FIRST District System

I've noticed on Chief Delphi recently that a lot of people have been posting FiM style rankings for their respective regions and it got me thinking (not always a good thing) what would FRC look like if all of the United States went to districts.

But, first a little background on the District System for those that don't know or have been living under a rock since 2009. The district system was created in the summer of 2008 in Michigan as a way to decrease cost and increase the value and sustainability of the FIRST Robotics Competition. It was piloted in 2009 in Michigan and has been used every since. The difference between the standard regional model and the district system is that rather than pay $5000 for one Regional event you get to play at two District event. District events are around the size of a small Regional, normally 40 teams, and takes place on Friday and Saturday only. The absences of practice day and team access to the robot is something for another post. In 2011 Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware formed the Mid-Atlantic Region. More info about the district system can be found here.

My District system would allow every team two districts event for the initial registration price. Since everyone will be on districts, team can go and play anywhere. They will be required to have one event in their home region but the second and so on can be where they want. Teams that go to more than two districts will pay the third district fee from the region where the third district is and have the option before Kickoff to pick which two district they want to count for point and which one will just be for practice. If they don't pick their first two district event will be point events.

Before I lay out what states are in each Region a little note about Championship spots for each Region. The number of spots are based off of a 600 team, 8 division Championship that I wrote about last year. They would be divided up as shown below:

Championship Berths

600 Total

20 for Hall of Fame Team

3 for Previous year's Winners

1 for Previous year's EI

1 for Previous year's RAS

30 for 5 Canadian Regionals

6 for Israeli Regional

6 for Australian Regional

6 for Mexican Regional

7 for International Team spots

520 for USA Regions

I know this will be controversial but I have limited spots for Hall of Fame teams to 20. That means that after you win Championship Chairman's you would get a 20 year exemption to Championship starting the next year. Teams that won more than 20 years ago would still be in the Hall of Fame, they would be just to qualify the old fashion way.

The seven spots for International teams are open to teams who do not have a regional in their country. They can either go to another foreign regional or come and play in the US. If they do the latter they will get two districts like everyone else, but will not be obligated to play at a region championship. Rather they will be ranked along with all of the other International teams and the top 7 will earn berth at Champs.

And now onto the district split:

FRC Districts
Name of Region	States	Number of Teams	Number of District Event	World Championship Berths
New England FIRST	CT, MA, VT, ME, NH, RI, Eastern NY	164	9	37
FIRST New York	Southern NY	99	5	22
Mid-Atlantic Region	DE, NJ, Eastern PA	109	6	24
FIRST Capital Region	MD, DC, VA	123	7	28
Carolina FIRST	SC, NC	78	4	17
FIRST South	GA, Eastern TN, AL, FL Panhandle	91	5	20
Florida FIRST	FL Peninsula	72	4	16
Ohio Valley Region	OH, Western PA, Western NY, WV, KY	143	8	32
Midwest Region	IL, IN, WI	147	8	33
FIRST in Michigan	MI	211	11	47
FIRST in Minnesota	MN, SD, ND	187	10	42
Mississippi River Region	LA, MS, Western TN, AR	72	4	16
Gateway Region	MO, KS, OK, IA, NE	135	7	30
Texas FIRST	TX	142	8	32
FIRST Northwest	WA, OR, ID, AK, MT	179	9	40
Rocky Mountain FIRST	UT, CO, WY	64	4	14
FIRST Southwest	NV, AZ, NM	61	4	14
NOCAL FIRST	Northern CA	105	9	24
SOCAL FIRST	Southern CA, HI	141	8	32

A couple of notes on the setup:

• New York gets split between New England, Ohio Valley, and New York City. NYC could join MAR and double the size of that region.
• The Dakotas got added to Minnesota because there are only like 5 teams between the two states.
• Rocky Mountain and the Southwest could easily be combined, but I left then separate because a combined region may be too large.
• Hawaii goes with SOCAL because it doesn't have enough teams for its own region. They would probably have a district event or two on Hawaii and then teams would go to California for Champs.
• 3 regions, FiM, FiMn, and NW all qualify over 40 teams for Championships which means that teams could qualify that don't make elims at the Region Championship. A way to fix this would be to have two simultaneous Region Championships like NE wants to do. This could all fix the UP problem in Michigan if one of the events was farther north.

