Teardrop!

[Sunday March 30th]
Anna and I have been toying with the idea of buying a teardrop camper. We did a lot of searching for companies that make them. As it turns out they are becoming more and more popular . All the manufacturers we spoke with had hefty backlogs.

Anna looked on http://www.craigslist.com for used trailers and found one up in Sandstone, Minnesota. Since we were in Minnesota for FIRST already, so we decided to drive up to Sandstone after FIRST and check it out.

On our way up there we stopped in Hinkley, home of a big casino. Unfortunately their hotel was booked so no crazy night of gambling for us! We pushed on straight to Sandstone itself and found a classic country highway motel 'Motel 61'. Ah, Motel 61... It had the essentials ;)

As you can see by the pictures, we bought it! The couple selling it were very nice and let us take it for a test tow. We took it out on the highway and around town. The car pulls it very nice. We got inside and checked it all out. We found ourselves starting to say things like "we'll do this, or that". Then we knew we were going to buy it.

The guy who we bought it from built it himself. Its primarily plywood sitting on a commercial frame.

So what is it? Its a lightweight trailer for camping ;) The inside has a bed thats just a little smaller than a full size bed. 4'x6' with a foam mattress. It also has some cabinets, a ceiling vent with fan, and lighting. Around the back, and under the hatch, is a kitchenette. It sports a three-burner gas stove, sink, and cupboards. Other items to note are the AC outlets so we can plug-in at campsites as well as a battery and inverter so we can run stuff without having an electric hook-up.

We're very excited! We're planning on taking it on our honeymoon.

FIRST - Minnesota

Team #93 attended the Minnesota Regional competition held this last weekend in Minneapolis. The team was firing on all cylinders and had a great weekend. We received four new trophies and a banner! The trophies are for being part of the winning alliance, Rockwell Automation Innovation in Controls Award, Underwriters Laboratories Industrial Safety Award, and Johnson & Johnson Gracious Professionalism Award.

A special thanks to everyone who came out to watch the event and support the team! Anna, my fiancée came out all weekend. My Grandpa Dick came out on Friday and Saturday. My Mother Sue, sisters Taylor & Elizabeth, Aunt Deb and John, her son Johnny came out on Saturday. Anna's brother Dave made it on Friday.

Thursday at the competition was a practice day set up for most teams to work the bugs out of their systems. We had most of our bugs worked out from the Milwaukee regional, but made some improvements to the autonomous modes. One major update gave the robot the ability to navigate over an entire lap in 15 seconds without a driver! Very cool. This allowed us to gain critical points at the beginning of the match. During the practice matches the driver and operator got the feel of the robot back after not working with it for two weeks. Everything was working very well and it appeared to be the makings of a very good weekend.

In addition of the 54 teams there were 30 rookie teams at this competition. Many of the rookie teams were struggling to have even partially functional robots. Because of this many of the mentors and students from our team went out to help as many of the other teams as possible. We rewired an entire robot for another team, provided multiple teams with software support, helped teams work through many mechanical issues including a robot that was 60 pounds overweight, and countless teams came to us to use or borrow tools and learn from us. Near the end of the day a mother of a student from a rookie team walked by our pit where we repair our robot. She made the comment that we are one of the most intimidating teams there due to our experience and professionalism. One of the mentors responded that we’re not intimidating…we’re inspiring. We were once again ‘doing FIRST’.

Friday during the qualifying rounds we ran very well. We were in the very first match of the day and proceeded to rack up nearly ninety points. Unfortunately we were outscored by 12 points and lost this match. It was a very tough opening round but was a great way to get the crowd pumped up for this inaugural regional even. We won the next six matches and ended the day with a record of 6 wins, 1 loss, and were ranked in 2^nd out of the 54 teams attending.

Also on Friday I got terribly sick! Anna and Dave went to go get me some medicine and when they got back they found me leaving the bathroom looking 'green'. Everyone knows that it takes a lot for me to throw in the towel but after some coaxing I went back to the hotel to get some rest and get over whatever hit me.

On Friday there is a partial awards ceremony that follows the qualifying matches to recognize teams that have unique accomplishments. During this ceremony we won the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Controls award for features implemented on the robot to conserve power during the match. This award celebrated an innovative control system or application of control components to provide unique machine functions.

Saturday morning I was feeling better and headed back to the competition. We had two remaining qualifying matches. Both matches were very close. We won the first match. During the second match we had a sensor feedback failure which rendered our robot arm unusable and we lost by a very close margin. At the end of the qualifying rounds we had a record of 8 wins and 2 losses and were ranked 3^rd overall.

After the qualifying round there was an alliance selection process where the top 8 teams can pick two other teams to join them. We were in a position to either pick two other teams to join us for an alliance or be picked by a higher ranking team to join their alliance. During the alliance selection the first ranked team picked us and we joined them. Together we selected another team that complimented us and the alliance got the robots and teams ready for competition for the afternoon of best-of-3 elimination matches.

