The marketing team came up with a long term plan for things they want to accomplish. They also made a brochure that the team can give to students interested in joining the team.

The software converted the turn method in BoxyHardwareMap to four-wheel drive,started work on the autonomous state machine, and determined how we would align ourselves with DogeCV and NavX. They also discussed how we would utilize DogeCV and thought about its position on the bot.

The build team started to put robot designs into CAD, made an idle dropper, worked on the chassis and lift, finish the chassis on the CAD design.

Today the hardware team worked on the re-design and maintenance of the software bot, Box-A. The software team worked on creating a diagram that will be the basis of the code organization this year.

Hardware team came to the conclusion that our robot should have four-wheel drive, and began to implement this on Box-A. New parts arrived in the mail today, so we are now able to work more with the 10mm maker beam. More arts are in the mail, including parts that allow us to use 15mm maker beam and our wheels. We had to start disassembling BoxA due to a piece inside not being attached properly.

The software team fixed almost everyone’s compiler issues today! Hooray! We also created a class diagram, and looked at DogeCV and NavX.

We had an awesome meeting today. It was the school’s SAT day, so we had to meet at one of our team member’s houses. Hardware team got some great work done, while Software was having compiler issues.

Hardware did work on completing our new  software test robot, BoxA. Also, we did some work on completing our new competition chassis. Also, we started creating a new collector prototype, Collector Three.

Software had some issues today. We were trying to implement our old encoder drive code from last year for autonomous, but everyone except our coach was having compiler problems.

Today hardware decided on a final design for our collector and mineral dispenser. Soft ware made gold mineral alignment test for autonomous.

The hardware team finished designing the lift and ball collector, and started working on the third prototype for the ball collector. After that we worked on the final chassis and worked on the measurements for the lift and the ball dumping method, next time we will continue to work on the chassis and continue with the third prototype for the collector.

On software Kian and Isaac worked together to make the Gold Alignment Test. Sadly, Isaac had to leave early, so we were one man down. Also, Robert and Andrew’s Android Studio broke, so that sucked.

Our team was invited by Northrop Grumman, one of our sponsors, to the company picnic. We set up some field tiles for kids to drive our robot. We also had a table where we did our signature event Build-A-Bot, where kids can play with our robot parts.

We originally had some worries about kids driving our robot into the wet grass, but everyone was surprisingly good at driving the robot!

One of our team members built a dog as an example with our robot parts, and all of the little kids wanted to copy it. Someone made a motorcycle and we had plenty of caterpillars and hamsters.

Near the end, we presented Northrop Grumman with a special plaque thanking them for being our sponsor.

We were also there with FRC teams 4472 and 5338, and FTC team 8297. We had lots of fun playing with little kids and participating in festival games!

We had a great meeting today, I’ve helped with the design of our mascots basic wing mechanics, and today the software team seemed to be successful

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Today the software team accomplished quite a bit. Today we figured out the problem with the program named “DogeCV”. Isaac made the NavX code more functionable, more efficient, and more compact. He is currently working on the solution for the program “DogeCV”. Robert fixed his android studio once again. We began thinking of a way to effectively align ourselves. Kian tested all the different sources of codes today.

Build team made a lot of progress today such as finishing on our chassis design and deciding to use a box chassis model that was 3 3/4 tall that has tractor wheels and a 4 wheel tank drive that has sprockets so the chain is moving at a 90 degree angle. We also finished working on the second prototype of the spinning collector, and are preparing for the third and hopefully final design for the collector. We worked on the next boxy and finally we decided on a design to put the spinning collector on the robot with the lift, so it will be able to extend and collect minerals from far away, and then put them in the lander.

Software: Isaac made the NavX sensor opmode more efficient; less complicated, responds faster, and reformatted. Also, the team finished the flow charts for the autonomous mode, and began on code.

Hardware: Fixed the testing robot, Boxy. Also, built a new chassis for the robot, made progress on spinning mechanism for collecting, and worked on two alternate designs for a lifting mechanism: a “forklift” like design, which most likely will not be able to work, as the individual pieces did not interact as expected, and a design that works like an elbow, which may work, if the motors moved more slowly.

Yesterday was Back to School Night for parents, where parents come to our school and meet their kids’ teachers. Before the parents went off to their children’s’ classrooms, they walked through the main hall and viewed different clubs and sports at South Lakes. We set up  a booth so that parents could learn about the parent interest meeting this Saturday at 1 pm. We also shared the meeting times and website information, and collected a list of emails of interested students. We had NextGen at the table and we were showing people the 3D printed parts. We had a number of people sign up.

Events like these allow us to reach students and parents at our school and recruit new members. We had many conversations with parents, increasing interest in the FTC club at our school.

In today’s meeting, software progressed more into the autonomous by working on a flowchart, while also working on finishing DogeCV. Hardware worked on repairing one of the robots, while also prototyping new solutions for this year’s challenges.

Today Robert worked on the autonomous flow chart, discussing the many possible options for orientation. The software team also made the intake mechanism work. Isaac finished up DogeCV.

Isaac taught the new people how the NavX worked. Andrew added the lift and the collection mechanism to the hardware map. He also began coding the lift mechanism.
Robert and Kian worked on the autonomous
Jay worked on the autonomous flow diagram

Hardware worked on making a lifting mechanism and making smaller versions of a collection mechanism.

Today, marketing finished the flyers for tomorrow’s outreach event, Back to School Night. We also contacted Flint Hill about the scrimmage, an event we participated in last year.