That's about it, I'm not saying I'm right but here's my idea. Tell me what you think.

2013 Orlando Regional Thoughts

I meant to get this out sooner but coming back up to NC State after Spring Break I had a paper due yesterday and a test today, so hopefully you can forgive me (By you I mean my mom cause I'm pretty sure she is the only person that reads my blog).

All this post will include are a couple thoughts on Ultimate Ascent through two weeks and some fun facts from the Orlando Regional this past weekend.

Thoughts:

• Field Reset is a pain in the ass!!!! I can only imagine how much worse it would be if human players could throw white Frisbees.
• The game moves relatively fast and a good robot can get 3-4 scoring runs in during teleop and still hang.
• With 45 Frisbees in the drivers stations there is no need to be able to pick up off the ground at this point in the season.
• Most human player throws were towards the main goals and not towards the pyramid goal where the colored Frisbees are actually special.

Fun Facts:

• 79 became the 9th team to win multiple Florida/Orlando Regionals joining 233, 1251, 86, 179, 180, 1649, 108, and 1592 (If I forgot anyone I am sorry).
• 744 won their first Regional as a team and as a school in 13 years of FRC.
• 1772 was the first out-of-state team to win the Florida Regional since 2007 (Only the 4th such team since 2002) and that team, 1270, went on to qualify for Einstein. 
• 79 eliminated 233 at the Orlando Regional for the first time ever. On the other hand 233 has eliminated 79 at least three times (all while I was a student!)
• 4451 was the first rookie to make finals at the Orlando Regional since 1902 in 2006
• 744 made their 3rd finals appearance in 5 years, 79 their 5th in 11 years and 233 their 3rd consecutive and 8th overall since 2002.
• All three members of the winning alliance were ranked lower than 10th.
• 79 and 744 partnered up for the 2nd time since 2009 with 744 being the alliance captain both times.
• 79 qualified for Championship for the 16th year in a row, which should be the longest active non-Hall of Fame streak. Surprisingly the only time Krunch didn't merit qualify was 2008.

That about wraps up this post and if I think of anything else I will go back and add it later.

SCRIW II

This weekend was the 2nd annual South Carolina Robotics Invitational and Workshops, SCRIW, hosted by Los Pollos Locos and D5 Robotics. Once again I went down along with the Hitchhikers to compete. This year the event was hosted at Irmo High School, alma mater of NC State running back Mustafa Greene.

This year I came down earlier on Friday to help with setup and with the help of Greg and Brandon from AndyMark and a bunch of student we were able to get the field up and running.

Saturday morning came and all 24 teams showed up which meant that everyone would get to play in eliminations. Just like last year I volunteered as a ref, with our head ref being Palmetto ref Tina. We were able to find two other qualified ref and combined with striped shirts we were much more professional looking than last year. Overall the event ran pretty smoothly. We got behind during sync checks and we never really able to catch up. Because of that finals didn't get done til around 7. Afterwards I stayed to help tear down the field before heading back to E-town.

As for the Hitchhikers they had about 15 students including a number of new students. Despite switching out new drivers, expect for Sam, we finished 7th after qualifying and moved up to captain the number 5 alliance. We choose 587, The Hedgehogs, and 2640, Hotbotz and rolled all the way to becoming SCRIW champions. During one of the semifinal matches Sam really had the shooter dialed in and scored more balls than I think we have every scored in a match. In addition the Hitchhikers have never lost an event when we make elimination and have been on the winning alliance of every FRC event in South Carolina in 2012.

