Week 6 Updates

Posted on February 17, 2013 by David

COUNTDOWN!

I actually got this written in time (and as such, scheduled it to be posted!) I shocked even myself!

Are you counting down the days till bag & tag? We have a count down in the top right hand corner on every page! Can’t wait to see what bag & tag day brings! Also, we are posting teasers on the Teaser page every Sunday or so, up until KC. Check it out here!

Until Tuesday (when I’ll post updates from our open house), keep it safe out there!

-David

Sunday

We worked on prototyping the hopper chute. We also did outreach at the Story County Fairboard Dinner. A press release was also sent out about our open house next Monday.

Monday

Award writing started tonight. We met with a leader of the Flying Monkeys who assisted us in starting the writing process. The programming team have started working with the practice bot and the pickup mechanism on it.

Tuesday

Programmers continued working with the pickup mechanism. The 2nd pickup mechanism for our competition bot was completed as well.

Wednesday

Our bumpers were assembled and hand-crafted tonight. We lugged the pyramid and the goal over to Howe where the programming team started driving the robot and debugging and finding some software bugs & hardware issues in our pickup mechanism and hopper. A prospective drivers meeting was held tonight to be able to pick a driver and button monkey out.

Thursday

We worked hard to get the robot in complete working order tonight, so we can turn it over to the drivers to practice with tomorrow night.

Friday

Chairman’s Award editing started today while we continued writing the rest of it. We also gave the robot over to the driver tonight to be able to drive around before we took it to the scrimmage on Saturday.

Saturday

We made our way up to Cedar Falls Saturday morning for a scrimmage against 525 in the afternoon. We had lots of fun, and got to meet new people (& robots). When we got back, we worked on our pickup mechanism.

Press Release: Team Neutrino Open House Event on February 18th

Posted on February 10, 2013 by David

Press Release

For Immediate Release
Date: February 11th, 2013
Contact: Dori Pinkerton, Coach
E-Mail: dori@teamneutrino.org
Web Site: www.teamneutrino.org

Ames, Iowa – Story County’s FIRST Robotic Competition (FRC) 4-H Team Neutrino will host an open house on Monday, February 18 at 7 pm in Howe Hall Atrium on the ISU Campus to reveal the robot they designed and built to compete in this year’s FRC Challenge, Ultimate Ascent. The 120 pound robot that will compete in the competition that will retrieve and shoot frisbees into goals almost 8 feet in the air and climb a 7 ½ foot pyramid among other things during regional competitions located in Minneapolis and Kansas City in March.

To learn more about this Story County Team Neutrino 4-H Club visit www.teamneutrino.org or email leader Dori Pinkerton at dori@teamneutrino.org. For additional Story County 4-H Program information, contact Mary Wilkins, County 4-H Youth Coordinator, by phone 515-382-6551, email mwilkins@iastate.edu, or visit www.extension.iastate.edu/story.

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach programs are available to all without regard to race, color, age, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. veteran.

###

About the 2013 Ultimate AscentSM challenge
The 2013 game, ULTIMATE ASCENT, is played between two Alliances of three teams each. Each Alliance competes by trying to score as many flying discs into their goals as possible during the two-minute and 15-second match. Discs scored in higher goals score Alliances more points. Matches end with robots attempting to climb up pyramids located near the middle of the field.

About FIRST®
Accomplished inventor Dean Kamen founded FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) in 1989 to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people. Based in Manchester, N.H., FIRST designs accessible, innovative programs to build self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills while motivating young people to pursue opportunities in science, technology, and engineering. With support from three out of every five Fortune 500 companies and more than $16 million in college scholarships, the not-for-profit organization hosts the FIRST® Robotics Competition (FRC® ) for students in Grades 9-12; FIRST® Tech Challenge (FTC® ) for Grades 7-12; FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL® ) for Grades 4-8; and Junior FIRST® LEGO® League (Jr.FLL®) for Grades K-3. Gracious Professionalism® is a way of doing things that encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others, and respects individuals and the community. To learn more about FIRST, go to www.usfirst.org.

FRC is an annual competition that helps students to discover the excitement of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and the rewards a career in STEM can bring. Approximately 51,000 high-school students from 16 countries will participate in the 2013 competition.

In 1992, the FIRST Robotics Competition began with 28 teams and a single 14-by-14-foot playing field in a New Hampshire high-school gym. This season, a projected 2,550 teams – including 375 rookie teams – will participate. Fifty eight Regional competitions in the U.S., Canada, and Israel, plus 17 District competitions, one State Championship, and one Region Championship will culminate at the 2013 FIRST Championship at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, April 24-27. FIRST programs are spearheaded by more than 120,000 dedicated Volunteers worldwide, most of them professional engineers, scientists, and teachers who mentor the next generation of innovators.

