November 2, 2024
Today was the competition date for the Falcon BEST Hub. We all got up at 4:00 AM to get to the high school, and we left at 5:30 AM. After a long drive, we made it to the Bowling Green Ohio campus where the tournament was to take place.
We ended up winning the BEST Award, as well as Most Photogenic, Best Exhibit and Interview, Best Engineering Notebook and Best Website, meaning we made it to nationals!
November 1, 2024
This is the last day before the competition, we added all of the final touches to the robot, and all drivers spent time practicing on our playfield. We also packed everything up to be put on the bus in the morning. Everyone left today optimistic for the competition on Saturday!
October 28,2024
At the end of the day today we had a fully functioning robot. We still needed to adjust a few things in order to make things run smoother, but for the most part everything was working. Our exhibit team continued to run through the exibit presentation as well. We began quickly making a new robot with all of the same features as the first. This robot would be spraypainted to match our team aesthetic.
October 25, 2024
We began taking apart our robot in order to print a new base piece, we also got the Dump system to work. Around half way through the day we decided to switch gears and work on making sure our engineering notebook was up to date with all of our CAD drawings. We plan to finish up the enginnering notebook on Saturday and submit it before the deadline.
October 24, 2024
Today was a very busy work day, we had many of our teammates stay after school to work on everything. Exhibit is nearly finished and marketing team has a lot of revisions after yesterday. We tested the Dump system and found that it wasnt falling farr enough to dump the moon rocks. We also got further on the arm assemblie and decided that we need to remake the base for more strength and to fix some small issues. This was very successful in discovering everything we need to change.
October 23, 2024
Several of the class members showed up at 7:30 AM to work on the project. The claw was completed, and the base was almost finished until an issue was found and we had to redo the arm tower. At 10:00 am, Mann Properties came in to review the Marketing team's presentation.
October 22, 2024
Today was our second day back from fall break. We had a practice presentation for our marketing and exhibit teams which was very insightful for those groups. We also worked on the robot, we reprinted some of the arm pieces on the laser, and worked on fixing the drive train for the wheels as well. Overall it was a very successful day of work.
October 16, 2024
This week was fall break. However our team decided to have one day where the lab was open to work on our project. Not everyone could make it but this day was very beneficial for our playfield and robot construction. On this day the playfield was fully finished. We made many changed to the robot base design and began putting this together. Overall this extra day of work really helped to keep us on track for the competition.
October 10, 2024
Today was PSAT day for Freshman, Sophomores, and Juniors at the school. Luckily everyone in our class is a Senior, so we all decided to come in at noon and work until 3pm, with some people staying even later. This was a very crucial block of work time, and we got a lot done. All of the Playfield pieces have now been cut, and the Playfield is nearly fully assembled. As for the robot, we got all of the new base pieces created and have begun the process of assembling them again. Once we get this tested, we will move on to create the arm of the robot.
October 9, 2024
Today we got the entire base of the robot assembled and attempted to drive it. It worked great when driving on flat surfaces but when we attempted to simulate the terrain of the playfield, we discovered that the robot begins to slide when it reaches the top of a hill. This was a very large issue. We decided to change quite a bit of our wheel design, scrapping the omni wheel altogether. We assigned a group to work on fixing this design so that we could start creating the new parts next class.
October 5, 2024
Today many of our group members attended the Fall-A-Palooza. This was a super fun event where we got to gain potential sponsors and advertise our team. On top of this we also got to meet many of the kids at the middle school, and teach them about our class, engineering, the competition, and much more. This was an amazing opportunity to connect with our community!
October 3, 2024
In class today, we took a picture of our team for our website and social media. We also worked to make sure that everything was in place for the Fall-A-Palooza, a local community gathering. On top of this we decided to move back the day that we would present our robot to our teacher, due to him being absent for a few class periods, slowing down our working process. We also made the decision to have something that drives by the end of next week.
October 1, 2024
Today was another workday, the engineering notebook still needed quite a bit of work, so we decided to continue with engineering notebook at-home assignments. At this point the playfield and exhibit were starting to look pretty good. Those on exhibit put in a lot of effort to make sure we have a good station at the fall palooza on October 5th. The robot build was still just beginning but with nearly all of the CAD files completed it is looking promising.
September 27, 2024
Today was an E-learning day through our school. For this class we decided that we would work on CAD and engineering notebook assignments. Each person had different responsibilities, but the goal was to make sure we stayed on top of all parts of the competition and didn’t put things like our research paper and engineering notebook at the bottom of the priority list. This day was very beneficial and allowed us to spend the majority of our in-school class time working on the construction of the playfield, exhibit, and robot.
