Later in the day we welcomed the Cyberfalcons (FIRST Team 3710) to join us and use our bridge and work room.It’s nice to have our workroom buzzing with activity.  It’s also nice to see how other teams are approaching the design challenges.  We look forward to sharing warehouse space with them during the last week of build.

Throughout the day there have been driver training sessions in the hall outside of room 107. The trainees had to maneuver around pylons that were setup on the track.

While the robot was having communication issues, we ran through the course instead!  Also, our mechanism for crossing the bridge has been confirmed to function.

But the robot has sustained some damage, as has the bridge!

Much progress had been made in knitting today as well. While some of us are knitting …

Others are sorting out the knitting cabinet …

so neat!

And others are winding the wool into more manageable balls….…with greater or lesser success…The wool will be used for team hats and for Kare-bots

kare-bot in progress

We have a team member who is planning on taking some Kare-bots to India to distribute this winter!

Kare-bots for India

As usual, the never ending CAD party is still occurring. We have printed out two-dimensional drawings of the robot and the three-dimensional sketch of the robot is nearing completion.

We love it when people bring us snacks.  Parents sometimes bring us left overs from work.  Today we got some interesting treats from Stacey.

We had many visitors in 107 this evening. We were very glad to have the custodians dropping in for a visit, and a quick eye-glass repair.  We have the best tools around!We were also very happy to have some friends of friends come to check out what we are doing.

We received a call from the Cyberfalcons, team 3710, asking some software questions.  Our lead programming mentor was unavailable, so our student lead took his turn being tech support.

For dinner, we had a delectable meal of perogies and ham. It is so great how our parents volunteer their time and money to make sure our team gets to eat good food.

After dinner, some K-bots checked a motor to see if it had any malfunctions.

BEEP! (that's for you Kevin H.)

If you are having any difficulties getting along with each other, remember, “Cooperation rather than competition” – Eric, Grade 9

Tomorrow, we meet from 10-6 and lunch will be served. Get lots of sleep this week, and GOOD LUCK ON THE EXAMS!

Be safe! If the roads are too bad, stay home and study. Enjoy your extra day.

Today is the first day of exams. If you don’t have an exam, you can just stay home and rest. If you are not a K-Bot, that is.  Exams are just as important as robotics. Some of us study, while the rest us build robots. Some us had exams today, so go cram for it!

Some of us worked on the wheels for our robot this year. It is very important to make sure everything works in order to perform well at competitions.

Some of our metal came in today. It gave Mr.Wood and Mike quite a workout carrying the pieces in….

…more than the chin-ups back in 2010 perhaps?

robotics works the whole body-photo from 2010

Russell’s dad brought in juice boxes and chips today. It’s nice to take a break between robotics and Exams and have a snack. Thanks!

We then set up driver practices. Many of us tried our hand at driving.  We’re having drive team try outs in February!  Practice is important.

We’re still working on how to tip the ramp.  It’s all coming together quite well.  Get ready to CAD more parts tomorrow, and finish up all part drawings.

By the end of the day, our wheels were finished and ready to go.  We look forward to watching these wheels drive around soon.

Tomorrow is another long day!  Room 107 is open from 8:30AM-10:30PM.  Good luck on exams everyone!

our design is tweedle approved!

We took a break for a delicious taco dinner.  It is fun to eat all together like this.  Everyone gets to know everyone else.  “My favourite meals in the week are the ones I eat at robotics” -Olivia, grade 8We also get to meet family members……and welcome them into our big purple family.  Family members love Tweedles as much as the rest of us!After dinner we kept working on our prototypes for ramp manipulation.  When tested on the ramp, the boys’ prototype was definitely the loudest, but the girls’ seemed to be a little more effective.  Good work girls!

Best of luck to anyone writing exams this week.  Study hard, and come build robots when you’re done.

“OOOOH!!!  pushy button switchy thingies!” -Elizabeth, grade 12

In other great news, we got some machining done today!  Thanks to our Queen’s mentors who spent lots of time in the shop and accomplished so much.When the pieces came back to our work room, we deburred…

…and labelled the parts.There’s more machining to come in the next few days.  Here’s another cool part that we’re using for our robot.  Does anyone know what it is?

There were MORE smiles when we had a surprise snack delivery!  We love it when parents experiment with making large quantities of food, and show up at our door.  “The muffins are SO DELICIOUS!” -Liam, grade 9
The oranges were so good, we couldn’t stop smiling!After snack time we got back to work putting together the wheel assemblies for our robot.  Working together is always more fun!We got to work on our top secret projectA few snips later and it looked like this.Some more secret business involves our strategy for flipping the bridge down.  We’ve been working for a few days to develop a good idea.  Today we moved our sketches onto CAD.Some shenanigans took place repeatedly today.  Over the course of the evening almost everyone ended up trapped at one time or another.  Here’s proof that even a Tweedle can get caught!  Despite being caught, the Tweedle is still smiling!

A Tweedle in a Trap!

