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Hello Birdies!!!!! Welcome back to WEEEEEEEEK SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIX AND BAG AND TAG (and potluck!)!!! Whaaaaaaat? This doesn’t make sense, build season is over? I feel like I’m being lied to right now. This past week has gone by so quickly I’m surprised I remember what happened this week! Well before I forget let me explain to you all the wonders of Week 6! Builders: Our builders didn’t have to eventful of a week. It was very much a “test-break-fix-test-break-fix-repeat” type of feeling. We did a lot of little things like adding Loctite to anything and everything, removing pieces just to put them back on, making cables, creating NEW HANGERS (or at least the hook part), and just truly breaking lots of things that shouldn’t have broken. Keyword: Should not have. We spent a looooooot of time wiring up our entire robot so we had 2 fully functioning bots for the majority of this week. ONE REALLY COOL THING: WE MADE OUR BUMPERS AND THEY’RE GORGEOUS!!!! THEY HAVE FLAMES AND WE USED A REALLY COOL STENCIL!!!!!!!!!! I’M CLEARLY VERY EXCITED! Now for the Bag and Tag Builder Update: We’ve done a lot of work with our intake and elevator adding little bits and bobbles to perfect them and fix some arising issues. Let’s just say it’s 8 PM on Bag night and we’re still fixing stuff. Today, we did a mock inspection for our new drive team girls (which include pit and programmer girls). Luckily, we passed with flying colors! And we even had time to set up our field! As Build Season is over we are continuing to come up with ways to modify our competition bot during our unbag time! Programmers: Our programmers were extremely busy this week. They not only got their hands on both robots for the first time but they made some extreme progress the past few days. FIrst things first: I want to say how much work our programmers have done on our Auto code, and just how good it’s going. As someone who understands programming very little, I almost passed out when I saw our Auto work for the first time. They also did general driver testing and practice for our new driver and to just figure out some of the little issues. We had a problem with some heavy drifting, but luckily that is mostly worked out now and the remaining kinks will be worked out on our practice bot. Something they are super excited about using PID loops, which will help them get the desired accuracy they need for Auto. As we finished with Build Season are programmers are still hard at work working with our practice bot! Now for some basic updates!!!! Veeeeeeeeeery important (to our amazing editor aka me at least), we’ve uploaded our “Break Yo’ Bot” submission for AndyMark’s contest! It’s an 8-bit Office parody of when we broke our elevator. Next news our practice bot’s name isssssssss: BOWSER! Our competition bot name will be announced very shortly so don’t worry, but for now it’s a secret! Potluck! This Saturday we held our annual after build season potluck where we have fun, eat some great food, watch some cool videos, name our bots, and most importantly name our nominees for Dean’s list and Woodie Flowers Award. So read below to the amazing people that are nominated this year, as a quick note: We are so so so very proud of them! They’ve done so many amazing things for this team and we can’t imagine the Firebirds without them! So a huge thank you for making our team a family and being such an important part of it! Dean’s List: -Kate Przydzial - Vice President and Head Programmer (Wizard) -Brigid O’Neill - Pit Boss Woodie Flowers Award -Hannah Farrell - Firebird Alumnus ‘11, Current amazing mentor, Fieldbook of FIRST and Firebird facts So Yes! That’s how the past 2 weeks have gone and I hope you’ve all had a great time whether you’re building your own robot or just being a supportive parent/friend/mentor! We’ll keep up with updates whenever we do fun things (and don’t worry we might throw some fun vlogs out there just to remind you all of how much fun the Firebirds are). So for now this is the last Build Season Blog Post of 2018! Thank you for reading and BUH BYEEEEEEEE! Break Yo’ Bot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us7wMOyegsE&t=36s VLOG!!!!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO2wPcMtq4s&t=169s Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5IQluJKZTs1HG3n6yprTGg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firebirds43... Twitter: https://twitter.com/firebirds433 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firebirds433/ Snapchat: firebirds433
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Hiya Birdie Bloggers!!!! Welcome back to the best FRC blog in err…. Flourtown? We’ll go with Flourtown. Wow almost done, one more full week and then I won’t know what to do with all my free time! (Don’t worry we’ll still keep you updated on what we do weekly!) Now for the part you’ve all been waiting for--the amazing build and programming update! So wait no more! Now, sadly, our programmers have been at a standstill when it comes to working because we’ve had to make some extra modifications on our elevator before handing it over to them. Though, we have no worries and they’ve done all the prep work they can for when they get there hands on this bot and even finished the electronic panel! Now our builders have been veeeeeeery busy again! Not only have we been finishing up our practice elevator but we have the competition elevator frame mounted