Fear Our
Bubbles
Old Team News
05-12-2010: Rebuild of the robot is almost complete. The new kicker and rewiring is near completion. The wench is mounted and all that is left is the hook arm and rebuild the drives.
03-25-2010: Here is a video of our almost double hang at Kettering District Event http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-kHzojAm7A
03-19,20-2010: Western Michigan District Event was great. We won the Excellence in Engineering Award and also made it to the play off round. The robot worked wonderful and the kids did a great job. Everybody was very interested in our drive design and asked many questions. If we can shave some weight off of it it would be worth doing again. We are waiting to see if we have made it to state, lets hope.
03-18-2010: We have an article in the Times
03-14-2010: We made the front page of the Fenton Press
03-09-10: Hey!! if we do well in Grand Rapids We get to go to state. Read this e-mail we recieved from David Verbrugge or GM representative:
Greetings Team 1322,
Congratulations on a great competition this
past weekend, a great looking robot and on winning the Delphi Excellence in
Engineering Award Saturday. I currently have the trophy you presented to me as
a representative of General Motors sitting on my desk between my Team 67 2009
Atlanta Championship medal and the 2010 Kettering Champion medal 67 won
Saturday. That is simply to say - I consider the trophy a very special item and
deserving a very special place.
I wanted to thank you for it and confirm
something I said to Kim and the young lady (forgive me for not now recalling
your name) who presented me the trophy Saturday night. If 1322, the G.R.A.Y.T.
Leviathons qualify for the State Championship, we - General Motors - will pay
for your registration fee. Keep up the good work and good luck at Grand Valley.
I hope to see you at Eastern in four weeks.
Cheers,
Dave
03-06-10: Second day at Kettering District Event. Another great day. The robot worked great, good thing, not much time between some matches to repair. Our ranking dropped but we were selected to go into the finals. Ryan did a great job driving, keeping Swartz creek at bay was a tough job. With two ties the other teams finally beat us but they were close ones.
It was great to win the Excellence in Engineering Award for our six wheel omni direction suspension. After two years of development it was a great pay off. Now onto the next design Idea that we will keep secret for now.
03-05-10: First day at Kettering District Event. It was a great day. The robot worked great and the kids did a great job driving. Finished first day in eighth place.
02-23-10: Ship week, we are bagged and tagged.
02-20-10: Week 6, WOW... the robot works great. Jumps over the bump with no problem and the winch works great. YouTube video going over the ramp and hanging from the rack
02-14-10: Week 5 for the robot build season. All is moving along fine. We tested our robot at the Enginerds facility on Saturday and found some items we need to modify to make the robot more effective. We are surprised that the robot does not climb the bump easy. With a run it will do it. Our winch works great and our ball kicker is doing its job well.
02-11-10: The local news paper featured an article on our team.
02-6-10: Robot and team after week four are doing great. Even with a lost day this week we are near where we want to be. Need to tweak the lift hook connection, connect the main breaker and it is ready for power. Our team is the most capable group we have had yet. All members are always busy machining and building on the robot. Other teams would be envious if they could see it.
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01-31-10: Robot after week three is progressing as planed. Almost all mechanical items are installed. We need to install the hook, grab bars for other robot and tweak tower pole guides. The kicker has given us trouble but has been resolved. The air is not exhausting fast enough to allow it to kick to it's full potential. With a quick release added we can extend the springs and latch it than reverse the 2 in pneumatic, when released it will kick to maximum. Using different valves we can control the exhaust and also control the speed of the kick for different distances.
01-25-10: Robot after week two, the build is going good and the team is doing a great job.
01-15-10: Robot after week one
01-16-10: Our trip to Baker was very informative. Our robot design was a big hit.
Worked on the robot kicker and kicked the ball 40ft. Gear boxes are together, we can start assembly of the drive system this week.
01-14-10: The build is progressing great.
01-10-10: Success going up the ramp with the test robot
You Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQMcw4QNCLI
01-09-10: Great new game this year. A version of soccer played with robots.
01-01-10: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
12-25-09: Game Hint ?
12-20-09: Installed and tested the air suspension. It was functional but needs more design to make feasible. It looses air pressure as it sits for awhile and would need a higher pressure to make it more solid.
12-14-09: The latest design idea, air suspension. This design will allow the front to stay at the required height and still allow the front to pivot up when square to a ramp. If going up a ramp on an angle one unit will go up while air will force the other to go down.
12-10-09: Our third design of our mech/suspension is assembled. Nic and Ryan were test driving it at our Thursday meeting. This design is easier to assemble and works very well.
12-3-09: Welcome new members. Some new students have joined our team and have added to the high quality of our team. This years team seems to be very committed and willing to build a top notch robot for competition. We are working with them on drive designs, arm designs, electrical, pneumatics, and programming.
