So I haven’t posted since February.

It’s nearing the end of April. Yeah.

Considering that by now I’ve probably lost any and all people who used to read this thing, I’m going to summarize what’s been going on since February 16th. If you’re interested in watching the FIRST Championship in St. Louis, Calvin might post a link sometime, but you’ll probably be better off Googling it.

Okay then. February 16th. I have no idea what happened immediately after that other than we had to bag and tie the robot. Pretty soon afterward we took a trip to the Kansas City Regional, where we kind of got our backsides handed to us on a platter. And although we put up a valiant effort in getting the team spirit award, and despite us leading the entire arena in cheers, and charging the field, and cheering for nearly every team in the building, and screaming louder than anyone else, and getting complimented for our GP in cheering by parents and judges, for some reason, we lost the team spirit award. Not that I was emotionally invested or anything.

Oaklahoma promised to be better, and after a work-full spring break it certainly was. Our robot made it into the elimination rounds, and although we were eliminated in our first quarter final, it was better than we could have hoped for after the abysmal performance at Kansas City Regional. Our hopes for Chairman’s were dashed by an Oregon team who’d targeted OKC to win both the regional and the Chairman’s Award, but our Chairman’s efforts can only go up from here, and our ideation process for community service and outreach has birthed a host of new ideas. On a better note, despite not really trying for it, we actually did end up recieving the team spirit award for the Oaklahoma Regional, winning me the new nickname “Spirit Momma” for my efforts. While less emotionally invested, I was still pretty happy.

And that takes us up to now, St. Louis, World Championships, which we got into on a lottery system, taking up the third-to-last position available. We’ll be on Archimedes field, which is apparently loaded with Hot team and two of the defending world champions, so our hopes aren’t high as far as winning goes. However, we’re really going for the experience, and talking with other teams about their way of doing things will help us improve ours. I’m especially excited for the Chairman’s Award panel, where we get to pose questions to recent winners of the Chairman’s Award. It’s also fun to nerd around in the pits and wig out over swerve drive and operating systems.

So yeah. This could very well be my last post this season. We’ll see if I report over the summer or anything, but if not, this is Rachel signing off until I get around to posting again.

P.S. If you want to call me Spirit Momma, Liz has trained me to respond to it now, so I’ll talk back to you

Hey there, it’s Cal here. I’m blogging from our Comfort Suites hotel room. We’re all comfy and cozy and playing cards and getting ready for tomorrow. If you’d like to follow our progress tomorrow and hopefully see us on the field, go check it out here. It’s sure to be a blast, and wish us luck!

T-minus one hour until we should should all be at CAPS for the beginning of the Greater Kansas City Regional. Get excited, and if you’re not able to make it out to Hale Arena, watch it on the webcast from the previous post! Hope to see your there and wish us luck!

Cal out.

Hey there. In a little under 10 hours, I should be strolling into Hale Arena and into the competition frenzy that is FIRST Robotics. We’re excited and scared; ready and still have work to do. Prepared but still a little frantic on packing. Either way, competition starts tomorrow whether we’re ready or not. Oh yeah, the reason for this update:

FIRST will be webcasting this event via the link here
As well, I will be doing my best to update MMRCorner with how the practice day goes. For more information, you can follow @Team2410 on Twitter too.

So yesterday I left early because WE TURNED IN ALL THE ESSAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And after that I was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay exhausted. But Chris did pretty decent yesterday, and he even made a wonderful Portal reference in the title, so let’s get started here.

Because all our due dates are past, not many of the NEA Knights showed up today. In fact, I was the only one, but frankly, everyone deserves a break. But today I managed to finalize our safety booklet and save it for printing, so we’re good on that front. Others today have been designing the sponsor logo stickers that will go on Epona.

Our robot is now driving at full speed and ramming into steel bars at full speed, damaging the steel bars. Epona seems pretty indestructable at this point. People have been fixing up her shooter, which is now fully attached, and welding her a stand so we can shoot without her on the ground. The acquisition system is working awesomely, and we’re right on track for the Tuesday deadline.

Other activity today has included designing and implimenting the dashboard, optimizing the Kinect-computer communication, setting up limit switches and potentiometers, and setting up the wires so our Kinect will have power.

In other news, one of the Lego League teams we mentor visited today and was toured throughout the CAPS facility. They got to watch Epona being tested (although not being rammed into steel beams) and it looked to me like they were having a pretty good time.

So, deadline approaching quickly, major work being done, and relax time ends tomorrow for NEA Knights.

Oh, and Liz and Calvin were voted Sweetheart royalty at BVN! Congratulate them!

This is Chris filling in for Rachel. Tonight, we made a great deal of progress on the final assembly of the robot. Not only has the shooter been mounted on the final bot (despite the absence of an Andy Mark gear motor) and we are now firing consistently. We also have the aquistion and transfer mechanism working seamlessly, and the bridge arm is also fully functional. Other than some minor safety modifications including bumpers and plexiglas gaurds, and some electrical odds and ends, the robot should be fully operational by Saturday. Hopefully the Kinect and code will be relativley finished by then! Thanks for reading and good luck to everybody in FRC reading this.

