Day 42: Scrimmage Preparation

by Vidur Maheshwari ’17 and Eric Wang ’17

Cleaning Routine

Since the scrimmage will occur on Day 43 and 44, today’s work was primarily cleanup. Most teams in the area will attend; therefore, today’s main goal was to make the lab as presentable as possible. The team finished assembling the whole field to be operated on tomorrow. 254 is very excited and looks forward to tomorrow’s scrimmage! Here is a list of the cleaning procedures today:

Parts Inside Shed

Students started organizing pieces of wood and scrap outside. This was for the scrimmage teams so that they could find parts easily and better make use of our facilities.

Barrage

The current 2014 robots, Barrage and practice Barrage \(P\-Barrage? Parrage?\), were carefully and safely brought to tables on the upper floor of the lab.

Battery battery

Also, because there will be many teams on day 43 and 44, the team organized the battery charging area. During the scrimmage the team will not only be charging other team’s robots, but will give its own batteries to other teams so that they can more efficiently drive and test their robots.

Past Years’ Robots

Students packed the twin Overkills as well as the 2012 robot Skyfire into a mentor’s car to be transported to the VEX lab so that they would not contribute to the chaos in the scrimmage.

Field Setup

As for the field, the visiting teams would need to test their scoring in both goals, so the team added a net to the blue goal. This would keep the balls that are scored from damaging the parts and machines behind the goal and hurting any drivers below.

General Cleanup

The final part was cleaning the shelves and putting away the tools and parts. Organizing and cleaning the shelves will make it easier for the team and others to find parts, but it will also lessen the team’s struggles find parts in the future. For example, the team moved monitors from behind the driver control stations to the area near the drill presses \(the southern walls\). Upon realizing this created a mess as well, the team later moved those monitors outside and dismantled the shelves holding them. In addition, students moved the mess next to the east wall to the upper floor. This mess included the computer monitors plus the lost and found. Also, students vacuumed all floors, including the competition field, of all metallic bits. This was achieved using a combination of manual labor and the Roomba \(Consuela\). Finally , students built a new shelf for driver stations.

Actual Robot Work

Although most of today’s time was spent on cleaning, the team managed to machine some parts as well. Notably, the team got the flywheel powder coated and the bumper to work.

Additions to the Competition Pit

The programming team programmed the collage for the giant display screen in the pit during competitions.

Awards Submissions

The essay team worked on the Woodie Flowers essay today. They revised the latest draft, as the essay will be due on bag and tag day.

Action Items

• Check Trello for To-Do List
• Finish both robots
• Finish code for both the robot and the pit display screen
• Make the Flyer for both the robot and the team (Kevin, Godwin, and Jeremy)
• Make Technical Binder (Mani and Abhi)
• Help Mani and Jeremy finalize Woodie Flowers