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.

Thanksgiving Break: 11/27-11/30

Hey BrickBusters,
Over the first half of the Thanksgiving break, we worked on finishing up our missions, practicing the skit, and practicing questions that judges might ask us regarding our project and robot. We had not completed our missions yet, and only one of the missions was truly completed. However, we had finished the program for the last mission, but there were still issues that needed to be fixed.

11/27: Teamwork building exercise, Practiced skit, younger siblings worked on questions judges may asked, worked on Construction Relocation-Safe Zone
11/28: Practiced skit, worked on song, younger siblings worked on questions judges may ask, worked on props for skit, worked on Construction Relocation-Safe Zone, began Plane-House Lift
11/29: Practiced skit, worked on song, worked on props for skit, added a few lines, worked on Core Values, completed Plane-House Lift, completed Construction Relocation-Safe Zone, worked on Ambulance-Base Isolation
11/30: Practiced skit, worked on song, practiced project presentation, worked more on Plane-House Lift, completed Ambulance-Safe Zone.

So far, the break was extremely productive, and we hope to perfect the skit and missions by the end of the break.

Thanks, and Go BrickBusters!

- Mukund Madhusudan