Time to Program the world

Hello to all!

To begin with, the King 5 interview this morning was cancelled, if any one watched the news this morning, the airwaves were not graced with the elegance of black and white. The lives of many were saddened this morning however, with the news that rightfully took our place, the death of the State Patrol Trooper. The hearts of everyone on the team go out to him. I will never understand those who kill people who devote their lives to the public. I do understand robots though, and that is what you are here for. Hopefully.

Tonight was 6-8, in light of most members of the team getting even less than no sleep.  We turned the robot entirely over to the programmers tonight, and one might say the ball is in their court. I personally worked on the Operator Interface, aka where the drivers drive the robot. I have said it 1000 times before, but I say again, this year’s OI will look great. A lot like the robot. Hopefully it will work too. But like they say, one can’t have his cake and eat it too. Just joking just joking. Button production has also started in earnest, with the marketing team pumping out buttons so furiously I was soon wading in particularly colorful discs as I wrote my notes.

On another note, I am going to start a new segment called “words from the not so wise”, or “a blind man helping pick out glasses” or something like that, but it will be a new piece of advice for rookie teams in the area. We really want you guys to stick around, and would love to help in any way. So the way I think this could work is if you are on a FRC team out there, or are an alumni, or are anybody at all, you could sent a piece of advice as a comment and I will pick one to post every other night. Also include your team name and number. So please, your comments would be great!!

That is it! I hope everyone is getting pumped for regional season, and I also hope you..

Stay Smelly!!

Liam Burke

School at 5:30? What?

Hey all!!

Tonight was a 6 to whenever-we-finish kind of night. The game robot is all packed up and ready to go, but we have to get the stunt double up and running tonight. We are driving down to Portland two weeks from tonight, and there is driving practice and programming to be done. I spent a lot of my time calibrating the Victor motor controllers, which is a lot trickier than it sounds. Some of the PWM cables were not connected correctly, and by the end the programmers were basically pulling their hair out. We did it though, which is good. Why all the rush you might ask? Well we actually have King 5 morning news coming in tomorrow to give the residents of king county a rather smelly good morning. We are all especially excited, and the hustle and bustle around the school tonight was +100%. In light of getting some sleep before the 4:30 wake up call tomorrow, this blog is going to be a little short. A perhaps unseen factor in this whole robotics thing is that the entire team, most of us arriving at school sometime before 9:00, and not leaving until after 9:00, tasked with homework from a very STEM school, have  been getting very few hours of sleep lately. I realized though, last weekend, that even though it is a little hard at times, there is nothing I would rather spend my time doing. That speaks strongly, I believe, for the organization of FIRST. Anyways, I will be doing to blog tomorrow as well, so you will hear all about the experience of being on TV. Until then, good night! I hope you get more sleep than me, and I also hope that you…

Stay Smelly!

Liam Burke

PS:

Hi, today was not my day to post but here are a few pictures Aiden took while we worked. Enjoy!

-Camila

Finishing up the practice robot

We were wondering why the radio wasn't working and realized this robot was missing a special cable...

The two and only tonight, our programmers

In the gym with our 2nd robot almost ready to go!