FIRST and the FIRST logo are registered trademarks of the United States Foundation For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST). LEGO® is a registered trademark of The LEGO Group.

NOTE: A public information flier can be downloaded here.

Media Note: Please let us know if you are planning on attending our open house event. The 2012 Rebound Rumble – Team Neutrino photo can be found here.

Week 5 Updates

Posted on February 10, 2013 by David

WOW! I can barely believe it’s already Week 5! Where has the time gone? I bet the time daemon ate it 🙂 As of Saturday, most of the sub-systems are complete with the exception of our hopper and climber. Below is 1 teaser photo of the robot & another of how well we can shoot. Also, there have been some major modifications to one of the items pictured, but you’ll have to wait to see what we changed!

IMAG2560

Sunday

R&R day! Today we had fun driving around our practice bot in Howe Atrium since we didn’t receive our parts yet from Quality to build our sub-systems.

Monday

Today we got our parts back from Quality Manufacturing. We were excited to start fabricating our sub-systems. We also held a parents meeting that was pushed back from last Wednesday.

Tuesday

More assembly of our sub-systems made by Quality.

Wednesday

Some of our students attending STEM Day at the State House in Des Moines. You can read more about it in this blog post. We also got the last parts back from Quality today!

Thursday

Shooter & Hopper were being finalized today, along with other odds & ends.

Friday

We started trying out our finalized shooter. We got most of our frisbees in. Programmers were working hard tonight as well.

Saturday

We played with the shooter and dialed it in to make it perfect. We also shot high-speed video of our shooter mechanism to see how a frisbee goes through it so we can improve it.

Note: I’m sorry I’m not updating much on the programming side of the build team, but I am not involved in that portion as much. We have a drivable robot, and have had for weeks thanks to them! They are the most important component of our team and without them, we couldn’t have a successful driving and scoring robot. THANK YOU Programmers! (And yes, we will hopefully have a robot to you by next Monday or Tuesday!)

STEM Day

Posted on February 6, 2013 by David

STEM Day @ the Iowa State Capitol Today, Team Neutrino attended STEM Day at the Iowa State Capitol with part of our Ultimate Ascent robot. We talked with state lawmakers educating them about FIRST and the benefits of FRC. Also in attendance were our friends from Team 525 Swart Dogs and 4646 Des Moines CoLab along with FTC Team 6420 and several FLL teams. We hope that our state legislators recognize the importance and benefits of FRC and the other FIRST programs and hope they continue their support of FLL and FTC along with adding FRC to the list of programs funded through the Iowa STEM initiative. Special thanks goes out to Swart Dogs for their contributed photos to this blog post.

Week 4 Updates

Posted on February 3, 2013 by David

Update: Talk about our teaser with us on Chief Delphi. Share your thoughts & join in on the guessing!

Sunday

A ~~wonderful~~ horrible winter storm hit today. A few people made it into the shop today to continue work on fabrication.

Monday

This morning Aren sent in our CAD parts to be fabricated by our amazing fabrication sponsor, Quality Manufacturing! Quality Manufacturing is a GREAT company that not only is sponsoring us this year, but they also picked up the newly formed Ankeny Team #4646 as well. We can’t thank you guys enough for all you do! We made the frisbee pick up mounts and prototyped our alignment system. One of our members also loaded the rest of our belongings that were in Christy Hall into their car.

Tuesday

Today we mounted our electronics on our practice bot, along with unloading our stuff from the member’s car into our storage area. Alex, Bojun, and David continued designing parts for Kraken in MasterCAM that were made on the CNC.

Wednesday

Iowa’s ~~wonderful~~ horrible winter weather hit last night again, leading to freezing weather today and a snow day for everyone except the parents. There were about 3 people working on assembly today.

Thursday

We started mounting electronics on our practice bot, along with finishing up assembling drivetrain modules.

Friday

Things have been really coming together! Tonight we ran on caffeine until 10. We got the practice bot up and running along with the basic pneumatics working! It’s so nice to have an awesome practice bot! We also mounted the speed controllers as well.

Saturday

2/1/13 Robot Wiring Teaser
Wow! Today was a busy day in Boyd Lab. We finished mounting and running most of the electronics that we could for our drive train on the competition robot. It’s getting exciting! We really shortened things up this year to make them super nice. We also started prepping pneumatics & running some tubing as well. We can’t wait to get our parts back from Quality to construct Kraken, shooter, and the other systems we have. Our goal is to have the competition robot complete by the end of next week. Included is a “teaser” of our robot of our beautiful wiring that we have completed so far. The pyramid is almost complete as well. Until next week, go teams!