During the eliminations rounds we went up against groups of strong alliances. We had a purely offensive strategy of brute-force outscoring our competition by using two robots to hurdle the ball and the third robot operating as a race car running laps. Our alliance consistently scored between 94 to 102 points every match. Because of our strategy and well functioning robots we were able to win the quarter finals, semifinals, and finals rounds without loosing a single match.

During the awards ceremony that followed, awards were given out for various accomplishments. We won three additional awards during this ceremony.

Because of the organized manner, cleanliness, and safety features displayed we won the Underwriter Laboratories Industrial Safety award. This award celebrated the team that progressed beyond safety fundamentals by using innovative ways to eliminate or protect against hazards. The winning team consistently demonstrated excellence in industrial safety performance that showed throughout the competitions from uncrating to re-pack.

Due to the tremendous amount of support we provided to other teams we won the Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award. This award celebrated outstanding sportsmanship and continuous gracious professionalism in the heat of competition, both on and off the playing field.

The third award was for being a member of the winning alliance for the robotics competition.

N.E.W. Apple Corps Robotics, Team #93 continues to be a very well respected and competitive team among our peers. We’re already looking forward to championship event coming up the weekend of April 19^th in Atlanta!

Taylor's Trip

[Sunday march 17th]
My sister Taylor went on a school trip to Argentina and just arrived. Here's the latest news!

I am in Mendoza, It is so beautiful! The plane trip here was amazing, despite the 12 hour ride. Being in another country is great, the culture is so different and laid back. The drivers are scary! Today we took a bus from Mendoza to Uspallata with a Geologist from Buenos Aires who specializes in the Andes. I can barely comprehend how incredibly enormous the mountains we have seen are, and we have´t even reached the snow capped Andes yet! They automatically serve wine here every time you sit down, and boy is it strong, it tastes like nail polish remover. But, I try to be polite. I just got back from walking around with some students around town. Their food places don´t even open until 8 or 9, and right now it is so busy out! Everyone inlcuding their kids are out right now having a good time. There are so many shops all around and people are very kind. Well, I must go to bed now. We have a long day tomorrow hiking around. We are headed for San Jose I believe it is. I hope you guys are doing well! I love you all!

FIRST - Milwaukee Day 3

[Saturday March 15th]
Well here’s the summary of the weekend! The weekend started out fairly rough but ended awesome. We got two new trophies! One trophy is for being part of the alliance in the final rounds. A second trophy is for winning the Engineering Inspiration Award. If you want the details, keep reading…

Thursday at the competition is a practice day set up for most teams to work the bugs out of their systems. We took most of the morning on Thursday to make various electrical updates to clean up a ‘crows nest’ of wires and then turned the robot over to software to implement several updates. One major update gave the robot the ability to navigate ¾ of a lap in 15 seconds without a driver. This allowed us to gain critical points at the beginning of the match. During the practice matches the driver and operator had several communications issues and the robot ended the last two matches on its back with no way to recover. It appeared to be the makings for a very long weekend, but it was better to get the bugs worked out then than during the regular matches.

Friday during the qualifying rounds we ran very well. We lost our first match, won the next four, and lost our last match of the day. We ended the day with a record of 4 wins and 2 losses and were ranked 14^th out of the 60 teams attending. We didn’t like the losses, but felt good about our performance mainly because we were the primary scoring robot and were getting better with every match.

Saturday morning we had two remaining qualifying matches with good alliance teams and won the matches. At the end of the qualifying rounds we had a record of 6 wins and 2 losses and were ranked 8^th!

At the end of the qualifying round there was an alliance selection process where the top 8 teams can pick two other teams to join them. We were in a position to either pick two other teams to join us for an alliance or be picked by a higher ranking team and join their alliance. During the alliance selection the fourth ranked team picked us and we joined them. Together we selected another team that complimented us and the alliance got the robots and teams ready for competition for the afternoon of best-of-3 elimination matches.

During the quarter final rounds we went up against a fairly strong alliance, but because of our strategy and well functioning robots we were able to defeat them in two matches and moved onto the semifinal rounds.

In the semifinal rounds we went up against the first seeded alliance consisting of three extremely tough teams. Our only strategy was to brute-force outscore their alliance. They had two robots that could rack up a lot of points, but they had some weaknesses. The first match we won with an 88 to 62 victory. The second match we tied at 70-70. There was some confusion leading to the announcement of the score and we were all on the edge of our seats. Between the second and third match the opponent called a time-out to fix something that broke on one of their robots. They were not able to completely repair one of the robots, so it was no longer able to score very effectively. During the third match the opponent alliance (#1 seed at the competition) decided to double-team defend *our* robot to keep it from scoring. We still managed to rack up a pile of points and won with a score of 72 to 48. This moved us on to the final rounds.

