Team Spudnik Update 3/13/13

Hello again, and welcome to another Team Spudnik weekly update! With two weeks left until competition, we have tasks to complete, and of course tasks that have been completed. First and foremost among those completed tasks: We've gotten ourselves several new sponsors. The sponsorship teams that were out doing their thing during the last update, and the ones we sent out later, got things done. The Sponsorship Page has been updated with a couple of our new sponsors, and more will soon be added once levels and everything are confirmed.

Other then that, we've also officially ordered our team shirts, designed our competition pit, and gotten more work done on our shooter. That wasn't everything I listed last week that had to get done, so of course there's still plenty of stuff for us to do. The cart is almost done, and all the drawings are made or being made for the parts and things we still need to build. Mainly what needs to be completed is the building of those final parts, gathering all the components of the pit, and reconfiguring the old robot for practice.

So there you go. Not too much happened this week, and there's till more being done. We should still be able to finish all that needs to be finished by competition, so we're good. And on a final note, happy Pi Day tomorrow! It's gonna be a good time. Bye!

Team Spudnik Update 3/6/13

Hello, I'm back again! For this post, I have two main orders of business. The first of which is my new blogging schedule. Originally, my theory was that I'd blog after every meeting we have. That obviously hasn't happened, and I don't think that really does need to happen. Therefore, this blog is now going to be updated WEEKLY rather then at every meeting. Now with that done, I'll catch you all up on what we've done since that last build meet.

One big thing we've done is plan. We spent a meeting going over what has gone well this season, and what hasn't. Then we began planning how to go about the rest of the time. Currently, work is being done on finalizing the frisbee shooter, building a platform to mount a couple parts we need to add to the robot, designing our pit for competition, and getting more sponsors (Our marketing team is out working on that as I type this). Very soon, we're going to begin the final tests of the shooter, and finalize the things that aren't done yet. Those "unfinalized" things include the bumpers, a cut sheet of plexiglass to protect our electronic parts, and the camera mount.We also hope to reconfigure the robot from last year, which we still have, to drive like the one from this year so we can continue practicing.

Of couse, it's not like we don't already have some stuff done. Our t-shirt designs have been finalized and ordered, we're almost finished with the robot moving cart, and I've just received word that we've gotten our selves moar sponsoringness. And as I said, the stuff that isn't done yet will be easily completed before the competition.

With only three weeks left until the competition, we still have plenty to get done. However, progress is certainly being made, and that will be more then long enough for us to complete that which must be completed. Nothing much else for me to say here, other then that you should expect another post a week from today. See you then!

Final Build Meet - 2/19/13

As the title implies, this is a blog post regarding our last build meet fot this season. This is obvious, as the 19th is the last day before Bag and Tag, which means we need to be done. As it turns out, we aren't totally- but that's why we have more to do before competition. Here we have our last build meet, in pictures...

This is our electronics board, which we attached to the robot at this meeting (I know it's last minute. See our slogan). Pretty standard FRC stuff, sitting there ready to do electrical things.

Here's the robot as it stands before bagging. It's obviously missing a few bits, but that's what we're working on until competition. 

This is the actual bagging of the 'bot. That guy is Cameron, one of our senior members. He got the job of getting the robot all the way into the bag, and also photographing it in there. This is photoception too, which is pretty awesome.

The robot, in it's bag, with another bag (Bagception, because we love references) full of additional stuff for at competition. Say goodbye to this guy for now...we'll see him in a month-ish.

We did a lot today, and we had a lot of people. We ended up consuming five pizzas and two-and-a-half bottles of soda over the day. Nom nom.

In addition to these pictures, we have several videos of the robot doing stuff, us working hard, and us working...not quite as hard. All that will be put up here as soon as it's uploaded, which should be soon!

2/18/13 Team Spudnik build meet

Ahoy! Today is Presidents Day, so we have school off, and we decided to have one big epic build meet to get everything done before bag and tag (the end of the build season) tomorrow. Below is a collection of photographs showing what we've been doing...

A basic profile of our robot. Right now it doesn't have most of the internal "organs" yet. Keep scrolling down...

Alex, one of our build team members, drills some holes so we can attach a beam to the robot.

A small part of our shooting mechanism...this may or may not be used on the robot, as we have multiple possible prototypes to use. (Want to see it in action? Click here)

A little shot of those "organs" that weren't in earlier. This still isn't all of them obviously, but more is getting added as I type this.

Some of us have been here for 10 hours working...we got hungry. This is 1/3rd of the result.

While we were painting a couple of the parts, Abby didn't want to get here clothes dirty. We found this coverall for her, and decided that we should share this bold fashion statement with everyone reading the blog. (In other words, it looked really funny, so I put it up. Don't tell her I did it)

So there you are! We've accomplished stuff, are currently accomplishing more, and we also got to laugh at Abby in a dorky coverall! Overall a good day, if a bit of a tiring one. Expect an update today or tomorrow with moar pics.

Saturday build session--important update

There are several activities at the high school today, so....

• Start at 10:45
• Meet in room 311 (the computer room)
• We have 10:45-11, then 12-12:30 to move things from 301 to 312 to work on, 
• After  1:45 we can move back into 301
• PLEASE USE THE NORTH STAIRS to get to the room; the ACT is going on in the same hallway we work. YOU CAN GO INTO THE ACT AREA, just let them know you are with robotics, and be quiet.

Please come if you can--the ACT test administrator also does the high school yearbook and is interested in having a page for Team Spudnik.  She'll take some pictures this afternoon after the ACT is done if there is time.

Build Meeting Saturday, Febuary 9th @10:00-4:00 AN. Be there!

We Haz Pneumatics!

Look at our pneumatics, our pneumatics are amazing...give 'em a lick, hm, they taste just like AWESOMENESS!

Sorry about the crappy quality...Blogger uploads videos badly.