I would compare our robot Benji to Captain Krunch 11. Both were well designed but not necessarily optimal for the game. They both got off to fast starts at there respective first regionals before fading at the second regional and championships, but coming back to win there first off-season event. Obviously Krunch improved the following year build one of our two best robots ever, so we'll have to see how the Hitchhikers do.

Overall it was a great weekend and its hard to believe that I won't be at another FRC event for almost five months.

2012 FIRST Championship

I know that Champs ended almost a week ago but I've been studying for exams and haven't had time to post, so lets see what I can remember.

I had my last class Thursday morning so I didn't get into St. Louis til around 5 and by that point I had missed our first two matches. I let Andrew coach the rest of the day Thursday and we finished the day 0-4 with a couple of coop points. Friday didn't get much better but we did go 2-2 and had a couple of good partners. We lost our only match on Saturday and didn't get picked which rapped up a much improved season compared to last year, but I still feel like we left a lot on the table.

Moving on from 2059's Championship to mine. Overall I had a great time even with the team not performing well. I got to check out and take some pictures of a number of this year's best robot as well as talk to a number of FRC celebrities. I worked out that Krunch was also in our division so I got a chance to hang out with them a bunch, which was pretty cool.

I've got a couple of Thank yous and then I'll end this post and get back to studying:

Thanks to all of the students that took some time to tell me about their robot and design process, it was much appreciated and I got a number of good pictures.

Thanks to Andy Baker for taking time out his busy Championship to talk to me and give me a little advice as well!

Thanks to my former Krunch mentor Tom Filipek for coming over to check out 2059's robot. I know it seems weird for me to be thanking someone for looking at our robot, but when it's one of your old mentors who helped to teach you a lot of thing that you use as a mentor , its nice for them to come and see how your doing.

And finally to all the volunteers, FIRST wouldn't be the same without you.

Now that the season is over what am I going to for seven months?

How to fix the FIRST Championship

Next week is the 21st edition of the FIRST Championship and it will be the largest one yet. It will not only feature FLL and FTC teams but almost 400 FRC teams in four divisions. This is up from 352 last years and its starting to get to the point where it is too big and something need to be done. Over the past couple of weeks there have been numerous thread on Chief Delphi discussing ways to fix Championship and most revolve around moving it to a larger venue. I have my own idea which I will lay out below and it doesn't involve moving to a new venue and here it is:

Before I get to the FRC Championship I want to discuss the FTC Championship and FLL World Festival. There are around 2000 FTC teams throughout the world and 128 of them compete at Championship which is 6% of all FTC teams. Compare that to FRC's 17% participation at Championship and your average FTC team will make there Championship once every 15 years. That means that like FRC most FTC students will never make Championship in there time on their team. Lego Leagues' percentages are even worse because of the quantity of teams, something like over 5000. On top of that as long as FRC is in the same building both FTC and FLL is be overshadowed and won't be able to get much recognition.

To fix this and improve both FRC's championship as well as FTC and FLL's I would give them there own championship event earlier in the year. Reasoning behind it being earlier is that their seasons start in September and for FLL is done before the end of the year. FTC events stretch into the FRC season and normally end week after build season ends. I would compress the FTC season to have all State events end at the end of January and then have the Championship in the off-week between Week 0 and Week 1. As for location, because of the time of the year it has to be somewhere warm and I would say the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. Reasons for Orlando: Its warmish in February (High 73, Low 52 courtesy of Wikipedia) and Disney World and Universal are only a short drive away. The OCCC is one of the largest convention centers in the nation and could fit a FTC/FLL Championship more than double the size of the current one. The brand new FTC Championship and FLL World Festival would also give FRC teams that also have an FTC team as part of their program a chance for the same students to participate in both championships, something that isn't really possible now.

