Rolling Thunder Blog of Awesomeness

Preparing for Connecticut

nospam@example.com (Student Blogger) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:28:39 -0700

The Connecticut Regional competition is coming up very soon! (Students leave Wednesday and Thursday next week in case you were wondering) Some people are testing and improving the shooter using the practice bot. Some are setting up awards for the team and for the CT regional. Others are writing press releases. The Chairman's Presentation Team is putting the final touches on their speech.

Travel Agenda:

The early crew - Pit Crew, Scouting Leads, Drive Team, Chairman's Presenters, Lead Mentors, some Parent Chaperons and the bagged Robot (Thunderstorm) are leaving Wednesday right after school and travelling by caravan. They will set up the pit and prep the robot for competition on Thursday.

Thursday, after school, the rest of the students, mentors, Teacher advisors, parents and chaperons will load the tour bus for the trip.

Friday Morning, we will be at full strength at the Connecticut Regional and ready to play Rebound Rumble!

Team Awards given at the Finger Lakes Regional

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 13:37:47 -0700

Here is the summary of the awards that we gave to other teams at the FIRST Finger Lakes Regional!

Full Court Shooter Award - for our Favorite Inbounder: Team 3173

Point Guard Award - for our Favorite Alliance Partner: Team 639

1st Round Draft Pick Award - for our Favorite Rookie Team: Team 4093

New High Tops Award - for our Favorite Robot Image: Team 1551

Globe Trotter Award - for the Team from the Longest Distance Away: Team 2172

YMCA Award - for our favorite Hybrid: Team 1507

Jump Shot Award - for our Favorite Top Basket Shooter: Team 1559

Slam Dunk Award - for our Favorite Lower Basket Dunker: Team 340

FLR Awards!

nospam@example.com (Student Blogger) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 19:11:10 -0700

1511 had a great time at our first competition, receiving 4 awards at FLR!

This year, we won the Innovation in Control Award, an award we have never won before! It is the first time we have won an award for a robot characteristic.

Congratulations to Justin, a Dean's List finalist! Justin has been awarded $1000, enough to afford 3 vocaloids!

Congratulations to Jeff, 1511's first Woodie Flowers Finalist award winner!

Congratulations to Larry, who won the outstanding volunteer award!

Make sure to congratulate the team, as well as Justin, Jeff, and Larry on their astounding success!

Our Robot at FLR, balancing on the bridge!

Shhh...the robot is sleeping!

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:57:00 -0800

Our robot, name still to be determined, was bagged and tagged on Tuesday night after a full day of primping!

It received fancy decals of the team name and sponsors made for us by Liz Smith of Two Pencil Designs. The indicator lights were readjusted, a camera cover was put on and several other mechanical tweaks were made. Photos were taken and the robot was weighed (112 lbs) before being packed up.

The team still has the practice robot to finish along with the myriad of items that need to be done before competition, so we are meeting tonight and there will be very regular team meetings between now and the Finger Lakes Regional Competition!

Sponsor logos by Two Pencil Designs

It's in the bag!

A Successful Rally!

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:26:00 -0800

Our Rochester Rally was yesterday and it was a resounding success!

The field crew was assisted by Mr. Pizzo, many students and mentors and was finally completed at about 1:30 am on Saturday AM. Thanks to Mentor Amy and Student Leader Jason and crew, it looked great! And thanks to Team Founder, Kim, for the midnight brownie snack to give us the energy to finish the field!

The teams started arriving Friday night and early Saturday morning and were given a chance to run simulated matches as well as have time for open practice on the field. Our robot made it to the field as well, and balanced on the bridge, climbed over the wall and scored a few balls during practice runs!

Many teams took advantage of our shop, our crackerjack programmers and Thundermart to get their robots running.

Our opening speakers from Harris and Tenrehte Technologies helped make Rally a class event!

FLR Lead Robot Inspector, Rob, spent times with the teams making sure they would have legal robots at the Finger Lakes Regional (March 8-10).

The FREE CAKE was great as always!

1511's Robot takes a shot!

The cake (one of two!)

The final week - Where is the Robot?

nospam@example.com (Student Blogger) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:16:00 -0800

Lots of people are taking tests, including me. Make sure to take your tests, everyone!

The robot is almost done and should be ready in time for Rally (which is this Sunday)!

Field is "Sort of done." A mentor said it, not me. On a similar note, we have painted almost everything. (Including the floor, oops!)

Drive train programming is completed, as is storage programming, and the arm programming is aaaaalmost done. I was not able to speak to anyone from hybrid/autonomous yet but since our programmers are so awesome I bet it is going well.

Remember, if you don't have anything to do, go see if you can help field with anything or help in the shop!*

*Unless you are Kieran, who is exempt from all forms of work.**

**Not really.

Week 6 events!