11-22-09: The White Wolves had a great competition and won two trophies, one for robot design and one for performance. We wanted to achieve a perfect score like we did in our practices but the gremlins came out during our runs. It was great fun. More Pictures
11-07-09: The white wolves have completed their missions and now only need to get fine tune their play. View the mission.
11-06-09: completed the Omni wheel hubs and assembled one.
11-05-09:Thursday we had a good showing of new students. We worked on the new drive system and also lathed out new Omni wheel hubs.
09-26-09: Our team did a robotics demonstration at Vic Caniver Chevrolet. We also placed a large amount of Legos on the floor for kids to play with. There was games, slides, food and much more for kids to have fun with.
09-19-09: We won three out of five games and the robot worked well. It was fun as always. We did not get picked for the finals even though we finished 18th out of 42. We will work on selling ourselves better.
09-17-09: Our team helped set up the Kettering Kick off, setup the pit area and practice field. Joe got beat up by a table and received a black eye but he is all better now.
09-16-09: The first Lego meeting went well, field is assembled and are now working on the strategy.
09-15-09: Getting the bugs out of the new design for the robot. Still having trouble with the floor pick up, we need more room for a larger pick up wheel but will work around it and have it ready.
08-22-09: The team went over the robot to modify it for Kettering Kick Off (9-19-09). Adding floor pick up and multi direction delivery.
Off for the Summer
04-30-09: Joe worked on the buggy during April. More pictures
03-09-09: Kettering University was great fun. Although we did not finish high in ranking our robot did not break down and our drivers did a great job. There was about five games that we won but lost from alliance penalties, so the low ranking does not do justice on how well we did. We actually would have been picked because of our outstanding driving but teams that were going to pick us were pick right away. Our human player did a great job scoring and our robot scored well also. We chased down many high scoring robots and pined them so they could not score and kept our trailer away from the other alliance. We did not let down our alliance at all and that is something to be proud of. More Pictures
03-02-09: We had a great weekend at Traverse City. We finished well and were ask to play in the finals. The matches that we lost we close accept the ones where our partners had many penalties. The robot did not break once. The team was great and we had no trouble with them. We were shown on a local TV news at http://www.upnorthlive.com/news/video.aspx?id=267073
02-17-09: Ship Day, Bag it up and store
it day.
02-15-09: Week Six and we are complete. We need to tweak the camera distance program but that is it.
02-8-09: Week Five and we thought we were ready.
We just found out that
we can not use casters on the robot.
Even though they are free wheeling apparently they are in violation of <R-06>.
Who thought that a caster is a traction device. We disagree but how can you
fight it?
We took our robot over to Lake Fenton High School and did some
practicing.
Learned allot and will make necessary modifications. Nice Troy...More Pictures
02-1-09: Week four just flew by. We drove the robot, tested the ball shooter and it works fine...More Pictures
01-24-09: End of week one, wow!!! students are awesome.
They have been
very competent with the jobs that are given them.
We are ahead of schedule
because of their abilities. More Pictures
01-17-09: Near end of week 3 and we are doing well...More Pictures
01-11-09: Attended Baker College to meet with local teams to go over
ideas about
the game and building ideas.
01-03-09: New game released, guess we will wait until next year to use
the new drive system.
Nice idea for the new game, Kind of like asteroids video
game.
Ground control to Major Tom FRC has gone to the moon.
01-02-09: Proto type has been tested...Video
01-01-09: New control system has been tested and we are ready to roll.
12-30-08: Worked on the test robot, drive works as predicted. Suspension
works great.
12-14-08: At the State Lego competition our white wolves did a wonderful
job.
The robot did not function as hoped but the students did there job
well.
They did great on technical (low robot scores affected scoring),
Team work
they could not have done better( we were surprised we did not win),
The project
was awesome with many excellent scores (we thought we would win)
but one item
was marked very low on the scoring sheet and that item is what got
us to the
Stat Championship. Strange that we did not get any call backs?
11-23-08: Our Lego robotics team the White Wolves did great at the
FIRST
Lego competition on November 22. They have won a space in the state finals.
There project was creative enough to place them, and with receiving a perfect
score
in teamwork they place third over all out of 40 teams. The robot score was
above
average and technical was awesome. Congratulations !!!
11-6-08: 2009 test drive is built...More Pictures/Videos
11-5-08: Last Lego meeting before the practice competition.
9-20-08: Kettering Kick off - We did great, probably our best
showing yet.
We managed to rank 4th place out of 42 teams
which allowed us to proceed into the finals. In the finals we tied the
first round,
lost by just a few points in the second
and lost by two in the third round. Our drivers did a great job and the
whole team was wonderful.