The first match of the final rounds we won by a close victory of 66 to 60. During the second match one of our alliance partners had a breakdown of their drive train which meant we were playing 2-on-3. We lost this round with a score of 44 to 80. Between the second and third match we called a time-out to hopefully give our alliance partner time to make repairs. The repairs took longer than the timeout period, so a backup team was brought in to replace them. During this last match our other alliance partner had a breakdown and again we were playing 2-on-3. We lost this last with a score of 36 to 64 and ended up taking second place.

During the awards ceremony that followed, awards were given out for various accomplishments. In previous years we won the Sportsmanship Award because of the support we provided to other teams during the competition. This year we took it a huge step forward and won the Engineering Inspiration Award. This award is given to a team that advances respect and appreciation for engineering within the team’s school and community. This is the second highest award that FIRST gives out. We won this award because of the work done by the team at various community events including Oktoberfest and Walleye weekend, hosting various robotics camps for grade school students during the summer, and the many links between Team #93, the Tesla charter school, Plexus, and other supporting engineering companies in the community.

N.E.W. Apple Corps Robotics, Team #93 continues to be a very well respected and competitive team among our peers. We’re already looking forward to the next regional competition the weekend of March 28^th in Minneapolis!

FIRST - Overdrive

There have been some questions about what the game is all about. Here is the introduction video shown by FIRST at the kick-off event. It'll fill you in ;)

FIRST - Milwaukee Day 2

[Friday Saturday 14th]
Happy Pi Day! Today was our first actual competition day in the Milwaukee Regional. Yesterday was a practice day. It was a very exciting day! We tried our robot out on the field for the first time. We were all very nervous putting it all together and trying it out. For us Software guys, running autonomous was worrisome because we've *never* ran all our new code with the real robot, and the little testing we did do wasn't on a full-size field! The first autonomous clip you see here is our very first run! We try and run thr robot around the course and do a lap. The robot has to know how far to go, when to stop, when to turn. On our first run the robot quickly goes full speed, all the way across the field with no sign of slowing down or stopping! Image us, running un-tested code, seeing that clip. My heart was racing. I didn't think it would stop! Full speed ahead like the titanic right into the way. Whew, stopped in the nick of time (and thats no small feat!)

By the end of the day we had a 4-2 record and were ranked 13 out of ~60 teams. We're really happy with how well things are going. We did get one of our tusks (grabbers) bent out of shape on the last match but we were able to get fixed right away and move on. Tomorrow is our big day. Who are we? 93!

Sunroom

This is the first in a series home improvement posts. First we'll start with the Sunroom! This was one of our first projects.

The previous owners did a great job assembling this room. The entire room is lined with beautiful stained wood. They furnished it with offwhite coaches and green blinds. It was a country feel.

One common and reoccurring theme was the previous owners had dogs! Hair everywhere! Our allergies to dogs, we decided to rip up this carpet and start new. Who knew how hard that'd be!

Ripping up the old carpet wasn't hard. We found a nice solid sub-floor atop the concrete subfloor.
Anna and I went shopping at a local carpet seller/installer not far from the house. Since the subfloor is concrete we decided to go all out and buy some super thick (aka warm) carpet. The carpet was so long, we were a little nervous we wouldn't be able to clean it (allergies). We made a point to ask if there were any special care instructions , we were assured there weren't.

We got the carpet installed and it was amazing! You could lose your whole hand in it! We loved it! Eventually the time came to vacuum it. We have 3x vacuums (that seems like a lot for 2 people 'eh?). We tried the first 2 with nothing too exciting happening, except the long carpet bogged down the motors. When we tried the 3rd, thats the charm! We frayed our new carpet. D'oh, what a bummer!

Our installer was really understanding and offered to replace the carpet. We decided not to go with the same carpet (maybe we'd end up fraying it again). We went into the store and selected some new carpet and went home. The next day an apologetic sales associate called us and explained that we selected a different brand of carpet and we had to go select again to select the same brand. I was frustrated that we needed to select again. We went back in and selected some new samples to take home and try out. While we still had the new samples, we got a call and found out we could select any brand. Yippee, we really liked our initial re-selection and placed an order.

Not too long afterward the new carpet was installed, awesome! The new stuff was less thick but great. After that fresh new carpet feeling went away we noticed a distinct line parallel to a wall about 4 feet away. I gave the installer a call and they asked how we liked the carpet. To their credit they mentioned the line on the carpet and wanted to see if it was a problem for us. We decided it was a little to distinct for us. Turns out its rare, it usually only happens in large office installations, etc, but as the carpet is rolled out the color sometimes changes. Our rool is wider than a roll of carpet so they unroll one strip and then fill in the remainder with then next section off of the roll.

We eventually got the correct carpet installed, it fantastic! We also installed new outlets installed and new blinds installed. Voila, our new sun room!