Working in the work room AND the Computer room!

Tonight has been rather busy as there has been a lot to do in the computer room, and the work room.

This evening in the work room people have been hard at work. Our most recent robot (Green Go) needed a wheel bracket job and so people are hard at work on those. "We are fixing Green Go" stated my brother Jeremiah. Ryan is pretty much in charge of doing things to Green Go. At the moment along with some other complicated terms here what went on: Ryan is working on putting brackets on the robot and he is working on getting the motors to move so they can change the belt sizes so they can turn the wheels. Along with other things, that's all I got from the Work Room tonight.

In the computer room, Anna Dodd has been hard at work on the videos for the open house. "The hours have been long. But I believe that the finished product will be well worth it!" Said Anna when asked about her work in progress.  Michael, our student animation mentor, along with other things and according to him an "Awesome Person." is working with Caleb and Jacob on some fun animation projects.

This Saturday we have a cage match at Brownsburg High it will be all day from 8-4:30, there will be thirteen other teams from across Indianan present. Some of the adults are working on the budgets and seating arrangements for the cars. It doesn't sound like much but we would be stuck here if it weren't for them!

So that is the update for this week! If I forgot someone or something I'm sorry but there is only so much awesomeness I can generate in one night, and if I included everyone in every article the whole blog would explode!

Hope you all enjoyed my first blog post,

Jamie B.
1720 blogger

First Time Exploring 1720

 There were several new students here tonight. They had a few demonstrations to explain what they are all about. The first demonstration was about CAD (Computer Aided Design). Basically, it was about designing parts to use on the robot. The coolest part was that you can actually print your pieces using a 3-D printer. Next, we talked about animation. Animation is separate from designing the robot (CAD) instead you make a minute-long cartoon. Programming is (in my opinion) the hardest of them all. From what I understand, programming is telling the robot what to do. Hearing about LabView for the first time was confusing. LabView is the program used to make programs for the robot.

Coming in and seeing what the robots actually looked like was surprising. While I was expecting to see a trim little model completely encased in metal, the real robots had wires all the over the place, plastic parts and steel frames. It looked cool, but not what I was expecting. I can't wait to see a robot actually work and move!

~ A Student Visitor

Back again, with fun things ahead!

Tonight went really well. We had a short meeting to go over a few plans for future events then just worked on things around the machine shop. Our team is now planing a get together for all our team members, just to hang out, relax and play some Frisbee! The next thing on our agenda is cage match around October, so we have a while to get ready for that still.

*1720 Parents!!!* Please be checking your e-mail for updates, our team can not run with out your help and participation! :)

*High School Students* If you are interested in joining our team or just coming to check out the program, NOW IS THE TIME!!! We are currently in our off season, which means it is time to recruit new members and find more sponsors too! If you are in 9th-12th grade and from around Muncie/Delaware County, and at all interested in anything PROGRAMING, ANIMATION, CAD, DESIGN, MACHINE WORK, SHOP SKILLS, PEOPLE SKILLS, PUBLIC RELATIONS, BLOGGING, WRITING, PHOTOGRAPHY, ELECTRICAL, DOCUMENTATION, VIDEO, or WEB DESIGN... COME SEE US :D. If you have any questions at all about robotics or the FIRST Robotics Challenge program, please send an e-mail to phyxtgears@gmail.com.

*Others/Businesses* If you are interested in this FIRST robotics program, please contact us. We are doing our best to make efforts to gain more sponsors this year to fund our program but we need your help! Any one can be a sponsor, just send us a your contact info and we will follow up and get things rolling. We would love to have you as a part of our team! There are many benefits to being a sponsor too! Just let us know and we will get you more info. :)

Jessica B.

Hello Again!

Here we are again! :) Tonight we had a day to let the parents talk about ways they can help us grow our team and to raise funds. Other than that it has been a really slow night. We had a lot of team members come tonight, so we put them to work in the machine shop working on miscellaneous projects. There were also several visitors today!

That's it for today,
Jessica B.

Notice!!!

There will be an informal parent meeting Tuesday night during our regular team meeting. Please be there if you can, we need all parents to at least come to one of these meetings.