are now heading into our second year, and we need to get the team refined and re-organized. This meeting will help us get the 2003 Team rolling. Goals:
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The 2003 LI Regional will be March 20, 21, 22. Woo hoo!!!!
A tentative idea is planned for an SBPLI mini-competition to take place at SUNY-Farmingdale in mid-October. The purposes for the event are: orient new teams (to be able to lend each new team a robot for hands-on acquaintance was proposed); motivate experienced team members; provide some practice, give mentors a chance to meet and invite corporate attendees to support the program. |
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As a closing, here is what I learned this year in robotics:
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Thanks are in order to the following people:
As always our mentors Chris Foley and James Stevenson for all their technical help and previous FIRST experience. I believe they were key to mold our team into one of the most Successful Rookie Teams ever Denise Stevenson and Mr. Stevenson for showing up at 2am to see the team off. Now that is dedication. Pat Foley's Aunt for bringing us goodies to eat and saving the day when 'someone' left the box of goggles on the bus. Mr. Foley and Pat's Aunt drove out to get us some pretty cool looking goggles so we could compete. Mr. Mauceri for lending us tons of AV equipment that hardly got used because 'someone' forgot the CDs on the bus. Most importantly for video taping the at WPI. As a warning, next year, Mr. Mauceri's son, Joseph will be competing on the Smithtown HS team, he is considered a high level security risk and should monitored at all times during the 2003 Competition :-) Last but not least our graduating Seniors: David Blum, Pat Foley, Brandon Gasper, Tom Pastore, Chris Werner and Trevor Young. We'll miss you help next year, but just remember if you choose to help another team, you will lose :-)
Specially: Student Leader and Mr. "Do Everything" - Chris Werner: I sure hope we can find someone who is willing to fill this position next year. Chris did more work and put in more time than all the mentors put together. Without his persistence WPI would never have happened. |
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As a rookie team at only their second competition ever, we did excellent!! We placed 11 out of 36 teams, which allowed us to pick alliance partners. After everything was done, we were the 8th seeded alliance with teams 177 and 562 on our side. In the eighth finals, we won 2 of the 3 games played, advancing to the quarter finals. However we were up against 173's alliance, who's team played some great defense and kept us (and our tether) out of our robot zone. We lost both games there, but still, making it into the quarter finals is a great accomplishment for a first year team.
And we were definitely noticed, both by the judges and other teams. The judges were again thoroughly impressed with our bot and teamwork and what we could get done in the pits and out on the field, and awarded us a "General Staff Award" which they gave to us as being the "Rookie All-Star." And many other teams came over to us and told us that we were the best rookie team that they had ever seen, some in over eight years. And many considered us much more of a competitor than many of the veteran teams out there, and you all know that BattleCry is composed of some of the best teams out there, so that is definitely a great accomplishment. All in all, it was a great event, and even though I will be leaving 871 next year and moving onto team 190 I feel that 871 should be a force to be reckoned with in future years. |
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