September 25, 2024
On this day we continued working on robot build, and playfield build. Kaden got majority of the omni wheel constructed, and many other pieces were cut by other team members. At this point most of CAD was done with the exception of the main assembly. We decided to assign engineering notebook assignments for every team member for the weekend. This was done to make sure that we are staying on top of our documentation as we progress throughout the competition. We also had a very successful day of exhibit build.
September 23, 2024
In class we worked on creating more of the robot parts. We also added more people to the playfield construction team. The playfield is very large this year and we want to make sure that we have a place to test our robot once it is created. We also decided that any leftover CAD needs to be finished outside of class. We also discussed an opportunity to visit a Junior High and display our progress and our goals.
September 19, 2024
Today we worked a lot on the CAD for our robot. Elena set the goal deadline of Sunday at midnight for all CAD. We knew this would be a difficult deadline to hit but we also knew that we need the CAD to be complete to begin the build of the robot. There were also groups working on playfield build, exhibit, and marketing presentation.
September 17, 2024
Today we worked on determining the dimensions of the robot. We used what we have learned from previous classes to make sure that everything was the right size to be successful. We also worked had a group working on constructing the playfield so that we can test our robot when it is completed. We also began CAD and had a group working on the marketing presentation as well as our exhibit.
September 13, 2024
On this day we finalized our design. We split discussed general ideas as a class then split into groups to maximize our time. One group revised our scoring strategy to minimize the distance traveled, lowering the speed our robot needs to travel at. Another group worked on further revising our new design, and a third group began creating some basic parts for testing. We left class with the goal to begin creating dimensions over the weekend.
September 11, 2024
On this day we ordered parts for the exhibit and playfield construction. We also further discussed our robot design and found many flaws. We ended up scrapping our original arm design in favor of adding a scooping mechanism. We decided that this would be necessary to be successful with our scoring strategy. However we struggled to find a way to keep an arm for other tasks, and use a scooper. All of the designs we came up with that would likely be successful used more motors than we are provided in the competition. Ultimately we decided to have everyone go home and come up with new designs.
September 9, 2024
This was the first class period following the launch of the competition. We discussed our scoring strategy and discussed the robot designs that each team member created over the weekend. We then split into 3 specific groups to continue brainstorming. One group brainstormed the base of the robot, one brainstormed the arm of the robot and the other brainstormed the exhibit. By the end of the class we had a few solid ideas and exhibit was fairly mapped out.
September 7, 2024
Sean, Tyler, and Isaiah met at Kroger on the day of the release to discuss the scoring strategy.
September 6, 2024
At this point, all our parts were sorted. We came up with some potential exhibit designs during class. We also discussed our plan following the start of the competition. We decided that each team member would come to class with two potential robot designs, and three area specific designs.
September 3, 2024
By this day most of our sponsorship emails were drafted or sent. We primarily focused on finishing the sorting of the consumables list. We also discussed immediate roles after the competition launches the weekend of September 7th-8th.
August 30, 2024
On this day we continued sorting parts, marking whichever parts we were missing to be purchased. We also had a group brainstorm for sponsorship and developed a sponsorship form and assigned students to reach out based on their connection to the sponsors. Laci also brainstormed some logo ideas.
August 27, 2024
Today we began looking through past consumables lists, a list of materials we can use to build our robot. We then began sorting the parts we had from previous years to fill two kits worth of material. This proved to be a very extensive task. We also began discussing the total cost we would be facing and potential sponsorship ideas.
August 23, 2024
Today we determined how we would organize our team. We grouped the project into different sections and assigned roles within each section. As a team we decided to give each section a team lead. These people would ensure that all necessary tasks are being completed in their groups and help to resolve conflicts. Everyone left class today with an understanding of their roles and what would be expected of them going forward.
August 21, 2024
On this day we began to organize our team. We began by establishing group norms. These norms will help us as we get into the competition. Group norms establish rules, resolve conflicts, and ensure equal workload among team members. We spent much of our class time discussing norms to ensure everyone has a say in how our team will be run and the expectations we will hold. We also began to look at the typical roles that are needed leading up to and during the competition. We filled out an online form to decide what roles most interest us.
August 13-19, 2024
During the first two weeks of school, we were introduced to the BEST robotics competition. We spent most of the class learning about the competition. Our teacher explained the different sections, the general rules, and how our school has done in the past. As a class, we discussed what led to past classes' success and the things that held back previous classes. We did this to learn from their mistakes and build off their success. During this time, we also voted on team leads, Elena and Hunter were voted to take the roles.