Tag Archives: organization

FILL THIS OUT PLEASE K-BOTS!

What would you like to do at competition this season?  Please read this form and fill it out before the end of the day on Sunday.

If you do not fill in the form, please do not complain about competition roles.  This is your chance to give us input.

 

 

Day 17: Prototypes and Driver’s Training

Day 17:  Today is the last day of classes for us at KCVI!  For the next little while our work space is open all day AND after school.  This will be a productive week!  Our electrical team went for a field trip today to Kraftwerk to discuss how we’re going to bend metal for several robot components.  We are so glad to have the assistance of Kraftwerk again this year!
driver training course
We worked today on our driving skills.  We carpeted the hallway and set up an obstacle course.
programmingProgramming needed a little tweaking to make the robot easier to drive.
testing the controlsIt takes a little time to get used to the controls….extreme focus…and then it takes intense focus to drive the robot without hitting the cones.  We saw a lot of promising drivers today!  We’ll keep practicing, and have some driver tryouts in early February.organizational boardWe’re organizing all of our tasks on our big organizational chalkboard.  There is so much to do!CADWe’re working on our CAD drawings still.  We’ve got lots of part drawings to get done before we can manufacture all of the parts.  prototypeWe’re prototyping various devices to manipulate the ramp.  To make it more fun we split up into two teams (girls vs. boys) and had a competition.prototypeWe’re planning and measuring and cutting material carefully.prototypeWe’re working together, mentors and experienced team members are showing our rookies how to work safely.sawIt’s exciting to see our designs work well!  Even if our designs don’t work well, we can learn from that.

our design is tweedle approved

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 8dinnerWe also get to meet family members…new friends…and welcome them into our big purple family.  Family members love Tweedles as much as the rest of us!we love the tweedleAfter 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.

 

Day 12: Adventures at the Grocery Store

Day 12:  We got right to work today on a variety of tasks. programmerWe’re getting a second driver station up and running so we can have drive practice before we hold tryouts later in the season.  driver training

Meanwhile….on the other side of the room…a rather creative brainstorming process led to the inevitable conclusion that we needed to use “the force” to keep our robot together!

the force

"lets hold our robot together using the force!"

We started to do some very premature pre-season scouting of the teams that will be at GTR East and Waterloo.  We need our new team mates to start connecting team numbers to names and their histories.

scouts

CAD work was continued.  We’re working on getting drawings done for our drive train.

CAD

We need to be careful with dimensioning and other specifications.  There’s lots to learn!

drawing

Part of our team embarked on a great expedition today to the grocery store.  Tomorrow we’re hosting our Parent Appreciation Pasta dinner, and we estimate 100 people will be there!  There’s lots to do to get ready for such a large event.  We made a menu plan and a grocery list.  We researched quantities online for feeding so many people. 

“5 lbs of ground beef….that’s like a baby cow!” -Sam, grade 10

We researched coupons and estimated how much dinner would cost.  We then took a field trip through a blizzard to the grocery store.  We got strange looks buying SO much food!

groceries

For future reference: we bought 5lbs of ground beef, 7 onions, 16 900g bags of pasta, 8L of tomato sauce, 6 cans of tomatoes, garlic, 12 peppers, 12 heads of lettuce, 4 heads of romaine, 4 cucumbers, 2 bags of spinach, 5 bottles of salad dressing, 6 carrots, green onions, 5 loaves of French bread, 5 cake mixes, cooking oil, 2 dozen eggs, 2 pounds of butter, 2kg of icing sugar…and all that cost around $140.  food

We’ll start to cook right after school tomorrow!

In knitting news….we’ve got a new expert!  Kare-bots are being knit EVERYWHERE!!!

knitting

our other knitting project is ongoing, and ever growing larger.  It will be exciting to see it completed!

other knitting

We’re having lots of fun with each other while we’re working hard on designing our robot.  We are celebrating the small moments, like finding a heart candy with FIRST on it….

FIRST

…and we’re developing bonds as a team….and inside jokes as well.

come at me bro!

Come at me bro!

We work until 10 tomorrow.  Our Pasta dinner starts at 6:30, but families are welcome to arrive early or stay late to see our progress.

Day 7: Field Completion

Day 7:  Progress is coming along in almost all our super-special-awesome mini-projects, especially the knitting.

knitting

Some people are brainstorming

brainstorm

we have a couple people building a test chassis, for testing our maneuverability on the field.test chassis

Our field building is nearing completion! fieldToday we got the bridge done

triumph

and had a minor debate on whether the note written on them said “No humans on bridge” or “No, humans on bridge”

balance

note: be careful to keep fingers and feet clear of the bridge!

