4/19/14: FINAL MEETING SUMMARY!

Hello readers,

FINAL MEETING OF THIS YEAR'S FLL SEASON! We had an excellent final meeting, We perfected and finalized the missions, we practiced everything multiple times competition style and we ran through our practice questions. Also, two coaches from the Lego Dragons graciously consented to come and judge us on our performances. 

This has been an amazing FLL season for all of us in the BrickBusters. Samarth, Shane, Srikar and I hope to continue on to FTC next year. Medini, Sriya, Suhani and Shaun hope to continue to do FLL and go to the World Festival one more time. We are all very excited for the World Festival. We give a HUGE thank you to our amazing coaches, Mr. and Mrs. Madhusudan. Thank you to everyone who helped out our team on this amazing journey.

Thanks and GO BRICKBUSTERS!

- Mukund Madhusudan

Lego Meeting Summary: 4/16/2014

Hey, Brickbusters!
Today was more of a practice day, than a work day. We all memorized our lines perfectly and practiced the RDES speech a lot of times (near the mission board as well.) Coach gave us information on the schedule of the World Festival and explained what we will have access to and when. Some reminders for next class include-

•  Review Project Skit and RDES lines. 
•  Review notes for Fire Retardant Balloon and The Lightening Diverter.
• Go over summaries for Robot Design, Project and Core Values.

Only a week left for the World Festival to start!!
Thanks, and GO BRICK BUSTERS!
Samarth.

Lego Meeting Summary: 4/15/2014

Hey, Brickbusters!
In today's meeting, the main thing that we focused on was some questions and especially the RDES speech; though we did practice the skit a few times. Lastly, we ended our class by working on Mission 3. Some reminders for next class include- 
                               
1. Review the RDES and Project Skit lines (Tip: all lines must be memorized by tomorrow.)
2. Review the Robot Design, Project and Core values summaries.
3. Review notes for Fire Retardant Balloon and Lightening Diverter.
Thanks, and Go Brickbusters!
Samarth.

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Lego Meeting Summary: 4/14/2014

Hey, Brickbusters!
We started off by practicing some Robot design and Programming questions. Next, we practiced our RDES (Robot Design Executive Summary) speech. We also ran through our Project Skit and finally worked on Mission 3. The younger ones revised their knowledge of Core Values by looking at the presentation that we had created for the State Competition. Some reminders for next class are-

• Review your lines for the RDES as well as the Project Skit. (Tip: All lines must be memorized by Wednesday.)
• Look over the Fire Retardant Balloon and Lightning Diverter notes. 
• Look over the summaries for Robot Design, Core Values and the Project.

Thanks, and Go BrickBusters!
Samarth

Lego Meeting Summary: Sunday 4/13/2014

Hello BrickBusters,
Today was also another good practice day. The older kids started off by practicing and improving the missions. During that time, the younger kids reviewed their questions and practiced their lines for the project skit and the robot design executive summary. After that, we all practice the project skit, RDES, and the core values song. Then, we went over some of the questions. After going over the questions, Samarth and Srikar prepared notes on the Lightning Diverter and the Fire Retardant Balloon, parts of the WEPADS to refresh everyone's memory about the various components of the parts. In that time, the younger kids refreshed their memory on wildfires. As we are approaching the date for the event that we are all looking forward to, here are a few things that we need to keep in mind:

• Practice Project Skit Lines
• Practice RDES Lines
• Review Questions

Thanks and Go BrickBusters!!!
Srikar

Lego Meeting Summary: Saturday, 4/12/2014

Hello BrickBusters,
Today was a productive day in practicing and making changes to all of the items that we originally had. Everyone practiced the Robot Design Executive Summary (RDES) along with the project skit and core values song. We also practiced the questions that we had come with before the qualifying tournament. Here are a few reminders as we approach the last week of practice before the World Festival. The older kids then practiced running the missions while the younger kids continued practicing and reviewing other information.

• Practice Your Lines For The RDES.
• Practice Your Questions
• Continue To Review Your Lines For Skit Depending Upon Comfortability With Them.

Thanks And Go BrickBusters!!!
Srikar

Lego Meeting Summary: 4/6/2014

Hey, Brickbusters!
We started off with practicing the Robot design speech. Through this process, we edited our script and added/ subtracted a few lines. After practicing the speech for about 3 times, we split off- doing work assigned to each group. The younger ones helped select some core value pictures for our team, while the older ones worked on perfecting the missions to the best possible. We also worked on redesigning our Robot design board and concluded on what to improve from previous experiences. Some reminders for next class are:

• Remember to review your questions; they are posted on a Google docs document which has been shared to all team members.
• The older ones have to write about a particular section in The World Festival Team Information Sheet and send it to the team.
• Finish commenting the programs and send them to Shane for printing.