Girl Scout Visit!

Open House for Harris management, PHS staff, and other sponsors!

Week Five - 2/9/12

nospam@example.com (Student Blogger) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:29:47 -0800

We are now in week five of build season! People are taking game, tool, and safety tests! The robot should be completed by the end of this week, and then we shall practice with it! The team has collected lots of electronics for the used electronics recycling drive but we need more, bring it in to Mr. Brewer's room. Next Wednesday is our Build Open House so we'll be in full uniform. Corporate officials from the school administration, Harris and Camtek will be coming in to see our progress. In addition, two troops of Girl Scouts will be coming in to observe us on Saturday.

Andy's new scouting program is "Doing very well." On a somewhat related note, all of the drive team/pit crew applications have been sent in and drive team interviews are beginning. Mo, Matthieu, and Shana have been selected to present for Chairman's.

A new bio page will soon be going up as soon as everyone turns in Photo Release Consent (PRC) forms! Don't miss it!

Wearing PJs for Ice Cream for Breakfast Day

Programmers at Work!

The joyous work continues!

nospam@example.com (Student Blogger) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:07:49 -0800

The first drive train is complete! Electrical has finished their prototype drawing! They are also almost done with their computerized drawing! Hybrid programming is collecting parameters for the robot and making steady progress in general. The rest of the teams are also hard at work and have been for the entire day.

Testing the Drivetrain

Electrical Designers at work - or are they reading the blog?

State of the team - 1/24/2012

nospam@example.com (Student Blogger) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:26:58 -0800

I wasn't able to do much more than collect some statements from each sub-team, but at least the blog is finally getting updated!

Week three of build season in upon us! The control and electrical teams are both nearly finished with their respective designs and we should see both by Thursday. Students and mentors have told me that the shooter is going "Fantastic." The chairman's group has started filming this year's chairman's video and the essay is being circulated for edits and comments. The drive train group is chaining. Dogtag sales should hopefully be picking up soon; see Austin (the alumnus one, not the student) to order one. Andy has a functional scouting program set up although he plans to make further improvements before loading it onto the scouting laptops. Finally, marketing would like to hear people's input on the team logo for this year.

Ciana and Molly capturing the team on video

Logo Designs - which one will it be?

Build season - Mid week two - The future's so bright I can't bear to look!

nospam@example.com (Student Blogger) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:15:30 -0800

Everyone is working very hard! The drive train is nearly completed! Field has a fully functioning ramp! Andy says the scouting system is going very well! The conveyor is being designed! Mechanical is making steady progress! Yay.

Shayna Testing the Bridge

Our enthusiastic blogger

Introducing the 2012 Rolling Thunder Build Season Blog!

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:00:00 -0800

Welcome to Rolling Thunder's 2012 Build Season!

Our blog is getting a bit of a late start... but we have a student blogger! Kieran has accepted this responsibility in among other tasks for the marketing group and in building our robot.

I hope you enjoy his unique perspective!

And the winner of the Chairman's Award is...

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 21:44:00 -0700

Ah, you don't think you are going to get off that easy, do you? We have two days of the Washington D.C. Regional to talk about first.

Ha ha! Just kidding! I'm too tired to think about writing a full blog, so...

The winner of the Washington D. C. Regional Chairman's Award is Team 1511, Rolling Thunder, from Penfield HS and Harris Corporation!

That's us!!! We are going to St. Louis!

I hope I'll get my brain befuddled and also get the team to write some reflections on the weekend. If that happens, we'll get that posted!

FIRST Washington D.C. Regional, Practice Day

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 22:28:12 -0700

Here we are in Washington D.C.! The advance crew has finished the practice day and is settled in their rooms for the night. The charter bus with the rest of the team is about an hour away. Tomorrow the whole force of Rolling Thunder will invade the Convention Center in downtown D.C.!

The advanced crew had quite a journey down last night. Rochester and much of the north east (actually I think it went as far as Chicago!) experienced a Spring "Winter" storm starting on Wednesday morning, so by the time the team headed south after school, there was a few inches of snow on the ground. The main caravan included 6 cars with Mentors Eric, Amy, Jeff and Gaffei starting a bit earlier with the trailer and one lagging vehicle with a few of the late-leaving mentors. During the trip we hit snow, freezing rain, sleet and finally rain with a thunderstorm. When the lightning flashed just south of Williamsport, Mike Mo's voice came over the walkie talkie, "There is the lightning, here comes the Thunder!"

As we made our approach to Washington, we had a view of the Washington Monument (at 11:00 - that's a direction, not a time), we discovered just a tad bit late that our exit was closed. So we took and unexpected tour across the Potomac River and saw the Jefferson Monument and glimpsed several other monuments. After we turned around, we finally reached our destination, checked in and headed to our rooms.