With FTC and FLL having there own event it opens up a lot of space in the America's Center for FRC pits. Now having 150 teams in a division is no better than having a 100 teams per division, so with this new found space FRC would expand from four divisions to eight. Archimedes, Curie, Galileo, and Newton would be join by new divisions tentatively named Kamen, Flowers, Lavery, and Baker. I think it would be possible to fit all nine field in the dome with Einstein at one end, three along each sideline, and two at the other end, each in one corner of that end. It might be a little cramped but it would be an awesome sight to see.

Each of the eight division would have between 70 and 75 teams meaning there would be around 560 teams at Championship. In the short term that means that Michigan and MAR can have a few extra championship spots, couple that with the new regionals and you have around 125 extra open registration spots at Championship. I could delve more into open registration and how spots should be divided up but I'll save that for another blog post either this week or after Champs. As for scheduling, it would stay basically the same except that qualification matches would stop around 10:30 on Saturday so alliance can be done around 11:00 and Elimination matches can start at 12:00 giving an extra hour for the extra matches on Einstein.

Hopefully I've been able to illustrate my idea pretty well and I'll be back later with a post about the District system.

Palmetto Regional

This week The Hitchhikers, team 2059, competed at the Palmetto Regional. This is our first year doing two regionals and our first regional outside of North Carolina.

I didn't get to the event until Thursday afternoon because I had class and when I got there we were going out for our 2nd practice match of the day. I would have liked to have done more, but I guess we can save that for NC. We didn't get inspected til late on Thursday and our bridge arm wasn't fully finished but looking at our match schedule I felt good about Friday.

Friday started as Thursday ended, with us working on our bridge arm. We lost each of our first two matches, one of which was totally our fault. The other alliance didn't score any balls and we gave them enough points to win because we drew a technically foul when we contacted the opponents bridge. I wasn't to happy about it but the afternoon made up for it. We won our third match and then lost our fourth to go into lunch 1-3. Everything changed after lunch when we rattled off 4 wins in a row including our first double balance. We finished the day 15th even though we didn't get a single coopertition point which I was a little frustrated with because our alliance attempted in 5 of the 8 matches. Overall it was a great day, we got the bridge arm working, and a bunch of students were complaining that nothing needed to be done on the robot (not a bad thing).

Friday night we had a great scouting meeting with our scouters, who did a fantastic job throughout the event. It was just like a Krunch meeting and I felt really good with the list we were able to come up with.

Saturday we had three more matches and in each of them we were able to get coop points, the last two with us balancing. Unfortunately we went 1-2 and finished 15th. We were selected by the 2nd seeded alliance 2640, The Hotbotz from Reidsville, NC, after they picked 1319 who declined. With out 2nd pick we choose  281, EnTech Greenvillains from Greenville, SC.

Our first match we worked pretty well and were able to win 34 to 19. Throughout eliminations our hybrid was off and I think we only got 1 or 2 in during the 8 matches. Regardless we balanced in 7 of the 8 matches and that was instrumental in our winning. QF 3-2 was our first lose and the only problem we had during elims, the pwn for the bottom roller came out so we couldn't pick up for about half of the match. Also during this match 281 was dead because they switched there computer it wasn't working. The third match is when things started going crazy. The ball score was 6 to 5 and then both alliances balanced two robots which made the final score 26 to 25 for us. It was really nerve racking winning a deciding match by one point and I know I gave at least one webcast viewer another heart attack. The match wasn't even the craziest part. 281's shooter broke during the match and they were unsure if they could fix it. We had to call our timeout and when they couldn't fix it we had to call in a backup robot, 2815, Los Pollos Locos from Columbia, SC. During quarterfinals I was pretty calm but everything that happened between quarters and semis just blew that away. I definitely think all of that had an effect on SF 2-1 which we lost by 7. It also didn't help that 2815's radio was unplugged for most of the match. We rallied back to win the next two semis with identical 40 point scores. In finals we were up against that 8th seeded alliance and during the two matches 2815 came up huge. Their ability to quickly score twos while us and 2640 balanced helped to push to a seven point 48-41 win in finals 1. Finals 2 us as well as 2815 scored and then we balanced with 2640. As we were balancing the red alliance was also attempting a balance and just after we got our they flipped a robot and it was over. We started celebrating with 30 seconds left in the match and continued after the buzzer.