Thanks, and Go BrickBusters!
Samarth

Meeting April 5th, 2014

Hello followers,

We recently had a meeting, our second after Spring Break. Shane and Mukund were working on the missions, perfecting them for the World Festival. We also practiced attatching and detatching all of the attatchments for the missions. Near the end of the meeting, we commented the remaining programs and got ready to complete the programming board for tomorrow.

Unfortunately, Srikar and Samarth was unable to make it to our meeting, but the younger ones practiced the Robot and Programming speech and they wrote down captions for the storyboard, about places that we visited as a team, and places that we volunteered at. 

The major things we need to do now are:
- Practice the skit
- Clean up the mission and project boards
- Practice the new robot design presentation
- Run through the missions competition style and make them more consistent

Thanks, and Go BrickBusters!

BrickBusters Meeting: 4/3/14

Hey readers,

We recently had a meeting, our first after Spring Break. For the World Festival, we are required to make a mini-presentation for Robot Design Judging. Shane and Mukund were hard at work to finish it, and at the end of the meeting, they were able to complete it.

Unfortunately, Shaun was unable to make it to our meeting, but the girls worked on what we did for outreach in our season. They wrote down everything we have done for outreach and created a timeline listing everything we have done.

Samarth and Srikar ran through our completed missions a few times, and worked on commenting the final program that needed commenting. The mission they were commenting ran through 100% perfectly multiple times, without a hitch.

The major things we need to do now are:
- Practice the skit
- Clean up the mission and project boards
- Practice the new robot design presentation
- Run through the missions competition style and make them more consistent

Thanks, and Go BrickBusters!

- Mukund Madhusudan

Presenting at the Findley Elementary School Science Fair with V-Cube FTC

Hello readers,

Our team was invited to present our robot, project and core values to students at the Findley Science Fair. We talked to many students, some who have done FLL in the past, or some who have not even heard of it. We also talked to parents and we tried to get students interested in FLL next year. We presented our robot by running a demo EV3 robot with a simple program that would make it continuously stay within a black oval. Students were intrigued about how the robot worked, such as how the motors drove 4 wheels, how the color sensor worked, and how the programming software controlled the robot. We talked to them about what FLL is, the parts of FLL and who can form a team. We even went around the Science Fair projects and talked to some of the students about projects related to what we were doing in FLL, and told them about FLL. It was a great experience, and we thank the school for inviting us to present there with V-Cube FTC!

Thanks, and Go BrickBusters!

-Shane Puthuparambil

Presenting at OMSI to the Jr. FLL Teams - March 9th, 2014

Our team was invited to present at the Jr. FLL competition at OMSI on Sunday! We graciously accepted the invitation, as it would be a great way to encourage aspiring "FLLers" to join FLL after their Jr. FLL experience. Mukund, Medini, Suhani, Shaun and Sriya were the team members who went with our coaches to present.  

We were able to do great outreach to the future FLL students, and we were able to describe our project and the robot to the various Jr. FLL teams that were there. Mukund went around and also interviewed some teams about their projects. The theme was just like FLL's Nature's Fury theme, it was called "Disaster Blasters". The teams needed to pick a natural disaster to research on and help prevent with a unique solution. There were some very cool projects, like a force field generating LEGO mechanism.

In the end of the competition, we handed out medals to the Jr. FLL teams. It was a fun day for the Jr. FLL teams and the members of the BrickBusters that were there. We were really grateful that we were invited for to showcase FLL at the Jr. FLL competition, and we hope to do outreach like this even after FLL is over.

Thanks, and Go BrickBusters!

Meeting Thursday, January 30th, 2014

This was our first meeting after the State Competition. We did not work on improvements during this meeting, but we discussed the World Festival with two members of an FTC team that has been there twice, the Batteries in Black. We talked about everything from size of the event to awards and decorating the pit. Thanks for BIB's great input on all things Worlds!

Afterward, we discussed changes we will make to everything.

Robot Game: Add missions including obstacles, perfecting base isolation test, picking up more supplies and improving consistency. We also plan to modify our attachment motor placement, and possibly redesign all our attachments.