It’s ok ’cause our status as human might be debatable!  We worked hard to reinforce the bridge so we can try to put several robots on it in the future.

woodshop

After the bridge was completed, we got to work cutting wood for the fenders.  Thanks Mr. Firth for helping us out in the shop tonight!

fender

For snack today we had delicious cookies!

cookies

In the back of our work space,  we got to have a little class on the function of sensors…sensors

…which led us to looking at the math associated with sensors.

sensors

We had a delicious dinner tonight provided by our very supportive team parents

dinner

tweedles

Tweedle dinner time{but which is which?}

After dinner we made great headway on the CAD for our drive train.  We are working as a group, putting the CAD together on the big screen.  It is really interesting to see the process unfold, and to understand the logic behind creating the robot design.

group cad

While work was taking place, some of us worked on organizing the workroom.  We are going to have a renovation soon, and we’d like to start keeping our files organized, both to save time, and to keep things neat.

organization

Throughout the evening, from time to time we were serenaded by violin music.

violin violin

At other times, people got a bit silly….

minitweedle

friendly strangulation seems to be the norm around here.

remember last year?tweedleWe build Saturday from 10AM-6PM.

Day 3: Learning All Sorts of New Skills

Day 3:  We have a new system this year to keep ourselves organized!  This year we scan our finger prints when we enter and leave the lab to track the time that we’ve been working here.

finger print scanThen we use our organizational chart to divide ourselves up into several groups. We have a timeline of season goals, along with weekly goals and daily tasks on our blackboard.  Each student and mentor have their name on a magnet, and choose their tasks for the session.

organizationalOur field building crew worked really hard to get the backboards complete, including the proper coloured tape. backboard Today we completed the middle level backboards.  We can’t wait for the hoops to be delivered.

building

While working to construct something so large, we learned quickly the hazard of structures that are at eye level.  We’ve flagged them with vivid colours of painters tape to keep ourselves safe.

hazard tape

We love showing our school what we’re up to.  We have decorated the display case outside the main office to show our spirit and theme for the season.  We hope to inspire more participation both this year and for years to come.

display

Our programmers learned the basics of the standard FIRST code today.  We broke down different parts of it to learn what they do.

programming

We discussed the priorities for our robot, and have had many interesting ideas about how to tackle the end-game balancing.  We’re thinking outside the box to imagine how to balance three robots on the bridge.  To help with visualizing the geometry, we used a scale model of paper robots on our whiteboard.

whiteboardTo test some of our ideas, we tried to use our robot from 2010.

testing

Later we started building another test chassis.  working hardWe’ll know a lot more about how to approach our design dilemma when we can see a robot moving over a barrier and onto a bridge.  Programmers are keen to get their hands on the test chassis too.  We like to multitask in a productive way.

dinner

For dinner we were treated to a delicious dinner of Indian food.  We are thankful to our supportive parents who are also REALLY good cooks.  Some of our K-Bots learned how to wash dishes today. 

“Robots aren’t the only thing we learn about around here”-Harry, grade 9

dishes

Today was a special day for one of our founding K-Bots, and current mentor, Opti.  We sang Happy Birthday, and presented her with her very own birthday cupcake, and tiara.

opti

Nothing is more important than knowing the rules to the game.  To ensure that everyone takes rule-learning seriously, we had a pop quiz today–high scorers earned cupcakes.  quizK-Bots, beware…..more pop quizzes are in your future.  Please learn the rules.

In case parents are wondering….we have done LOTS of homework today too!

homework

homework

Hoodie Orders

You’ve been asking for them….here’s your chance!  Go write your letter to Santa!!!  Hoodies have now been ordered

Hoodie Order Form (deadline Dec.21st)  The price is $40 provided enough people are interested.  Payment can be in cash or by cheque made payable to KCVI.

The payment is needed BEFORE we’ll order your hoodies.

The hoodies are American Apparel.  Go to Princess Street, try them on and figure out your size.