and the intake arms mounted as well. That being said, stringing the elevator has been a challenge. After a week of trying to string the elevator with rope, and sadly failing due to some very intense tangling, we have come to a possible solution. As I type we are currently “chaining up” the bot. Instead of rope we are using chains to run the first stage of our elevator and using rope for the remaining stages. So far it is looking pretty good. (As a quick warning I’m writing this on a Friday afternoon, and staying true to the Firebirds, we will most likely make sufficient progress in the next 48 hours so there may be many editor’s notes). Some other little things we’ve done: spray painting, more spray painting, and even more spray painting. In conclusion: our teams loves spray paint. UPDATE: Chains were a BIG no, and actually made us go over our max height, sooooo we went back to rope! BUUUUUT ROPE IS WORKING! We’re all pretty happy and gotta say super relieved cause this elevator has been a huge problem this past week. We are now making some adjustments to our climber to compensate for how we fixed our rope problems. We’ve had a day off due to bad weather, so sadly our shop was closed on Wednesday, and the following day was the Eagles Parade in Philadelphia (Fly, Eagles, Fly!), so our shop was a little quiet this week. Believe it or not, we have made in incredible process this week and are super confident going into Week 6! But don’t let us fool you, Week 5 has been filled with crazies, just like expected. There was a lot of dancing, WaWa, and some crowns made out of robotibal materials! And don’t worry Bridget has continued to play Kesha and Harry Styles all day in the shop… Our mentors now know all the words to Praying by Kesha. And of course our crazy vlogs are still being filmed even with all this happening, so keep an eye out for that and I’ll post a link down below! Now that’s all for this week, been pretty crazy, but exciting as usual! Be ready for WEEK SIX!!! Are you and your team prepared for the final week? And as always if this hasn’t filled your daily dose of Firebirds… CHECK OUT THE VLOG!!!!! VLOG!!!!: https://youtu.be/O5vT_rMDboE Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5IQluJKZTs1HG3n6yprTGg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firebirds43... Twitter: https://twitter.com/firebirds433 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firebirds433/ Snapchat: firebirds433 Hi Everyone! Yes it’s the beginning of Week 5 and this is the blog update for Week 4, buuut everyone needs a little antici….pation in their lives! So here we are! Since no one really wants to read on a Monday, I’ll make this brief. BUT WAIT UNTIL THE END FOR A VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!!! As many people do, Week 4 was jumping over the Week 3 slump, and we jumped high… Very high… We did an amazing amount of work this week and are right on track! Our programmers spent a lot of time on our electrical panel for the practice bot. And guess what? All of our programmers used drills and band saw and we are very proud of them! Yes, they all have been certified and have had sufficient practice due to our training sessions during the off season (Watch our vlogs a fun time lapse of them working on it!). Our builders were just as busy though! We had a few obstacles to jump over but we were able to get past them super quick! On update on where we are with our practice bot: The intake mechanism in mounted and is currently being wired up!!!!!! We are now starting to gather pieces to recreate it on the competition bot. The elevator is in the process of being strung and wired, the elevator has been a very fun process, but by the end of this week we will have this process down to a science! We made some modifications to our wheels and finished up the specifications for our climber. The past seven days have been filled with looking over measurements, and looking over them, and looking over them once again. But it has been worth the time, because our bot is a b-e-a-u-tyyyyyyy. Week 5 will be filled with wiring our practice bot and starting to build up our frame for the competition bot, so there’s no rest for the Firebirds! NOW THE BIIIIIIIIIIG ANNNNNNNNOUNCEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!! You may have seen on our Twitter or Instagram that something is a little different with our team shirts this year. Well, no, we didn’t put a weird filter over our orange and blue shirts, our colors are actually PURPLE AND GOLD!!!!!!! We are very excited to announce that our team colors are now the same as our school the Mount St. Joseph Academy. We’ve realized that our school pride is something we are extremely proud of, and what’s a better way to show this than to wear PURPLE and GOLD! So keep an eye out for us in the stands because we will be shining with GOLD and dressed in PURPLE! (Guess what our robot is actually PURPLE and GOLD too!) That’s all we have for this week! And it really is a lot I know! We’ve all been waiting to announce our color change and we hope you all love it too! If you still want to see a little more of what we’ve been up to this week, CHECK OUT OUR VLOG (link below!)!!!!!!! VLOG!!!!: https://youtu.be/ui0R3d0msB8 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5IQluJKZTs1HG3n6yprTGg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firebirds43... Twitter: https://twitter.com/firebirds433 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firebirds433/ |