Project: Making to-scale blueprints of the WEPADS, and potentially developing prototypes for them. We will also make our skit more entertaining and sharpen up our knowledge of wildfires.

Core Values: We will improve our core values board and possibly improve our team "costume". We intend to work on displaying Gracious Professionalism and Coopertition through everything we do, and conduct further outreach.

Other: We would generally like to make our boards look nicer, and we would like to improve our blog. We also need to add pictures to our collage board.

We already cannot wait for the World Festival, and we have a lot to do to prepare for it!

Thanks, and Go BrickBusters!

-Mukund Madhusudan

WE ARE GOING TO WORLDS!!!

Hello Brickbusters,

Sorry for not posting things for so long but a lot has happened between the qualifying and regional championships for us.

In the qualifying tournament @IntelJonesFarm, we competed in the robot game, robot design/programming, core values, and project. We got 152 points in the robot game. It was a little less then we had expected, but we found out the problem and made sure to fix it by the next competition. We also needed to work on making our project seem like 1 solution, not like 3 different solutions. Anyways, after all of our hard work, we got the 2nd place championship award! We all had tons of fun, and we were looking forward to the state competition.

We unanimously decided that we had to show up with our best game, so we improved everything. In the project (based on the judges feedback) we made the skit incorporate all three parts of solution seem like one, so that there would be no confusion like at the qualifying tournament. We also practiced our core values song to make sure that it was fresh in our heads. The robot game had the most changes. We made our robot into a 4x4 by using 2 gear trains, and we changed our board based on the qualifying tournament board. We tried to attempt more missions under less time. In a perfect run, our robot should be able to score an astounding 519 points, and end in the red region by 2:20!!!

The state competition was amazing! We were surrounded by a bunch of great teams and enthusiastic parents. Everyone had lots of fun. We first went to the opening ceremony. Mrs. Cathy Swider gave us all we needed to know about what the teams were expected to do, and then we headed to our first robot run. Mukund and I made a mistake on the placement of the robot because the walls were different then ours. When we ran our missions, we failed to get the pets, so we lost a ton of points. We were determined to do better next time. In the second robot run, our robot performed perfectly, until the airplane blocked the robot on its movement towards the red region. Next was the robot design judging. We talked to two experienced judges who asked us a lot about programming and strategically placing physical features on the robot. I talked to the programming expert with Suhani. We explained our favorite missions, light alignment, and the light calibration programs. It was nice to talk to someone knowledgable about robotics. He was impressed with our robot, and he could identify where and when we placed our line alignment program. It was my favorite part of the competition, other then the robot run. Then we went to the project and core values judging. We had worked harder on our core values, due to negative feedback the judges in the qualifying tournament. Our hard work paid off. The judges really liked us. We had our final competition round. We got 380 points, 9th place overall. It was tons of fun to have finally seen our robot perform somewhat in a way that we wanted to. Finally, it was time for the award ceremony. In the beginning, all teams got medals to put around our necks and feel proud. We did not get called in any categories, so we all felt worried that everyone had performed better then we did. We all felt that we worked super hard for this moment. Finally, the championship awards were going to be handed out. Not 4th, not 3rd, not 2nd, and the moment finally came. We got the championship award, out of 60 top teams at state. Medini screamed, Suhani cried, while the rest of us stood "like a bunch of bosses". We all felt happy for the other teams, but we knew that we had tried very hard as well. We went to the stage, got our award and a bunch of pictures taken, and the next thing we know, we were going to go to St. Louis, Missouri. We were on the news: http://www.oregonlive.com/north-of-26/index.ssf/2014/01/bethany_teams_are_co-champions.html

Link for capacitors website

Hello BrickBusters,
The link for the website to learn about capacitors is as follows:
http://www.rapidtables.com/electric/capacitor.htm

Lego Meeting Summary:1/3/2014

Hey, Brickbusters!

This was our first meeting in 2014, so a very HAPPY NEW YEAR to everybody! We started off by understanding what a capacitor was, as this question had come up in the Project judging room. A capacitor is a device that is used to store electric charge. It consists of one or more pairs of conductors and is separated by an insulator. We then worked on the missions, and added picking up the water near the Cargo plane and also were thinking of picking up the flashlight near the tree branch. We were able to perfect the mission until the House Lift and planned to continue next class. Remember to read the link on capacitors. The link to the website is as follows:
http://www.rapidtables.com/electric/capacitor.htm
Thanks, and Go BrickBusters!
Samarth.