Meetings

The meetings, from Kickoff to State

Saturday, September 8:
This was the FIRST Tech Challenge Kickoff event. At 10:00 AM, FIRST released a video revealing the challenge and a basic overview of the rules. They also released the official game manual, with the full rules. Our team met at SUU with a few other teams from Southern Utah, watched the reveal video, discussed the game and ideas for the robot, and looked at the field for this year's competition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR4gR4l2XA8
(same as the video in Project Details)
(about 3 hours)

Thursday, September 13:
We talked more about potential ideas for how to complete the challenge and started prototyping the robot. We are mostly working on how to collect the "minerals" that we use to score.
(about 2 hours)

Tuesday, September 18:
We discussed new ideas, compared prototypes, and tried to get an idea of what the final robot will be.
(about 2 hours)

Thursday, September 20:
We continued going over prototypes, because we had new ones and had improved the old ones. We also got the majority of the drive train built.
(about 2 hours)

Tuesday, September 25:
We discussed how to complete the drive train. We also went over better and more functional prototypes that team members had made.
(about 1 hour)

Thursday, September 27:
Still working on prototypes.
(about 2 hours)

Saturday, September 29:
We finished assembling the drive train so that we can start testing programming and practicing driving. We also discussed changes that need to be made for the final competition drive train.
(about 2 hours)

Tuesday, October 2:
Driving practice/testing chassis.
(about 1 hour)

Thursday, October 4:
Adjustments to chassis, discussing changes to the rules, discussing more potential robot designs.
(about 2 hours)

Tuesday, October 9:
We worked on a functional prototype of a collector/sorter for the scoring elements.
(about 1 hour)

Thursday, October 11:
We got new parts cut for the drive train, and swapped the old ones out for the new ones. The new ones are more precise and will provide more stability and reliability. We also tested to make sure it could still drive.
(about 2 hours)

Tuesday, October 23:
We started turning the prototype collector/sorter into a better one for the actual robot. It probably won't be final, but it will give us an idea of how well it works and what we need to change, as well as give us something to start programming.
(about 2 hours)

Thursday, October 25:
We continued working on the collector/sorter, and made a good amount of progress on it.
(about 2 hours)

Saturday, October 27:
The first southern Utah build day, where all of the FTC teams in southern Utah are invited to come and work on their robots for a few hours. There will be help for the teams if they need it. There are also events to go to that discuss how to be a more successful team. There are a few of these build days every FTC season. We weren't getting much done at the build day, and we decided we could get more done where we normally work. We finished our first version of the collector/sorter. It's rushed, and definitely not final, but it will allow us to test the concept, work out issues with it, and start programming for it.
(about 3 hours)

Tuesday, October 30:
We made the collector/sorter slightly better, and started working on the linear slide to extend and retract it. We also have a prototype lift that our robot can use to hang. We spent a lot of time discussing how these different parts of the robot will work together.
(about 1 hour)

Thursday, November 1:
We finished the lift for hanging, and got most of the linear slide worked out. We also did a little bit more on the collector/sorter.
(about 2 hours)

Tuesday, November 6:
We began working on our main scoring mechanism, which will be attached to the hanging lift. We also worked out how we are going to get the collector back into the robot, and edited the CAD files for the side panels so that we have more surface to mount things to.
(about 1 hour)

Thursday, November 8:
We got new side panels cut for the robot to give us more to attach to, now that we have a better idea of what the final design will look like. For the rest of the meeting we just continued working on what we've been working on.
(about 1 hour)

Tuesday, November 13:
We got the vertical lift attached to the robot, and put in the ratchet system that will keep the lift from letting the robot fall when we don't want it to.
(about 1 hour)

Thursday, November 15:
We continued working on the lift. We figured out the lengths of the strings we will need to operate the lift, and figured out the correct size of the spool to work with these measurements. We also put in the motor that will operate the lift, and we made a mechanism for dropping our team's marker in the corner goal.
(about 2 hours)

Tuesday, November 27:
We finished up the lift, wiring the electronics, and mounting the phone to get the robot ready for the West High qualifier on Saturday.
(about 1 hour)