It was such an awesome site seeing us win a regional I can't even describe it. I was barely able to keep it together in the aftermath of the finals and winning is so awesome. For the rest of the members and well as the students I don't even want to think about it. For most of them this was there first event and it was also the first time 2059 had made eliminations so the rush for them must have been amazing.

I know this post is getting long but I just have a couple of notes as well as some thank yous left.

In addition to Regional Winner we also won the Spirit Award for our Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy theme as well our full adoption of our new primary color, orange. As they were reading the award once we figured out it was us I looked at our lead mentor and was like "seriously". I knew we were orange and spirited but it wasn't even something I thought we would be in the running for.

As for my coaching, with our 12-7 record I moved to 30-17-1 in four events with two wins and two missed elims. I guess when I coach its all or nothing and this time we got all of it.

A big thanks to 2640 for picking us. There we some many good robots in the field I was stunned when they called with the 2nd pick. Your auto was consistent and deadly and never had any problems on the bridge.

281, its too bad you guys couldn't make it all the way through but you were good while you were with us. I hope you guys get everything worked out for North Carolina in two week and congrats on the well deserved Chairman's.

2815, man were we lucky you guys were the top backup bot. Your two point scoring kept us in matches and was instrumental to our victory. I'm glad you guys get to go to St. Louis and that you became the first team to win back-to-back Palmetto regionals.

And finally to all of the students, you guys built a great robot and kept it working throughout the event was crucial.

Both of our other mentor came up to me after and thanked me for everything I've done for the team and that made me feel really amazing.

See everyone in two weeks at NC and then in St. Louis!!

Day 45: Introducing Benjy

Even though the team is working tomorrow my blog says day 45 so now its time for everyone to meet Benjy, Team 2059's 2012 robot:

  

Not to bad for breaking in 15 new student this year.

 

Specs:
Drivetrain:
6 wheel westcoast drive(which is a first for me as well as the team) using 6" Performance wheels as well as a custom gearbox. The white things on the front are Delrin skids(subsystem 6) which were added when we had to change from 8" wheels to 6" ones. The bearing blocks were made of ABS but they all broke over the weekend as I mentioned earlier and will have to be replaced.

Collection System:
Bottom roller is powered by a 550 in a 26:1 gearbox and the rest of the rollers are powered by a 550 in a 64:1 gearbox. Krunch students(old and new) will notice that the rollers are basically shorter versions of the rollers on Krunch 12. We did them a little differently but the overall concept is the same.
Shooter:
Two 6"diameter cardboard(yes cardboard, we got it from a McMaster shipping tube) rollers are bolted to 6" KOP wheels which are driven by 2 Fisher Price motors attached to CIMple boxes. The creative part of it is that the bottom FP drives the top roller and vice-versa. This was done to increase the speed closer to the level we had on the prototype.

Bridge Manipulator:
It is still a work in progress but you can kinda see it in the first photo. It should work once we get it all together but that may not be until we get to Palmetto.

Overall I think the team performed very well this season. We could have worked a little faster and been done a little sooner but you can only do what you can.  See everyone at Palmetto and North Carolina.

Day 43: BBQ and Bots

Today we worked for 12 hours and made a lot of progress. We got the final pieces of the frame finished which allow us to mount the bumpers. The wood was cut and one of out parents sewed the number on to the bumpers so the team should be able to put them together tomorrow. We also got subsystem 6 fabricated and mounted on the robot, more on that later.

The software team started working with the camera tracking on the actually shooter and had some success, but it wasn't working as well as we would like. There is a couple things they need to change in the software that should make it work better and hopefully they'll be able to do that tomorrow.