They are the same zip up model that you’ve seen around the school.  They are purple (even though the photo here looks blue), and they have a blue K-Botics logo on the front, and K-Botics across the back. (click to enlarge image)

hoodie

FLL Tournament Preparations

Tonight we gathered in the evening, after all of the sports teams had finished their games, and we transformed our school gymnasium into an FLL tournament venue.setting up

We set up the tournament tables and practice tables in the gym…

setting up

…and another set in each of the technical judging rooms.

setting up

Quality control was very important for this job!

quality control

We put up signs all over the school to lead people to the various important locations…

signs

We’ve reused all of the signs from last year!

signs

It was a big job to make sure that each of the rooms had all of the required information for each set of judges.

organization

We were thankful to the many K-Bots who gave up their Friday evening to help set up–many hands do make light work!  Thanks also to Richard, one of our mentors from Transformix Engineering, who came out to help.  He’s getting excited for build season, just like we all are.

mentors

We worked together to make sure our robot was demo ready, and looking great!  Everyone headed home and straight to bed.  We’re expected to be at our posts at 7:00AM tomorrow.

 

Brainstorming Skills

first aidWe’re still accepting more people in our First Aid Course–sign up here!!

Details: Emergency First Aid for K-Botics and Cyberfalcon members and mentors on November 26th  from 9AM to 4PM at KCVI room 107.  The cost is only $10.

Today we had some exciting news about some upcoming renovations to our workspace.  We’re looking forward to a more organized space for build season this year.  We’re currently determining what kind of storage we need–what better way than to empty the cupboards and see what we’ll be storing.

organized chaos

organized chaos

In the span of 45 minutes we had our clutter organized in piles on the tables.  We grouped common things together like motors, electrical supplies, pneumatics, etc.  It was good to go through some of the many boxes that were full of “random parts” and discard anything that wont be useful.

Is the room looking better?

yes

YES

To prepare for the thrill of kick-off we looked at the scope for the Skills Canada Robotics competition.  It’s an exciting mining themed remote-controlled robot competition that includes putting nuggets on a pan.  There was a long discussion about nuggets, and strategy.  We read over rules and brainstormed about the important aspects of the robot we’ll build.brainstorm

Homework:  sketch a robot that you think will fulfill the requirements for the game.

We also continued working on our CAD skills.  There have been some difficulties noted about the “Parts 1″ and “Parts 2″ tutorial.  If you are stuck on either of these you can skip over them for now.  Remember to email your completed files to Kevin!

CAD

"I just did three tutorials in a row--I think I'm going to be sick! " -Joy

Before the end of our meeting we spent some time working on our tool skills.  Some of us missed these workshops the first time….

chainrivet

Such intensity!

We’ll see everyone next week when we’ll focus on programming and try our hand at another interesting design challenge.

Barbra’s Back!

We got the good news today that Barbra is back in town.  Thanks so much to our sponsors Transformix Engineering for allowing us to ship our robot to and from Championships using their loading dock.Barbra

We uncrated today after school and transported Barbra back to our headquarters to do some last minute repairs before the Relay For Life tomorrow.  Now that weight is not a big concern, we can put back on some of the pieces we eliminated during competition.  We’re hoping to get our party lights back on soon.

discussionsWe’ll be blowing up some tubes, and setting up some parts of the field tomorrow.  Our demo is from 11:00-11:45 PM.  Fingers crossed that all will be well, and that Brandi can climb the pole once more.

All Relay-For-Life participants need to be at the school by 7pm.  We can’t get into the building until the entire team is present.

Our next meeting, on Tuesday will be at KCVI and include a drawing workshop (3-5) and a CAD workshop (5-7) with the Cyberfalcons!drawing

On another note, a sure sign of summer: bumper materials are readily available– Get yours today!bumpers

Pre-Season…Post-Season…it’s all a bit blurry!

We’re in the foggy gray zone of post-season wrap up and pre-season planning.  We’re cleaning up our workroom and making sure our tools are back where they can easily be found.  We’ve cleaned out our filing cabinet, and organized files on the computer hard drive.

planning

mentors hard at work planning

We’re making our 2009 robot demo-ready for the Relay For Life on May 13th. We’re preparing newsletters and contacting the media about our recent St. Louis competition.

filing cabinetAt the same time we’re also preparing FLL curriculum and presentations, and getting ready to bring “Kasey III: Barbra Streisand” on tour to the local elementary schools in June.

brainstormingWhile we’ve got ideas fresh in our minds we’re making up a handbook for new members, and we’re also coming up with ideas for  fundraising and we’re always looking for new sponsors, so we’re refreshing our sponsorship package.

student handbookWe’re always learning!  It’s a good time to brush up on CAD skills.  CADMonday we’re going to Frontenac Secondary School at 5:00PM to learn technical drawing with our good friend the Cyberfalcons, team 3710.  It’s going to be a fun pre-season!!

Quote of the day: “I can mutter in parseltongue” -Joy