Day 5: Cad and Camera

Its hard to believe that its only been five days and as far as I know we're not behind, yet. Tonight we got started on the cad and finally got the camera to work again. The team is really starting to come together from a people perspective and that makes me very happy since we have students from 5 different schools.

On a different subject we're working a lot more than we did last year and while the students are young I'm starting to feel a little burned. Luckily its early in the season so there's still plenty of time to pull back a little and still help out.

Its getting late and I'm watching some NBA, see y'all tomorrow. 

Day 4: Budgeting the Bot

I didn't do much robot work tonight because I was working with the other mentors on our budget. Think its a little late in the game to be doing this, join the crowd, but its got to be down. A couple of tough decisions were made, but it looks like with a little of help we'll be able to attend two regional, even if we can't shift.

Finally tomorrow we are really going to get down and cad the robot. 2059 is a student led team so I try really hard to stay hands off with the cad and that will be the name of the game this year until at least Saturday. After that we'll see what happens cause I would like to have the design down by Monday.

As for the students, the software team began work on the camera tracking and the rest of the students worked on getting the kitbot assembled so that we'll have something to prototype with.

Day 3: FIRST Choice

The most important things that happen today had nothing to do with the design of the robot, for now. First of all we ordered our new CRIOs and unlike teams that ordered theirs when they came out a couple of months ago, ours will ship on Wednesday and should be here sometime next week. The second thing was alluded to in the title of the post, we used our FIRST choice credits! The ordering page was a little aggravating, but in the end we used all 100 of our credits and should have a good assortment of parts arriving from AndyMark.

As for the robot the students spent the meeting discussing ideas and seemed to move in a circle. It might be a waste of time to continue to go in a circle for the robot design but with the first update coming out tomorrow, I didn't want to start major cading before the update.

Not much else to report except that the Athens Drive students took Marvin to their open house. From their report everyone was impressed, including the principles, and we picked up three more students to move the total to 21.

Day 2: Taking stock of the situation

For some reason a number of my students didn't think we would meet today because during the rest of the season we don't meet on Sundays. To avoid falling behind I pushed to have a meeting and so we met for 4 hours today and after that we still have 0% of the cad done. The biggest thing that I noticed is that all 7 of the students that attended today's meeting, less than 50% of the team, hadn't read the rules and didn't seem to broken up by it.

Despite that we continued to work through the how of the robot, making some changes to the drivetrain, finalizing the collector, and figuring out what motors to use. Of course I can't really say what we're doing cause its a secret.

We spent the last hour of the meeting discuss the feasibility of building two robots and if a couple of things fall into place then it will happen. Don't expect to hear more about it for a couple of weeks.

Day 1: Aim High 2.0

I was up pretty early this morning, you know that whole nervous energy thing, and I got to Dorton around 9 the rest of the arrived by 10 and we sat down to watch kickoff with most of North Carolina. As soon as Bill showed the poof ball I was so happy. My first impression of the game is that it should be pretty interesting.but we'll see how it goes.

During lunch I attended the first NC Team Council meeting. It was relatively interesting and should be a big help to teams in the near future. After that I began to review the rules with some of the members of team 3459, Pryotech, to get ready for the human game. Basically we just played the game with human similar to each year at TNT, just a little more structured cause we're trying to learn about the game. I learned a good bit of strategy including that scoring isn't as easy as it looks and there aren't many penalties.

Hitchhikers ended up leaving a little early to meet and discuss our game strategy. I won't go into details but we were able to finalize a relatively simple strategy and discuss most of the robot design.

Tomorrow we're meeting in the afternoon and should a have a smaller group because most of the students have homework, who knew? Hopefully we can get the drive train caded so we can order the parts asap.

Day 0: T'was the day before Kickoff

Well its that time of the year again, robotics season. This season I was be blogging each day during the season recapping what my team, 2059 The Hitchhikers, did at our meeting without giving to much away.

Now on to what I did today: A lot of driving, I left my house at 8 and drove 12 hours to get back to NC State so I would be here for kickoff tomorrow. Tomorrow 2059 will join most of the other teams in North Carolina for kickoff at the home of the NC Regional, Dorton Arena. Not only do we get to watch the game but there will be a full sized field there for us to look at after the broadcast.

I'll have more to say tomorrow but now I think I'm going to get some sleep before the start of the season.

College Football Playoff Quarterfinals

Yesterday I picked winners for the 1st round of my college football playoff. Today I will pick the winners in the quarterfinal games.

December 30 Quarterfinal games:

• West #4 Oregon vs. West #1 Alabama, at the Rose Bowl
• West #3 Boise State vs. West #2 Oklahoma State, at the Fiesta Bowl

Alabama vs. Oregon:
Tough choice, two great teams and Alabama does have to travel cross-country to the Rose Bowl. Oregon has speed, but Alabama has speed and power. Alabama is very similar to LSU who beat Oregon at the beginning of the season. The key is can Bama's offense put up enough points to compete with the high powered Ducks.

Alabama 31 Oregon 30

Oklahoma State vs. Boise State:
Five years later Boise State returns to the scene of one of the greatest games in college football history and they get to play none other than Oklahoma's instate rival, Oklahoma State. This is Boise's chance to prove that they can hang with the big boys. This game should be an offensive shootout with Boise unable to match-up with Justin Blackmon and Oklahoma State unable to control Kellen Moore.

Boise State 42 Oklahoma State 38

December 31 Quarterfinal games:

• East #5 Wisconsin vs. East #1 LSU, at the Outback Bowl
• East #3 Arkansas vs. East #2 Stanford, at the Capital One Bowl

LSU vs. Wisconsin:
Undefeated LSU faces Big Ten champ Wisconsin in a game with two grind it out teams. Both teams seem to find a way to score 30-40 points in every game. LSU has the better defense and couple that with an offense that improved as the season went along could mean a long game for Wisconsin. Two Heisman trophy finalist will add intrigue to this second round game.

LSU 37 Wisconsin 21

Stanford vs. Arkansas:
The final quarterfinal game features the best quarterback in the country against a dynamic offense lead by Tyler Wilson. A long trip for Stanford should help to balance out the game. Ultimately the balanced attack of Stanford takes advantage of a weak Arkansas defense and helps the Cardinal advance to the Semifinals.

Stanford 34 Arkansas 28

The semifinal games feature two SEC teams, three of the top four teams and Boise State with a chance to show everyone they belong.
January 6 Semifinal games:

• West #5 Boise State vs. West #1 Alabama, at the Fiesta Bowl
• East #1 LSU vs. East #2 Stanford, at the Orange Bowl