Friday, November 30:
We drove to Salt Lake City for the qualifier at West High School the next day.
(about 8 hours, from the start of the drive until we went to bed)

Saturday, December 1:
This was the first qualifier event in Utah. The team qualified for the State competition in Ogden. We got to compete in 10 matches, and we won 7 of them. We managed to hang the robot on the lander on 9 out of 10 matches, and our drive train held up very well. We also won the third place control award, which is for autonomous programming. From competing, we learned a lot about the robot. We need to change how we drop our team marker, because it's too random and often messes up our autonomous program.  We also decided that the collector doesn't need to be as complicated as we originally thought. We don't really need it to be a sorter. From what we saw other teams doing, a simple collector should work fine. Overall, we learned a lot, and it was easily one of our best competition performances.
(about 16 hours)

Sunday, December 2:
We packed up and drove home.
(about 5 hours)

Tuesday, December 11:
We took a week break after the competition. The first thing we did when we started meeting again was we discussed what needed to be changed on the robot. We talked about what worked and what didn't what could be made more efficient, and what broke. We also started figuring out what we want to do for our collector.
(about 2 hours)

Thursday, January 3:
We got new side panels made. Hopefully these will be the final ones. We disassembled and reassembled the robot to put the new side panels on, and continued working on the collector.
(about 2 hours)

Thursday, January 10:
Due to school, I will not be able to attend meetings as often. On Tuesday, the team finished the collector, and today, they started putting it into the robot. It's mostly in, and the robot is just about ready for the qualifier at SUU, which we are attending for practice and to test the changes before the state competition.
(about 1 hour)

Thursday, January 17:
On Tuesday, the team finished putting the collector in, and today, we worked on how the collector would get the minerals into the correct part of the robot. We also spend a lot of time working out the programming and testing programs.
(about 1 hour)

Friday, January 18:
We finished up the collector and the scoring mechanism to get the robot ready for the competition in the morning, and we checked in at SUU. We also worked a bit more on testing and fixing programs, and we put the finishing touches on the robot, such as our team number.
(about 4 hours)

Saturday, January 19:
Utah FTC Qualifier at SUU. The competition went fairly well. We didn't perform all that well, but we are already qualified, so it doesn't really matter. We got to test out the new additions to the robot in actual competition, and we got some good driver practice. We got to see what works and what needs to be changed, and we have a good idea of where to go from here. We also won the control award, which is for programming.
(about 9 hours)

Thursday, January 24:
On Tuesday, the team started working on fixing the robot, and on Thursday, they finished it. There's not much left to make, so hopefully the rest of the season will just be fixing, improving, and practicing. They hope to practice driving next week in preparation for the Dixie State qualifier.
(about 1 hour)

Saturday, February 2nd:
The Dixie State qualifier was today. I've been sick, so I haven't really been able to help out with the robot for the last week, and I wasn't able to make it to the competition. The team did manage to get everything ready in time, and got a decent amount of driving practice. The team did fairly well at the competition. Most problems came from lack of practice and autonomous programming that wasn't quite perfect, which we expected. The results were very much like our State Competition performances in the past, which is encouraging. With three weeks to perfect everything, we should be in good shape for State, and may even have our best state performance yet.
(0 hours)

Tuesday, February 19:
The State competition is on Saturday, and this was our final meeting before the competition. I did not participate because of school and homework, but the meetings recently have been practice driving and perfecting the autonomous programming, and I can't really help with those anyway. I mostly help with the engineering aspects of the robot, and that's all done. I will be going to the competition on Saturday, and hopefully we do well.
(0 hours)

Friday, February 22:
Today we drove to Ogden for the State championship. When we got to Ogden, we made some last minute fixes to the robot in preparation for the competition.
(about 5 hours)

Saturday, February 23:
We had a fairly average competition performance this year. We were better prepared that we had been in previous years, but we still had to deal with the usual issues. Our team and many other teams had some problems that were completely out of our control and were caused by bad event management, like always. Still, we did the best we could with the situation, and we have definitely had worse competition performances.
(about 13 hours)

Total Hours: Roughly 103