This year we're using pneumatics, which we didn't last year and I haven't since '08, but over course everyone still turns to me as an expert. After a 10 minute refresher I taught a couple of the freshman about the pneumatics and got everything mounted on the robot minus the cylinders and the solenoid. We're still missing a couple of pieces but we're going to borrow them from another local team and then order some and give the new ones back to the other team.

After dinner, which by the way was some great North Carolina BBQ, we got done to actually testing the robot. With subsystem 6 we attempted to drive over the barrier and we ran into a couple of problems. The two big ones are we can't get over the barrier and we cracked all of our ABS bearing blocks. We were planning on getting aluminum ones made and now we don't have a choice.

The team is meeting for 9 hours tomorrow but I have to study so I won't we back till Monday.

Day 42: Driving?

I started out today with an interview at Altec. I think it went well but the best part was the tour of the facility. They had all sorts of cool machining equipment from laser cutters to cnc breaks to a huge powder coating oven it was amazing. After I got back I was pretty tired but I toughed it out and went to the meeting tonight.

The robot is basically ready to go and tonight the team mainly finished wiring and installing the bumper mounts. There isn't much else to report except that we'll be working all day the next two day to get enough practice in before we bag. I left a little early so hopefully the code got done and the robot got driving and if it didn't it will tomorrow morning.

Day 41: Electronics

Last night the team got the shooter mounted to the robot and decided that a feeder wasn't necessary. I won't go into details but after they explained to me I don't believe that it will work but I'm willing to let then try.

Tonight the electronics team worked on get the electronics mounted and wired on the robot. The mechanical team worked on bumper mounts as well the motor for the lazy Susan.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like the robot will be ready be Saturday so we won't be able to attend the scrimmage. I know I mentioned this earlier but it was official tonight. It kind of pisses me off because we were in this situation last year and we won't have any time to practice, but you work with what you got.

Day 39: Cupcakes

Tonight a couple of parents brought some cupcakes and most of them were eaten by the mentors.

Other than that the new gearbox plates came in and we finally got the drivetrain done. The electronics board got wired and we should be able to mount it tomorrow and get it wired in. The shooter is coming along decently but we continue to run into a lot of problems. We put the chain on, I'm actually pretty good with #35 master links, and it actually worked nicely when we tested it. One of the problems was the duct tape so the student took it off, which I wasn't to broken up about.

We're almost there but I'm not sure we'll be ready for the scrimmage on Saturday which I'm kinda upset about since I pushed to have it.

Day 38: Duct Tape and AMPs

I got to the meeting a little late tonight to see that the team was struggling changing out the FP motors in the AndyMark planetary for the 0673s we got over the weekend. Basically they had just found a random FP pinion and press it on only to find that when they ran the motor it stalled and almost burned out. I of course knew what the right pinion looked like and everyone else was shocked to learn that it was the one that didn't fit through the hole in the mounting plate. I explained that that is how the AMP is designed and one of the other mentors complained and tried to find a way around it. Just when I was on the verge of screaming at him I told everyone to go away and that I would handle it. Not surprisingly the job only took like 15 minutes for two motor when it was done right.

The students got the polycord onto the collection system and we were able to get a ball to go all the way to the top. They also began to work on the bumper mounts and hopefully we'll have at least one set done by ship stop build day.

Finally, tonight the shooter team made some good progress. They changed out the smaller PVC rollers for larger cardboard ones similar to the ones we used on the prototype. They also are doing some strange things with the power transmission to make them spin faster. It is actually a good idea but I still kinda think they are crazy. Back to the rollers, you'll never guess how they are attaching the cardboard to wheels spinning at around 1000 RPM, duct tape. Now when I was on Krunch we never used duct tape on the robot because it looks terrible. These students seem to disagree with me on that but as it is there robot I guess I'll let it slide even if I'm linked to an ugly looking robot.

That's about it for tonight, hopefully we'll get the electronics on tomorrow night.