We worked hard to modify some of our robot structure and try some new ideas.  There are some creative ideas that we’ve been working on.  Look at this…we even smile while we’re sawing!Part way through our work session today we took a time out to learn about talking with the public, particularly to judges and to the media.  We are lucky that CKWS TV, our local TV station is interested in following us through build season, checking in from time to time, watching our robot grow and develop, and watching us come together as a team.

We look forward to the opportunity to share FIRST Robotics with the rest of Kingston!

What’s even better is that they’re rushing the order so we’ll get them in a week.

The Bad News: We’ve got a potential hiccup with our machining that’s causing us a great deal of stress. We also have not yet received our metal shipment. Time is ticking by, and we’re crossing our fingers that it will all work out ok. We made cookies tonight to be delivered with our part drawings to the machinists.We made LOTS of cookies!

"I may be taller than her, but she's still intimidating!" -Sam, grade 10

We hope machinists like chocolate chips!We’re thankful to everyone who is pulling strings to help us out.  We are lucky to have a great support system, including our own superhero!

We work tomorrow until 7PM.  Come ready to do lots of work, we’re a bit behind schedule!

We had another birthday to celebrate today!  Our tiara is certainly getting a lot of use.

We had lots to accomplish today, so we got right to work in small groups.

Our programming team is working on how to work with the camera.

Our bridge was balanced by adding surgical tubing.

We’re now able to test balancing in more realistic conditions.  We started testing some of our sensors on the bridge today.

We were treated to a delicious lunch…

….which fueled our afternoon’s prototyping extravaganza.

We learned about how to connect pneumatics, and what pistons might be able to do on our robot.

We looked at how to control the ball, and came up with a pretty good system.

We had a look at last year’s electrical box, and decided how to make changes for this year.The test chassis got used again by our programmers to test some code.

To help with more prototyping, we had a look through our scrap metal.  Our quest for the keyed shaft was unsuccessful.  “Would the steel shaft sink to the bottom of the pile because it is more dense?” -Mr. Wood

We were able to brainstorm anyway, and the ideas were flowing!

He's using his head!

Today we made some interesting discoveries.

1.  Mike likes apple juice.

2.  Our team is very creative and thoughtful!  Look at the surprise birthday message that was hidden under the sliding blackboard.

3. It is possible to fall asleep on a keyboard.4.  Tweedles can knit!

5.  Some K-Bots make tea in the normal way….

…while others prefer to chew on teabags…

As time goes by, we are progressing with our robot designs, our game strategies, and problem solving.  We’re also learning more about our team mates and our mentors….we’re becoming more tight knit with each day.

We work Monday until 10PM.  Be there!

After singing, we got right to work on our tasks for the day.  Part of our group worked on CAD, programming, electrical and mechanical design…

We’re making our 3D model into 2D drawings

Others got the robot demo ready to go for when our parents arrived.

Some ideas are being prototyped using meccano that one of our mentors brought in.

"We're playing with Mike's childhood"

The rest of us headed up to the kitchen to cook up a lovely pasta dinner for our Parent Appreciation Pasta Night.

hand washing--step 1

One group made the cakes, which included lessons in egg cracking…

…and a little bowl licking

There were icing lessons…twice! (the original batch had to be discarded because the electric beaters broke and metal ended up in the bowl somewhere….it was sad to throw out all of that icing.  Thanks to Mrs. Wilson for lending her mixer and rescuing us with extra butter and sugar!)

Here’s everyone with the finished cakes.

Another group worked hard chopping up vegetables for salad, sauce and stirfry.

crying over the onions

We cooked up 4 different sauces (spicy meat, spicy vegetarian, plain meat and plain vegetarian).  Some of us are particularly skilled at stirring!

At 6:30 we had the food ready, and were excited for the families to mix and mingle in the cafeteria.  Kids, siblings, parents, mentors were all sharing in the fun.  It was great to see parents of so many rookie members of our team.

We were thrilled this year to have our custodial staff join us for our pasta feast.  They are with us during the long hours of build.  Without them we couldn’t be building in the school!  We hope they’ll join in more meals with us in the future.

After dinner, part of our group got right to work on robot design once more, while the other part worked hard to clean up the dishes and rooms after our meal.  Thanks to the parents who helped out with the clean up!

We’re planning once more to put electrical components in a removable box.  Now that the CAD for our robot is almost done, we know the dimensions that we can work with for the electrical box.  It’ll be a tight squeeze to fit everything in!

In the end we’ve got plans for our “really big” (note the air quotes for sarcasm) electrical box.

All in all, we’ve made lots of progress today.  We are looking forward to a very productive day tomorrow.  We work from 10AM-6PM, and will be eating LOTS of leftover pasta!

We’d like to say a very big thank you to all parents who came to eat with us, and a very big thank you to all the parents who were unable to attend.  We appreciate your support from afar.  Not only do you drive us to and fro, cook food for us, and help us cope with the stress of build season, but you also give us a good laugh from time to time!