So yesterday, thousands of people tuned in to see the 2013 game Ultimate Ascent. After much thinking the subgroups are in a feverish flurry to prototype and design the mechanisms to compete in this years game. Here is the animation.

At the Friday work session, Exxcelcior’s drive was restored and now is available for driving use. It was a long procedure but all 4 drive motors were replaced.

Peyton

Logansport High School has formed our area’s newest FIRST team: BerryBotics (FRC #4824). Several students and mentors from CyberTooth (FRC #3940) and the TechnoKats attended their callout meeting on December 7. About 40 students were there when we arrived, with more trickling in during the meeting. Along with Indiana FRC Regional Director Steve Florence, we gave them a brief demo of a couple of Rebound Rumble robots, a quick overview of what FIRST is and what FRC teams are expected to do, and probably enough technical and historical information to overwhelm them. Our two veteran teams have volunteered to mentor BerryBotics through their rookie season.

Their team coach is Mr. Bever, a physics teacher at LCHS. We all have each other’s contact information, and we’re going to try to schedule a time before the end of the year when they can come down to Kokomo and visit both the CyberTooth and TechnoKats team workshops. We’re also trying to set up a session when we can help them with their “Quick Rookie Build” kit to put together a working FRC robot chassis.

BerryBotics is sponsored by NASA, AndyMark, and CalComp. They are registered to compete at the North Carolina Regional (during the same week as the Boilermaker Regional).

So I mentioned at the meeting last night that for people interested in the FRC season and like to read, there is a book called The New Cool. It shows the season from a few different team’s perspectives with emphasis on FRC team 1717 from California. I’d recommend everyone that can to read it.

This is a link to the author’s page about it http://nealbascomb.com/books/ncool/ncool.html

This is a link to the book from the library http://encore.khcpl.org/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1479316__Sthe+new+cool__Orightresult?lang=eng&suite=cobalt

Be sure to check it out.

We accomplished a lot today.  The electrical team took all the mylar off the ball, and will be fixing all broken boards on Tuesday.  There will be another shop session on Wednesday, open to anyone willing to work.  At that time electrical team will be replacing all mylar.

Today, I also added some color to the ball control.  Cameron Ellison mentioned how it was difficult to read the lettering on it, so I took some paint and now you can read it clearly.

The finished project:

The mechanical team also worked on MarioKat’s reconstruction.  Roy was very happy this weekend!  The drive base looks very nice.

Good turn-out for the team meeting.

Shooting is getting much better. Hit 2 and 3 pointers more consistently from half court across the bump. With the nature of our shooter design, we are more accurate when we are farther away. That may be a good selling point to other teams once alliance are forming and we are not an alliance captain.

Have the opportunity to practice bridge balancing with Team 3940 Cybertooth. We did reasonably well and getting better as practice progress. Since we are still trying to get our bridge lowering device to function properly and traction capability of our robot, we were more fitted to be the pusher coming on the bridge. Cybertooth was good at lowering the bridge, but it has trouble with traction getting and staying comfortable on the bridge.

Our center motorized bridge lowering device needed a little adjustment. Have a lot of potential. Almost pull down the bridge the first time before chain skip. Once the chain skipped, it has trouble pushing the bridge down from that point on.

Our side bridge lowering ramp experience trouble too. Dimension check looks good. Ramp angle looks right. Was able to manually push the robot up the bridge with it. Survived one time driving up the bridge. Did not survive the second try when the robot hit the bridge at a slight frontal offset. I am already in the process of retrofitting and creating a sturdier version with pneumatic control this time. Completion target for the end of Thursday work session completion.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/pc9t_3SfWYw
http://www.youtube.com/embed/dciL6XGr8PM

Just when we thought we have all the issues resolved, new one arise. Despite the problems TK finished the day 2-1 and finish the qualification round with a record of 5-7. Great improvement, but not good enough to get into the elimination round.

The good thing is that we learn of the reoccurring problem that plagued us for the 3 days and have applied corrective actions.
>Drive base chain came off for numerous games. It was discovered to be caused by the carrying fixture apply tension on chain when we are adjusting the drive base chain tension. When Haynes is placed on the ground for play, the chain was too loose and have a tendency to come off the gears. The cart base was modified for proper chain clearance.
>Software was commenting that the shooter is inconsistent. It was discovered the back half of the electrical panels which support the shooter are completely loose resulting in a non stable base for the shooter.
>Conveyor was not picking up balls when loaded. Changing over to the large pulleys caused slippage problem. This was not observed on the practice bot Elwood. Both the upper and lower conveyor pulleys are now keyed with a M5 bolt, so no slippage is possible.

All known problems have been corrected and ready for Queen City Regional, and changes will done on Elwood. One issue that stands out is that we need a more robust bridge manipulator. Roy has an idea. I also have idea. I should have a working prototype by the end of Tuesday ready for drive team test on Wednesday.

By not participating in the elimination round at the Boilermaker Regional enabled us to talk with Haynes and find out its problem while allowing us time to make correction in preparation for the Queen City Regional and Championship!

The Anderson family was presented with the volunteer award for all the service the Anderson family providing and promoting FIRST.

The Technokats 45 were awarded the website award for most improved and for their history project. Now we can concentrate on updating the website in preparation for the Queen City and the Championship website awards. Let’s aim high and shoot high!

Great work team

I have noticed the following things with week 1 competitions

This is our first post on the technokats website about FIRST!

second

We will accomplish all our goals to be the best we can be while achieving the game’s goal better more efficiently than anyone else in the field.

Here is one of our Tech Talks