FIRST - Atlanta

FIRST update from the Championship competition!

.E.W. Apple Corps Robotics Team #93 attended the Championships held in Atlanta GA this past weekend. There were approximately 340 teams divided into 4 divisions at the competition this year. We were part of the Archimedes division with 86 teams. As with the other competitions the N.E.W. Apple Corp attended this year Thursday is tech inspection and practice. The team used this time to update some of the electronic controls to help us in knocking a ball off of the overpass in hybrid mode and also fine-tune the robots control software. The team was ready for qualifying matches to start on Friday. We would play 7 matches starting Friday morning ending Saturday at noon. Unfortunately the matches did not go as well as we had hoped.

We lost our first 2 matches 122 to 70 and 88 to 76 winning our next 2 matches with scores of 58 to 30 and 92 to 56. The last match of the day was one of the strangest we've seen in sometime. The first 15 seconds of the match is know as hybrid mode. Robots can run a preprogrammed string of commands or a student armed with a TV remote control can send the robot a command.

Our student or AKA Robocoach has 2 commands stop and raise arm. If were lucky enough to have a trackball on the overpass ahead of us we will try to knock it off by raising the arm. Unknown to us at the start of this match one of our teammates used the same remote commands and told our robot to raise it's arm. Because of the custom high power remote they made our Robocoach could not get our robot to stop and if that wasn't bad enough our robot raised it's arm to high. Our robot basically clothes lined itself landing on it's back with in the first 5 seconds of the match. Needless to say we lost that match even though we were with two very good robots.

On Saturday we would split our last two matches winning 94 to 64 and losing 120 to 104. Leaving us with a 3-4 record ranked 42nd out of 86 teams. We were picked by the 2nd seed alliance for the elimination round. In the quarter final round we lost the first best of 3 match before working out a winning strategy to win the last two. In the Semi finals we won the first match but, one of our team mates had a transmission problem that we couldn't repair 100% ending our run towards the finals. Tobor 11 this years robot has held up remarkably well due to the hard work of the students on the team. Not once has team 93's robot been unable to help their alliance partner in a match because of a mechanical break down.

On a side note as with all of the championship events you never know who will be there . This year was no different than in the past. During Fridays opening ceremonies one of the presenters was none other than our 41st President of the United States George H. W. Bush. One of his comments seems to have become very popular with the FIRST community. Buttons started to appear on Saturday quoting the President " FIRST robotics is like the WWF, only for smart people."

N.E.W. Apple Corps Robotics, Team #93 continues to be a very well respected and competitive team among our peers.

We had some free time while in Atlanta. We arrived mid-afternoon Wednesday, just enough time to buzz through The Georgia Aquarium. Because we got there so late they gave use 1/2 off out admission! After our hurried (but fun) underwater exploration, we decided to see if Coca-Cola World was still open. Surprisingly it was! They closed the ticket booth already but one of the security guards got one open for us so we could pay and get in as the doors were closing.

Last tour of the day (sweet). This is the new facility they recently built. It was great!And the taste testing lots of good stuff! yum!

I brought my Wii along too so we had a blast with that. C'mon guys, fight!

One thing that was very apparent as we walked around near the Georgia Dome, was the aftermath of the tornado that had struck there earlier in the Year. Lots of broken windows, torn metal sheathing, and broken glass on the sidewalks. Yikes. Scary to think of a tornado rolling down a big city street!

A Stitch in Time

I made an awesome discovery for my camera! It's an open-source software package to run on my Canon camera! Here is a link to an article about it: CHDK. It brings out all sorts of options for my camera. The coolest one is changing the shutter speed. I can now set shutter speed at 1/8000 to 1/60,000 of a second! This is fantastic for high speed photography. After learning that I setup the faucet to drip and started taking a ton of pictures. I caught some fantastic pics!


Another awesome feature is time-lapse photography. I downloaded a script that allows me to setup my camera to take a picture every X seconds. Now I am on a lick to take time lapse photography of a lot of stuff. From fixing the trailer to pruning trees.

One more item that seems useful, though I haven't yet tried, is bracketing. Its a technique where you take say 3 pictures of the same scene. Each photo is taken at a different exposure setting. This is useful for when you take a picture and the building is fine but the sky is all washed out white and the ground is dark. Now you take 3 photos, one where the building is good, another where the sky is good, and yet another where the ground is good. You then mix the pictures and get amazing results.

Of Gates and Axles...

[Sunday April 6th]

The fence gate behind our 2nd garage has been annoying me. It just doesn't close right. I took a closer look at it and realized that the gate itself was too wide! I decided to shorten it. Now that may sound easy but its harder than you might think. You've got to take off the gate, then take off the chain link of the fence that is stretched on the fence, so it's a little tricky to get off. After that you have a basic frame to dismantle, cut shorter and reassemble. Some elbow grease and some big swings of the hammer breaks the pieces lose. Unfortunately it also breaks one of the corner pieces ;) After getting the frame and new parts together, how does one stretch the chain link back onto the gate? Enter some cranking tie down straps! I used them to pull the chain link tight.

Now that's out of the way, time to start a challenging project. Relocate the axle of the Teardrop trailer! Turns out that the tongue weight of the trailer is 185 lbs, a little hefty for my Ford Taurus who's limit is 175lbs. It's close but I'd feel much better if it were under! My theory? Move the axle forward and the tongue weight will be less! After several hours of wrenching around, I managed to get the tear axle moved ! Not only did the tongue weight go down, but it looks alot better too! After weigh it, we dropped from 185lbs tongue weight down to 120lbs! Not bad!