Today was our second qualifier of the season, in St.Peter, MN. We stayed overnight in a hotel, and we starting the morning off bright and earlier, and ready to succeed. We had really high hopes for this tournament, due to the fact that the Eagan qualifier had went so well for us, and we have made many improvements since then, and taken a large amount of feedback from others.
We started the day off by practicing our judges interview a few times in the hotel room, and then we were off to St.Peter high school to start off our day. Right when we walked in we were super excited to be competing again, and now we knew the routine, so we headed to the pits and got set up, being sure that we set up our pit in a way that looks professional and welcoming. We set off to talk to a few teams, and just get ready for our day to start. Before we knew it it was time for robot inspection. It went pretty smoothly, although fitting into the sizing box was a close call. Eventually Velma passed inspection, due to the fact that we agreed to put duct-tape onto the sharp corners of our plexiglass. We headed back to the pit to fix this problem, and then we were good to go for the tournament. We headed up to our judges interview soon afterwards, and we were very well prepared and happy to talk to the judges about our team, our outreach, and our robot. We really wanted to get across our mission in outreach, which is to help spread FIRST in Minneapolis Public Schools. After our interview was over, headed back to the pits, and talked to some teams and others more and more, as we prepared for the qualifying robotics rounds to start. We tested out our autonomous program a couple of times, to confirm that it was working consistently, and by this time the drivers meeting was starting soon. We headed off to the drivers meeting, and became more and more excited for the day to start. So many other teams at the tournament had been so friendly towards us, and we were really excited for the day to start. Soon the drivers meeting was finished, and we had the qualifying schedule. We went and talked to a lot of the teams that we were alliance partners with, and found out what their robots were capable of so that we could work together well.
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Today we met to work out some more details involving the extending arm, the sweeper and the dispensing system for the climbers. We decided to only use one extending arm because we feel that it allows us to focus more on making the arm work better and with more consistency. We received some of the pulleys that we will be using on the extending arm, and we worked on attaching the rope and pulley to the arm in order to test out our system and also to allow us to secure the system. We also did decide how we wanted the arm to retract, which involves another motor.
Only Rachel and Izzie could meet today, but we finally figured out how to attach the sweeper. Our plan is to have the servo for the sweeper to turn the axle with the zipties attached. However, we don't have space to have the sweeper to be permanently attached with our bucket, so we came up with the idea of the sweeper being attached to ANOTHER servo. This way, we can pull it in to fit in the sizing box, and then we can have it out of the 18 inch box. While there were some challenges with that, by the end of the meeting the sweeper was able to move forward into a position where it could be used, and then backwards and up into a position in which it would not be in the way. It was quite a struggle to get this to line up in a correct way with the gears that the sweeper spins on.
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This blog covers details about our outreach events and other events that are important to our team, and our season.
AuthorHi, we are the Rubies, FTC team 9890. To learn more about us, visit the "About Us" page Archives
April 2016
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