The experience did
wonders for the team and gives us a great start of for the 2009 season.
9-13-08: We set up a display at a local car dealerships grand opening. Displayed Lego's and FRC robots.
9-4-08: Troy worked on the claw with a different design.
8-28-08: Eric and Joe made a drawing of a mecanum wheel that we can build for our test drive.
8-14-08: We will be starting meetings on Thursday September 4, 2008 to get ready for the Kettering Kick off. We also need to talk about recruiting more members and finding new sponsors for parts.
8-13-08: Joe worked on the hand. Still has issues to resolve. The finger don't move evenly.
8-13-08: Field elements for the Lego field are here. Next Wednesday at 7 pm we will have a Lego meeting to start assembly.
8-13-08: Joe and Troy worked on the hand project. Cut the fingers and the pulleys for the knuckles.
8-08-08: Her is a drawing to help understand the suspension
8-04-08: Worked on the 2009 drive drawings
8-04-08: Check out some of the drawings for the 2009 drive system at TECH TIPS, Ideas underdevelopment
7-30-08: Eric and Joe worked on the 2009 drive system. A 6 wheel drive omni bot. Because of the gear set up you will not have to worry about it turning as you drive straight. The motor will be going the same direction making it track straight. This system will also have a suspension.
7-29-08: Troy showed up for a meeting and we worked on a robotic hand idea. Joe made a working model of a hand and used that to design from. We hope to make two and attach them to arms on an old robot that we can control with our own hands and arms. An ezztension of our own hands.
6-17-08: The Lego students met with J. R. Kirtech the weather man from WJRT TV12 to discuss the weather and climate change.
6-14-08: Car Wash was a great success, washed allot of cars, and received some good donations. We also had some grate tacos donated from Taco Bell. Check out the pictures at car wash . Check out this video
6-11-08: Prep meeting for this weekends car wash, only Joe and Troy showed up. We made a couple
of signs, we were hoping some one with a artistic ability would have showed up. We also rewired the
old omni robot.
5-25-08: Buggy Fun from this weekend
5-19-08: New control system for 2009. CLICK IMAGE FOR LINK
5-16-08: Video of robot claw working automatic. http://www.team1322.org/video.htm
5-13-08: Programmed the robot IR sensor and the claw to operate. Programmed the old omni robot to work again in all directions. We will be practicing driving it, the 2009 robot will use the same drive program.
5-11-08: Installed IR sensor for detecting the ball when its in position to grab.
5-02-08: We are thinking about entering a float in the 4th of July to bring in some new members. If any body is interested in helping please contact us through our contact page. We will need a truck to pull the trailer.
5-01-08: Connected a solenoid to the arm lift pneumatic so we can stop it at mid position. We are having trouble with the radio so we set up the old omni drive robot to check out if its the radio or programming. Also the students can get use to omni drive for the up coming 2009 season. Troy hung Ryan's shoe in a tree. Troy snagged Giggles shoe and gave it to Ryan and the chase was on. After 10 minute of running we got back to working on the robot.
4-18-08: We want to congratulate Troy for winning the Kettering University scholarship. This is a very large scholarship for him and will help him go a long way at Kettering University. With his proven ability with our team and his common sense knowledge he has a great chance of becoming very successful with his goals in life.
4-12-08 - 4-17-08: Rebuilt the arm, we are now using a pneumatic to lift the arm, and to grab and release the ball. This should make the ball easier to work with. It will also give us a place to install a over pass sensor to release the ball at the correct time.
4-11-08: Joe solved the traction problem with omni directional system and is now designing it for the 2009 season. Not only does this give us more traction it will also give us a suspension that will work on ramps. The secret design (except to team members) should win the highly sought after design award.
4-10-08: We started an off season project.
Above Left to Right: Troy, Brian, Michelle, Ryan, Andrea (Ryan C is today's ghost member)
3-28-08: We ranked 56 out of 63. Probably our worst showing ever at Great Lakes. Its not last place but we can do much better. I believe our drivers need to practice more before the events and learn the rules better. We scored well but lost to penalties. Even with the poor showing we did learn from this and will change and do better for the Kettering fall event. We will look for drivers that WANT to practice every chance they get so we can do well this fall.
3-28-08: Our scores are not high and we are not winning games. We are having fun and enjoy working on the robot. We were hoping to win the web site award but fell short of that goal.
3-27-08: Great Lakes Regional Practice day; Practice went well, the robot was working good. The drives had to get use to the robot and learn to play the game. Programming the hybrid mode is giving us trouble.
3-08-08: Michigan Rookie Event at
3-07-08: Michigan Rookie Event at
