Nailed down autos, practiced driving and climbing today! We added a coral deflector and sponsor panels to the robot. We worked a lot on figuring out our cycle times and rehearsing talking to judges and scouts. Things are looking good for our upcoming competition.
Feb 1, 2025
We have been extending our meetings due to losing a few from school closures. Our goal today is to have everything CADed so we can move forward with the build process. Team shirts have been ordered, thank you TeeSquared for your sponsorship!
Feb. 8, 2025
Thanks to the snow, only six students were able to make it today. Despite that, a lot got done. Our elevator is attached to the robot and the bumpers are able to be mounted. For our listening pleasure today, we listened to the music of John Williams to celebrate his birthday. If you don’t know who he is, he composed music for over 100 films; including Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and Harry Potter.
Feb. 15, 2025
Coral Manipulator done and mounted, Algae Manipulator 90% done, Climber mounted, 80% of wiring done and Cage Catcher done and mounted! Job well done for the students here today!
Feb. 27, 2025
I missed this past Saturday post because we were at Week Zero. We had a great day! Our bumper was complimented and several teams were impressed at our ability to hang from the cage!
March 1, 2025
Lots of stuff was done today! We are using Pathfinder to map out autonomous routes, and it is working really well. Algae is claw is reinstalled and the plexi coral intake will be mounted and ready for fine tuning.
On Saturday, September 28th our team competed in the Minnesota Robotics Invitational (MRI) in Roseville, MN. All members were given a chance to explore different roles in the drive team and alternate between each match.
Our main goal this year during the pre-season is to give all our team members experience and preparations for competitions in EVERY aspect of Robotics. We want all of our members to be capable of driving a robot, understanding how its coded, being a human player, scouting, answering questions, planning strategies and more. To do that, we are competing in 3 pre-season competitions before official seasons start.
We want to start the 2025 season strong with our best abilities. These competitions give us the opportunities to learn without the same stress and risk of larger competitions. We also get to introduce our new members to the FIRST environment!
Today ,June 13th, our team participated in Fridley’s 49er’s Day Parade!! We showed off our 2016 robot for a bit, handed out candy, we even got to answer questions and encourage other students to join robotics! We had a blast, enjoyed the weather and had our fair share of technical issues along with overcoming said issues.
Today we had 7 of our sponsors show up to our sponsor appreciation night! Sponsors graciously offered us a tour of the Nation Tool and Machinery facility and 3 people from Cummins, who took time out of their day, came to stop by. Our wonderful sponsors got to ask questions, talk to our mentors and students, and even play around with this seasons robot Princess Scene Queen! Thank you to everyone who came! <3
On May 7th, our team organized a staff appreciation night for Fridley teachers and staff members, due to it being teacher appreciation week. Individuals who attended were invited to come for refreshments, checking how our robot works, ask team members questions, take a look at our processes for an off-season robot, and even try their hand at driving this seasons robot. We had around twenty or more teachers, administrators, and school board members attend, and we are all so glad that they were able to make it! We love our staff members and appreciate everything they do for our school and community!
Throughout the night, we made sure to take pictures to show you just how much fun it was!
Today our drive team presented at the middle school assembly, to grades 5-8.
At this assembly we showed off our robots abilities, talked about what we do in robotics, invited 8th graders to inquire and potentially even join our team as they transition into high school. We hope to have left an impact on these younger students, here are some pictures to show how it went!
On April 16th, we presented to our School Board. Our slide show discussed FIRST: what it is, how it works, and core values. We also talked about what our team needs, wants, and is thankful for (a designated room and closet). Remi, ThuyVi, and Coral did a great job of preparing, answering questions, and keeping their composure when our video had no sound. This is our first step in what we hope will be the start of a successful outreach program with our school and our city.
Accomplishments Between Competitions
Our main focus between competitions were major improvements to code, the addition of cameras, improving our autonomous driving, creating a method for keeping game pieces from getting stuck, and improving our intake. We went through many designs for our note-blocker, which would prevent notes getting stuck near our battery during matches, but in the end determined that more refined driving strategies would work best at competition. Our intake was improved, however, by adding a polycarbonate sheet and some bolts to the top of it to prevent notes from being pulled in too far.
Competition day by day
Day 1
We had a few team members stay and set up the pits while everybody else brought their luggage to the hotel and settled in. Assembling the pit went well, and they later joined us at the hotel. Several other teams stayed at the same hotel as us, allowing us to make friends. This made the hotel stay and competition much more fun, since we danced, swam, and played games together.
Day 2
We played several practice matches and began scouting in order to get information about other teams and their robots. We also spent time connecting and building relationships with other teams. We had some issues with the robot’s controls behaving unpredictably in matches, but other than that our practice matches went smoothly.
Day 3
On day three we started to play qualification matches. We had some rough matches, but our drive team could improvise on the field for the best outcome. The robot took some damage on its intake, with the mechanism getting bent in addition to a motor breaking. In another match, the climber got caught on the stage in the center of the field and became severely damaged. Finally, we had a loss of electronic communication to the motor controllers, finding that some of the wires were pinched in the robot frame. However, thanks to our troubleshooting skills, (and a little help from another team), we were able to fix the pinched wire in time for our match.
Day 4
On the final day of the Granite City Regional, we played our last two qualification matches and got ready for awards and finals. While we didn’t rank in the top eight teams (which are the teams that get to pick alliances for finals) nor were selected for an alliance, we cheered on other teams and joined in on lots of spontaneous dancing.
Plan for the postseason (and summer)
In our remaining time, we plan to expand our fundraising efforts and better network with our sponsors. We have a few fundraisers planned for the postseason, including working closer with a few local businesses. To better support our goal of gaining more sustainable funding, we are also working on building a booster club. We plan on having build specific meetings during the summer to help us learn and improve skills.