Today started earlie with the team gathering to leave at 6:30 am. Most of the students headed to MacDonalds for breakfast, to save money for later. A crew of students went with the load in crew to unload the trailer, bring in the robot - sleeping in its bag, and get started on the pit set up. A new and improved pit set up that is. The rest of us stood outside in the cold (relatively - it wasn't snow. :) ) until they let us in at 8:00 and finally into the field area at 8:30 am.

The place is SMALL, but the pits are spacious. We got the scouting system set up in the arena space, while the pit was set up and the work on the robot begun. We needed to install a new manipulator and a new deployer for our new very tiny minibot. As always it seemed to take too long as we were anxious to get Thunderous Prime onto the practice field. At the same time the team spread out to help as many other teams as needed to get their robots ready. By the end of the day, we had completed our repairs, tested the mini-bot a few times, hung an uber tube in autonomous and come oh so close a few other times and helped a whole slew of teams, some just a bit and some quite a lot. We got to meet the local Rolling Thunder Robotics team and look forward to cheering for them tomorrow. We also did a session at the showcase giving teams a chance to come learn about our patron drive, leadership boot camp and how to run FLL events.

The whole team was busy, we really could have used a few more of us, so we will look forward to tomorrrow when we are all together!

Oh! today was Mentor Leann's birthday! Happy Birthday, Leann! We celebrated with cake and ice cream during our evening team meeting!

More tomorrow! Go Thunder!

Fingerlakes Regional Competition

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 22:03:33 -0800

The one thing I know for sure about competition is that it is EXHAUSTING!

It is now Saturday night after our first competition for the 2011 season. I promised I could get a brief synopsis in of the competition and let others fill in more details tomorrow after a bit of rest.

Friday was a long day! After having so much trouble on the field on Practice Day, the field seemed to run fairly well. We dove into our qualification matches with great enthusiasm! And by the end of the day, we were somehow ranked 4th. The robot needed repairs and tweaks during the day, autonomous mode seemed elusive and the mini-bot wasn't as consistent as we wished it was. The drive team got some much needed experience managing Thunderous Prime, but still weren't having an easy time of it.

In the evening the strategy team spend several hours reviewing all of the other team's results, which pretty much meant none of us had any energy left to blog.

Today we had two final qualification matches. Unfortunately we lost both of them although the drive teams seemed much more comfortable driving the robot.

During alliance selections we were selected by one of the Rookie Teams, 3799 which made us part of the 5th place alliance. W didn't make it out of the quarterfinals, but were treated to some great matches by semifinalist and finalist teams!

During the matches we were presented with one of the Top 4 Safety Team awards in the pit. Go Mike Mo., this year's safety captain. He did a great job representing our team!

At the awards ceremony, 1511 received the Gracious Professionalism Award! We then capped the ceremony by having one of our Juniors, Jason, recognized as a Dean's List Finalist!

Well, that's the news! More details should follow. If we catch up on our sleep that is!

FIRST Finger Lakes Regional Day One!

nospam@example.com (Student Blogger) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:51:57 -0800

Posted by Team Captain Crystal!

FIRST Finger Lakes Regional Day One!

Can you believe it? It's week one of regionals, and we've been so psyched to be here with 43 other FRC teams! It was an early morning for our pit and drive crew who arrived at RIT around 8am. The pit was setup with a new addition of our FLL sponsorship banner that overhangs our pit backing! Thanks to Amy A who put all of that together (it has a splash of all our FLL team's t-shirt designs)! Robots were in and out of pits and shortly after lunch everyone had been inspected and approved, whoo hoo!

We saw our friendly away from home "Thunder Members" Tall Rob, Dan and Jen! Many of our friends and family stopped in today too to check things out!

Sadly enough, practice matches never started running until about 5pm because of a poor radio connection mishap, so the practice field was booked all day and FRC team members of all colored flare practiced pitching their tubes (apparently it's more effective to throw backwards sometimes, believe it or not)!

Lunch consisted of delicious boxed wraps that came with a soda, chips or cookies and a fruit piece... yummy!

1511 rushed to several different teams today to help out, and we've provided well or 15 help services to teams! Those are some serious Thunderbolts!

We tweeted all day, and some of our friends and family checked out the webcast that Time Warner is broadcasting through the Rochester City School District website! Whoo hoo!

Thunderous Prime has been working pretty well all day, and well, we'd say he's a great success! Our first match went over extremely well with a logo scored high and one mid tube! We've yet to see an ubertube be placed though in autonomous.

By the end of the night, Prime frayed a bit as his manipulator width grew! So we had to make a few modifications to re-fit and size to the 84" envelope. We managed to fit in one match after that and did a rather decent job again.

Check out all the great photos!

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