Quizzo, FTC, Offseason Projects, Oh my!

  Hello alumni, sponsors, and fellow robot enthusiasts! If you are looking for an update on what the Firebirds have been up to, look no further. The Firebirds have been very busy over the past few months adjusting to a hybrid learning system and starting on our fun offseason activities!

Quizzo:
First things first, a message from our Vice President of Business on this years Quizzo:
"Hello everyone!
Even though 2020 has looked different than we imagined, Quizzo 2021 is going to happen! This year, Quizzo takes place, virtually, on Friday, February 19th, 2021 at 7 pm. It is going to be live: scored by current Firebirds and MC’ed by one of Mount’s Chemistry teachers, Mr. Jerkerwicz. And of course, we are still going to have raffle baskets! A benefit to this new virtual model of Quizzo is that you can bid on baskets in advance by using the website, OneCause. This website along with the registration will be published at the end of January and continue to be updated until the night of Quizzo! 
Your team members can be people in your “pod” or you can social distance with friends or family! We wanted to make Quizzo as fun (and semi-normal) as possible while still being safe. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact [email protected]. 
Hope to see you there!"

FTC:
Through the generosity of our sponsors and the dedication of our girls, we have been able to start two FTC teams this year! 
We are proud to present FTC team 18436, Basan, and team 18437, The Valkyries. Each team is made up of girls in the purple and gold cohorts respectively, due to the hybrid system the Mount has adopted. All girls on each team have less than two years of robotics experience. Lets see what both teams have been up to!
Basan:
Build:
Basan has been hard at work prototyping mechanisms for the intake, indexer, and outtake. I asked some of the girls to describe the prototypes they have been working on.

• Intake
  • The intake must make sure that two rings don’t get stuck on each other. The prototype should be anchored at about 2.5 to 3 inches off the ground.  It currently requires 1 motor.
• Outtake 
  • It’s a shooter with 2 horizontal rows of wheels with a small gap in between them to fire the disk.  There are six wheels across on both the top and bottom and they use 5mm hex shaft. After some testing, I decided that a 45º angle works the best to shoot the disks the farthest so I built a triangle out of 15mm extrusion. I am attaching two motors to the extrusion. They sit in the same orientation as the wheels with the motor laying horizontally and the part where the gears go facing away from the robot. One of the motors is above the wheels and the other is beneath them. 
• Indexer
  • The goal of it is for the wheels to rotate and the orange belt will rotate on top of the wheels. The black things on the belt will hold a ring on it and pull it up to the shooter. 

Programming:

• Our programming team has been working on drive train code, wiring, and autonomous code logic.

Awards:

• I’ve been keeping up the engineering notebook and organizing everything as updates are added. I have been formatting the document and making sure it is visually appealing and easy to read through.

The Valkyries:
Build:
The Valkyries have also been in the prototyping process developing an intake, indexer, and two outtakes. 

• Intake and Indexer
  • We are working on the intake prototype (wheels) and connecting it to the indexer. We are putting the belts on the same axle as the stake so as the intake takes in rings it also moves them up to the outtake.
• Outtake
  • Catapult Outtake
    • Our first prototype is a catapult. The hardest part was getting it to actuate without a motor. The easiest way to do that is doing a sprinkler system where it’s two gears and one is an open space on one side and one is an open space on the opposite and then they click together to spin in opposite directions. The catapult itself is basically some kind of almost spatula shape and it’s linked to an axle between two vertical bars that act as the hard stop. When the gears move separately from the motor the catapult was pulled back and then when the other side of the gears roll around it will release the tension and the motor will spin the axle forward and the catapult will actuate itself and throw the ring across the floor.
  • Single Wheel Outtake
    • ​Our second outtake prototype is a single wheeled launcher. We used the X-carve to cut a curved piece for the rings to follow as they move through the launcher. We will have to play with the launch angle as this prototype actually sometimes launches the rings too far!

Programming:

•  We have been working on making sure our code is logically sound since we can’t test it on the drive train yet. We have also been working on typing and spelling errors in the code that would cause it not to run. we are doing all of this in the autonomous and have been mapping out the movements before writing the code.
  
  

Awards:

• Awards team has been keeping up with all of our sub teams, documenting the experiences, accomplishments and mistakes in our work. There’s always room for improvement and it’s best to accept mistakes and learn from them! We’ve been documenting since the beginning of our season and receiving all of our information from each of our sub teams. Design and art team was also working on our x-carve, teaching our new members about how it works and how to design their carves. Many of our freshman are truly excelling and advancing in their new skill.

Offseason Projects:
BB-8:
This year, some of the juniors and seniors on the team are working together to create a real life BB-8! Two of our builders, Sophia and Nora, are currently using CAD to map out a robot design and determine the parts best suited for the robot. Our senior programmers have decided to use a Raspberry Pi and a Servo Hat to control the bot. So far, we have setup the raspberry pi to receive values from an xbox controller, started research on using beam break sensors with the Raspberry Pi, and begun developing an object avoidance program using a Raspberry Pi Camera and a Pi Zero.

Glove Controller:
Senior Brynn Lintner decided to make a new type of robot controller: an electronic glove! The idea began with using a gyro in a glove so that when the user turns their hand the robot would move. Then, the idea expanded into flex sensors in the gloves’ fingers to allow control of other mechanisms. The sensors would allow the programmers to use different bends of the users fingers to control a multitude of the robot’s functionality. With this in mind, the parts were ordered and Brynn has begun working with an Arduino board, the flex sensors, and gyro to put it all together and create the gloves.

Ivy Hill Equestrian Society:
Before winter break, one of our girls, Sarah Farrell, was designing tags for the horses at the Ivy Hill Equestrian Society. When we return to school, she will use the X-carve to engrave the tags!

Thank you so much to our sponsors for making this happen! Check back soon for more updates on the weekly happenings of the Firebirds. See you soon!

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