Day 37: Speculation

The team meet for four hours today but I wasn't there because I had to study so I will do some speculation of what went down today. Hopefully all of the chains are on the drivetrain, the shooter was finished being assembled, and the collection system is all together. I guess I won't really know until tomorrow, but we're running out of time none-the-less.

Day 36: All Day

Today the meeting began at 9 am and as I am writing this is still going on for at least another half an hour. When I arrived I found that the collector was mostly done and that the Banebots motors were mounted to the gearboxes. Unfortunately they mounted 540s to the gearboxes, which are illegal this year, rather than 550s. When I told the students this they seemed shocked and admitted that they hadn't read the rules this year.

Quick tangent: It's week 5 and you haven't read the @#$&ing rules, I mean if it wasn't for me having reading the rules we would probably have tons of violations on our robot. It really aggravates me beyond belief because they manual was only like 7 pages and it would have saved a bunch of time today.

Tangent over, they replaced the motors and got to work on the shooter. Most of the shooter got done today but it won't be ready to mount til tomorrow because some paint has to dry overnight. The drivetrain is about 80% complete and we're getting the 2 correct gearbox plates on Monday or Tuesday so we'll be driving by then at the latest. The cad team worked on subsystem 5 as well as some changes to the drivetrain.

Finally we were able to get two 0673 Fisher Price motor from another local team, which by the way I have the part number memorized because I read the manual! I got a nice bruise on my hand when I had to help a student remove a hub from a shaft and a cut on my other hand while putting a gearbox together.

Short meeting tomorrow, but I have to study so I won't be there.

Big thanks to FIRST team 3459, Pyrotech, for the two FP motors.

Day 35: Late Night

Tonight I had Hillel so I didn't go to the meeting but I do know what happened.

The parents had a meeting to discuss the restriction that have been placed on us by our host, but since the robot will should be done by next Friday so it won't be that big of a deal. Other than that the team faced a couple of problems with the robot but I think they can be easily worked around. I'm kinda glad that I had something tonight because the team planned to work to 11 tonight and then work 12 hours tomorrow so its going to be a long weekend.

Day 34: Back to Work

Today I returned to the meeting after two days of studying. The final drivetrain parts came and all of the wheels have been treaded. It wasn't the best treading job I've ever seen, a number of former Krunch students are better, but I would give them a B.

In other news the collection system is mounted and the final parts were being fabricated. The shooter is coming along well and could be ready, minus one piece, this weekend. Other than that the electronics were laid out but won't be mounted until the rest of the robot is done because the electrical components and metal shavings aren't good friends.

I helped the business team finish up 5-year business plan. Hopefully they'll get Chairman's done cause it's due next week. For some reason 2059 has an aversion to getting thing done early so we can spend time refining them. It happened last year and it happening again this year because as of tonight we have 3 or 4 paragraphs of the Chairman's essay done while many teams already have the essay written and refined.

Another thing that 2059 has trouble with is using tool the right way. When I got to the meeting tonight the students were thinking of cutting key stock with a cut-off wheel. Luckily they came to there senses and used a hacksaw. Tonight we broke two taps, a drill bit, and a hacksaw blade. Rich, our lead mentor, is pretty chill and wasn't too upset but I would like to see Coach react to a hand full of broken parts in one night.

That's about it for tonight, It should be a busy weekend.

Day 32/33: Break

Tonight the whole robot broke!!!

Just kidding, I'm taking a short break from robotics so I actually don't know what happened tonight. Two reasons for my break ,1, I have a test on Thursday and 2, It's a stressful time in the season and everyone needs a break.

I'll be back with a more meaningful update when I return to meetings on Thursday.

Day 31: Its that time of the Season

Another weekday, another new student.

Tonight the team continued to work on retrofitting the gearboxes and working on the collection system. The girls worked on button designs and had a contest to see which one more people liked. We're running into some problem with getting the roller hubs finished cause for some reason we only told the shop to do them half way knowing full well it would be a PITA to finish them.

As for me I'm not feeling that great today and might take tomorrow off.