Week 9 - We have a week before our final competition at Wilsonville 

This week we are getting some final bits cleaned up and driving, then we are doing more driving, changing numbers in code, and did I mention driving?  The key now is not to add more capabilities or try and put more on the robot, the key is practice to be sure our drivers do what they can and do it well.  We do also need to practice our pit set-up since we did not have everything figured out by the last event,  we need to make sure we have the tools and supplies we need in the pit, and we will need to finish up some more pins for the next competition.

CAIS was fun.  And tough.  We had almost no practice going into day one so we had a rough start, some mechanical and coding issues, and some driving to practice.  But through luck (good alliance partners) and some focus, we moved up through the competition and finished 13 of 32.  We were chosen by PHRED and Beavertronics to be part of an alliance and made it to the semi-finals before being eliminated.

Wow we are excited

We had the tool cart and the fasteners cart both break off wheels while loading, and of course that meant we had a very late start to set up day Thursday.  Not to be overwhelmed we popped 12 students and 3 mentors in the vehicles and dragged our trailer to Clackamas Academy.  Guilli went with some of the team to be inspected while our daring pit design team worked their magic creating a sea cave for our water-themed season home away from home.    Pit looked good even though we were without our tool cart.  We had a Cinderella weekend really.  Rough start at practice...Guilli barely ran, we had only logged about two hours of total practice on the robot and we had lots of troubleshooting to get us moving and functional.  It was looking very bad early on.   But the pit crew and mechanical rubbed along finding the issues, fixing what needed to be modified or corrected and we got a bit lucky in early qualifiers and had some wins.  By the end of qualifiers on Saturday, we had settled at 13 of 30, a very respectable location considering the young team and low resources.  We were chosen by PHRED and Beavertronics to be on their alliance and we lost the first match against the top alliance but won the next and stayed in the finals until we were eliminated.  A great run though!

The week of Competition Qualifier 1  CAIS

We are a bit behind.  Mechanical issues with the hopper and the wiring have set us back a bit and we have not had much drive time.  So we will be going into competition at a disadvantage.  The good news is that we think we have the hopper recentered and with another addition have it where it needs to be to take coral.  

Week 8

This is the week to put it all together.  On top of that we had some other projects to get finished under a tight deadline.  

Week 7

We are way behind in mechanical and our wiring has taken an extra bit of time with loose ferrules, incorrect connections of our  Anderson powerpole connectors, and some over-tightening in the zip tie department.  But we have righted the ship so to speak with an extra evening of rewiring work and our mechanical systems are back in action.

Week 6

Now we need to catch up.  The elevator is finally built and attached and we have had to redesign the hopper connection as the Dyneema pulley ropes are a touch tighter than we expected.   SO that is back in design.  In the meantime we are prototyping the algae intake and hand and programming is moving along to button controls.

Week 4-5

The weeks have been flying by.  These last two weeks we have been assembling the elevator and the hopper has moved from design to prototype.  Several slow downs along this path have set us back a week from our original plan.  Some design challenges plus half the team seems to be out sick.  February is rough for team sports but The programming and controls team was able to check the swerve drive, make sure our wiring was working and get lots of updates to the radio, WIPLib and such.

Week 3:   This week our focus is getting the chassis finished, letting programming loose to get some basic work and code onto the system, building the elevator, and figuring out how our manipulators are going to work.  It is time to update the build book too.  On the pit side, the Pit team has figured out our theme, planned fabric walls for our pit area, and designed and ordered our flooring.  The Programming and control team has gotten our swerve working together and responsive and now they are onto the elevator controls and limits this week.  Several more students got signed off on tools and that training continues as we learn the drill press, sander, band saw,  and our fancy label maker.  7 members of the team have learned to add ferrules and connectors in our wiring adventures and  our motor controllers have all had connectors attached.  

Week 2:    Our energy this week is on creating the field game pieces and completing the chassis enough to be drivable.  Once we have the chassis ready for use, we can get our programming team working on how it moves in space and how to program controls.   While most of the team is wiring and finishing the chassis, a few of us are creating field elements, making and checking game pieces, and starting work on manipulators and the elevator.  Time to order more aluminum stock!

Week 1:    Kickoff happened on Saturday Jan 4!    Here is the FIRST Game page if you would like to see the kickoff game animation.  https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/game-and-season  We had the team and a couple of alumni pop by the shop for breakfast and viewing the kickoff together.  Afterward,  we did some brainstorming, reading,  and digging into the rules of the game.   The manual is available for viewing here.  https://www.firstinspires.org/resource-library/frc/competition-manual-qa-system .

The team met up after kickoff on Sunday the 5th to brainstorm and think through our operations and needs, plus some strategy. 

Meeting schedule  January - March 2025

 Tuesday 3:30-6 Thursday 3:30-6 Friday from 3:30-7 Saturday from 9am-3pm