Amazing!

It's been another productive couple weeks. It's been very impressive to see and feel the energy at our meetings.

Fundraising:
Much thanks to Donna Hawkins from the PTSO for helping us make follow up calls to potential sponsors! This is much appreciated.

The disc golf tournament is right around the corner! Let's get the word out and get more people to sign up. Also, let's check with Mike to see if there is anything we need to do to prepare for it.

Dylan has been heading up the Bake Sales and is also organizing our first Smoothie Sale tomorrow during school. But, we need to do more! We only have a little over a month to raise $3000 more! Let's ALL pitch in and help fund raise. Do whatever you can think of ask friends, family, businesses, post on Facebook, etc. If we don't achieve this goal, there will be NO robot competition for us this year!

Roger the Robot:
He is coming along stupendously. The key ways in his wheels seem to be staying in now. We'll have to monitor these to make sure that the fix is holds up. His solenoids are finally working and the pneumatics system is 90% up and running. His autonomous line tracking is also working except for a few minor changes that need to be done to the code. That's right, he can drive himself now! His arm supports have also been re-attached and he is looking more and more like a finished robot. The team working on the gearbox has done great by making the box smaller and minimizing the flex and play in the gears. Once that is complete, we will be able to attach it to Roger and try to grab and hang some tubes.

And More:
The crate is in the process of being built. We made some headway last week but now we are in need of some tools before we can finish that up.

Blayne has been teaching the noobs how to program. The more programmers we have, the more we'll be able to divide up the work during build season.

Also, Megan did great in writing up a tutorial for Autodesk and getting all the new recruits to learn that as well.



Very proud of all the hard work,
Team Mom

PS Thanks to DJ for babysitting during club!

Keep Up The Good Work!

The last two weeks have been extremely productive. Students we were able to work together to successfully get our bot ready for the first friday fundraiser at RR square where we raised about $100.

Miguel has also been rocking the bake sales and we've got about $20 from that in just the first week.

Last week, our newbies came and helped out too. We got our wires cleaned up and organized, our materials ready to build the new crate, loads of sponsorship letters sent out, and alot of good work done on the arm gearbox, wheels, and pneumatics.

We finally made the trip out to JCPenney to show off and received a few donations from their customers while we were there. We just received confirmation from the store manager that they will be returning as a sponsor again this year with a grant of $2000!!!

We have an order in for more safety glasses. This year we're going to have a sign out system to try not to lose any more.

Let's keep it up. There's still alot to work on!

Fundraising remains numero uno in priority. There are lots of grants to fill out, the disc golf tourney and next first friday coming up, and some more events to plan.

Other than that, we can work on fixing up Roger's arm, wheels, and pneumatics. The crate is ready to be built and the cart needs designing. There's so much more, see the "To Do" list on the links page.

Welcome Back!

Hey everyone,

Hope you had a great summer. School is back in session and lots of work is already underway. Meetings are every Thursday after school.

Priority number ONE is fund raising. We've got to get $6000 by November. Yup, that's only TWO months away! So far we were generously given $600 from the PTSO. Thanks so much to them!!

We had a good fundraiser at Railroad Square last night. People seemed very impressed by Roger the Robot and we sold some juggling balls too. Everyone worked super hard to make that happen. We've got about $800 total so far and we've got to keep up that spirit and get to our goal.

Club day was also yesterday. Roger also made an appearance there and we've got a long list of new recruits. We've got a lot of seniors this year so let's teach them all we know so they can pass on the knowledge for many more years after you're gone.

We've got the disc golf tournament to plan, car wash(es) to set up, grants to write, first Friday part deux, sponsorship letters to write and send, computer parts to sell, and a ton more!

Other than fund raising, there's still lots to be done. We've got to get our materials together and build the shipping crate and robot cart. Let's get those done before build season starts so it's done and out of the way. We've also got to finish Roger. The more we practice working on him and programming him, the better prepared we'll be for next season!

2 weeks, 14 days, 336 hours

We have had a great week. We are finally mobile and our arm is growing in height and hopefully dexterity. Our drive system is so smooth it glides around the room. It now has to be tought how to follow lines. Here is our most recent YouTube link.

27 Days left and we are on schedule.

Which means we have no idea what the future awaits. Our robot temporarily named Rob has finally cut its umbilical cord and become wireless. We are now prototyping our arm and gripper, sending our minibot through revisions, increasing our control through programming and getting ready for to go from 2 to 4 wheel drive and Mechanum wheels. Its going to be "epic".

See our YouTube video of our first steps.
Thanks to everyone who has gotten us so far. Half way just means we climbed a huge mountain. Rest, and take a moment to see the road ahead. We have a long way to go.
~JaSun

32 Days left! Pressure is on

We are 2 weeks through our 6 week build season. We have fund-raised $10,500 dollars and are estimating the season to cost $12,000.

We have spent our time brainstorming, designing, testing components, and programming. So far we have 2 joysticks that can wirelessly control motors through a Wifi connection and an enormous desire to build an epic robot.

We are taking our CAD drawings over to our sponsor the Mag Lab this weekend to begin fabrication of our chassis and arm. We are hoping by the end of the week to have a platform that we can practice driving and begin understanding the interactions with forces and momentum.

Thanks to our major sponsors: JCPenney, Mag Lag, SAIL HS, and Leon County Schools and all the mentors, parents, staff, and of course the students that actually make things happen.

SAIL Robotics Web site (updates, calendar, photos,...)
FIRST Robotics Competition

~JaSun
First Team 3502

Kickoff and Open House

The FIRST Kickoff was in Orlando this past Saturday. The game challenge was finally revealed to the 60+ teams that will be competing this year and we received our kit of parts. We are now 4 days in to our build season. The goal is to have a design to work on by Friday.

Open House yesterday was a huge success. The media, parents, students, mentors, and general supporters were all in attendance. The game animation was displayed and the brainstorming sessions began immediately! An enthusiastic crew! We even got the robot control panel hooked up and are almost ready to start running some motors. Much thanks to the PTSO for providing food and drinks!

Let's keep the energy flowing!