‘Night all!

If you’re in a couple, you don’t have to read this blog post.

Just kidding. But if you are in a couple, stop posting about it on Facebook. I am annoyed.

Today I slashed essays, which is to say I grammatically corrected them with a red pen until they bled. Due dates are fast approaching on our essays and the website, so major work on those was completed today. We’ve also been counting T-shirt orders and taking a lightbulb inventory.

Other work today includes working on scouting forms for the competitions, choosing pictures for the aforementioned website with an upcomig due date, and dealing with the shortening of the robot. From yesterday, the Shooter 2.0 is being finalized and the aquisition system has been configured for the new height. The skin for the bumpers was sewn today and it looks like everything there is completed.

On the electrical front, the battery holder is being mounted, as are the speed controllers, and they’ve been rerouting PWM’s and organizing wires so that everything on Epona will function correctly.

Exciting news for the day: programmer Austin of the willing-to-talk-ed-ness has fixed a dashboard to stream video directly from the Kinect, which is about the coolest thing I’ve heard all day. Power to Austin for being a total winner!

Anyway, singles, be aware, you exist. That is the point of today. Also, eat candy, because that is important.

Lastly, important tip for life from Liz: Always be careful of hand placement when soldering.

An awful lot of something is what’s been going on today. Also, hello, Rachel back from wisdom-teeth-induced horror and punishments. I honestly have no idea what went on this weekend or who blogged (because seriously, even I don’t read this thing), so let’s just get started on what happened today.

In the NEA Knight department, some small work on the banner was done today and our Woodie Flowers essay is being seriously worked on. Also, it looks like we’re nearly done with the safety booklet, and I am totally in love with our cartoon horsie that needs a name. He makes me very happy.

In our vicinity, people have been making spirit posters for competitions which include awesome things for both the red and blue alliance, such as Doctor Manhattan and blue screens of death. I have enjoyed watching this progress.

In the shop, everyone has been freaking out over the sixteen inch decrease in height Epona has recently gone through because of her being too top-heavey. Shooter redesign has been going on in earnest along with a completely new electrical board design, which many members of electrical have had breakdowns over. Other redesigns include the feeder system, robot panels, and round white bands that hold other not-white bands onto the robot, whose purpose currently escapes me.

Two drama events happened today. The first involved an accidental bumper drop and some rather angry shop girls who had to rebuild said dropped bumper. Admittedly, the fault was on both sides. It technically wasn’t the dropper’s fault for dropping and the bumper broke, so it wasn’t build correctly in the first place. So let’s all be complacent about it.

Second drama event: I flipped out over my discovery of velcro duct tape. Which, seriously, is an awesome discovery. Just think of all the things one can do with velcro duct tape. The list is endless. Heck, why didn’t I think of this before? I could be freaking rich right now. Velcro duct tape is the epitome of innovation. In fact, from now on I’m going to replace the word ‘innovation’ with the phrase ‘velcro duct tape.’

That said, our team is certainly full of velcro duct tape. Which is awesome, because I honestly can’t get enough of velcro duct tape. This stuff is the bomb.

Hey, so Cal here, checking in with the blog on out teams progress. I wish I could say more about the progress, but everyone has been furiously constructing our competition robot so we can get in as much practice on it as possible before ship date (Yes, I know it’s just getting bagged, but I still call it ship day. It just has a better ring than “Stop build day.”) Anyways, back to the actual content. I can say that once KC rolls around, we should be an offensive powerhouse. As to the details of such, I’m afraid everyone is unavailable for comment. It’s time for us to roll into high gear. See you on the court.

Cal out.

Hey all, Ellie here again. Our love is with Rachel, who missed a Friday all day work day to get a painful dental procedure…

By the way, Rachel.. TomOrrow. Not that tricky. There’s no “a” in “Tomorrow”. It’s not a hard word to spell, dearest.

But I digress… Crunch time’s full force is being felt, as we all feel crunched.  Members who are seen as less useful have been sent into the NEA-knights’ lair (The CAD lab) to be used as our minions.  They’re currently making posters, writing spirited cheers, and cutting shapes out of cardboard with X-Acto Knives while we NEA-Knights cross our fingers, cover our eyes, and keep our band aids close at hand.  Luckily, all team member fingers are intact.  Among the most useful of our minions, perhaps, is Sudhanshu, who edited the Chairman’s essay for me.  Award essays are now due in less than a week, causing massive stress. 
Meanwhile, the robot is in progress, while everyone who is not involved in said progress is shooed out of the shop the moment their toes touch it’s concrete floors.  The plan is to move from building our robot to testing our robot.  In other exciting news, we had Indian food for lunch and have been listening to a lot of John Mayer music.

-Ellie