OK everyone, I posted this in the forum already, but here's some more stuff...  The Chairman's Award is DUE before midnight on Tuesday, February 21st.  Here's some info......

Here it is! Go to the forum or your email inbox and fill this out and then email it back to me (you don't need to email me the pictures and descriptions just the word doc that says Design Matrix).  In the first column are criteria or categories and the second is where you write the importance of those criteria from 1 to 3.  1 is not very important, 2 is important, and 3 is very important.  Then under each robot rate how well that particular robot meets each criteria from 1 to 10.  1 is not at all and 10 is perfect.  That's it!  Happy hunting.......

Periodically the FIRST team releases team updates when modifications are needed for the Competition Manual, the applicable section will be updated and the revision changed. In order to communicate when changes are made, as well as explanations as needed, we will publish a “Team Update” and post it on the FIRST website. The updates are authored by the Game Design Committee (GDC) and are the official word from FIRST.  Team Updates will be posted weekly on Tuesday and Friday throughout the 2008 FRC season, so be sure to check the page for news.

Team Update #1 is now published and available at http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc/content.aspx?id=450 and listed below:  ...

Okay so, today we did a bunch of things.  To start with we drove the robot in circles until it broke again, always entertaining.  After that we spent a great deal of time going over the five designs that we made.  I think it's safe to say we all found out some things today we had never thought about before.  From herder bots to pincer bots, to pincer herder bots.  Tonight we are refining our current designs and adding some new ones.    The process for voting is going to go something like this.  Tomorrow afternoon I will take all designs that I have and put them up so everyone has a night to look at them and think them over.  Sunday morning I'll put up the design matrix with instructions.  Then everyone needs to email the finished matrix back to me by a reasonable time on Sunday night.  Once I've got all of them I'll average everything and calculate the final scores.  Then hopefully there won't be any close ties for first place and we'll have a final robot design!  If there is a tie we'll have to meet on Monday and work something out, possibly a second design matrix but right now I am not sure how.    You can find the pictures descriptions and documents for the five designs we went over today in the strategies section of the forum (in a few minutes I will post them, they are not up just yet).  Tomorrow you can find the final design list (the ones that will be found in the design matrix on Sunday) in the same place in the forums.  Today and tomorrow I am also attaching drawings to the emails I send out.  Things should be pretty self explanatory once you open them (I will attach instructions…

Our kit of parts robot has taken it's first steps, by remote control!  We are now able to drive it around with a joystick, well sort of.  Steering is a bit of an issue, but just a bit, okay a lot, but hey!  This is awesome!  After building the KOP robot in only three days we now have it running around the room.  It stands on it's own that all who have attended these past meetings deserve a big round of applause for delivering such results so quickly, so congratulations. ...

The FIRST team is holding an Open House for parents and other interested adults on Thursday, Jan. 17 in the Black Box Theatre from 6:30 - 8.  Please urge your parents to come and find out about what we're doing, and how they can help - making meals, snacks, you name it.  ...

Hey guys, we met today to talk about final robot design.  To do this we went over multiple ideas and designs in each robot category (as noted in the team progress report I posted last night)  then slowly over a few hours refined those down to three much more specific categories.  Herder/Defensive, Mouse, and Arm robots were what was left.  For the night we assigned designs.  Each person of the five who have been attending previous and present meetings has made their own design, to be posted and presented tomorrow (I will also post those online tomorrow after they are presented and scanned).  After this is done we plan to spend the rest of the day working on  the playing field, and refining and combining those designs.  Saturday will be a dead day, no meetings or activity, though I may add certain things to the website.  Finally after having slept on it the entire team, all those online and here at the workshop will vote from the presented designs on our final design.  How those online will vote is not yet set in stone, so I will send more details later.  The vote will consist of a design matrix, not a simple choice.  The matrix will include all types of categories from feasibility of build to "Wow" factor and a writing section. I have posted below the audio files from today's meeting, please be sure to listen to them.  Also please be sure to take a look at the following items;  at least looking at all of these is a prerequisite of voting on the final design:- Thurday Meeting Audio Files- Team Progress Report (posted yesterday)- Team Electrical and Programming Reports (posted yesterday)- Team Electrical and Programming Documentation (posted yesterday)- FIRST Competition ManualKnowing this information will be required for your vote…

Thanks to the assistance of John Walthour, our Norwich University mentor, Ryan, Ian, and Michael, the electronics board was completed today and mounted to the Kitbot chassis, which was put together by Lee, Tank, James, and Chris.  We now have an almost completely assembled prototype robot - we can start putting it through its paces before we leave tonight.The model game board is 90% complete - just needs painting.Supplies for the competition track were purchased today.   ...

This last Friday several students, teachers, and mentors including Elaine Parshall, Chris Fitzhugh, Ryan Knopf, Breandan Considine, David Cairns, and John Walthour. We got to see some amazing things; Rudy Guliani spoke, followed by the FIRST chairman and Dean Camon, after which the moment of truth was finally unveiled. After driving back we begun the work or a long and exciting six weeks. All week we will be meeting to coordinate out strategy for the game and begin to design and engineer the robot. Starting with a simple cataloging and inventory of out kit of parts, then moving on to general strategy to find an optimal way to score, each person who attended the meeting will design their own rough idea of the perfect robot tonight. Tomorrow we discuss them and decide what general direction we would like to go. Will this be a fully defensive bot? Will it be a bot dedicated to moving balls on the ground or in the air? These are the general questions we are asking ourselves before beginning any talk of pneumatics and arms. ...

The 2008 competition course animation has been released and is now available here at sjafirst. To view the video go to competition animations and just click play. This year teams compete in "FIRST Override" to build robots that can move 42 inch diameter balls off of, over, and under an "overpass" and across their alliance's finish line. Some different things have been done this year, for instance robots may now be a maximum of 28"x36" and for the first FIRST (no pun intended) bumpers are required on all robots between 2.5 and 8.5 inches above the ground....

Tues, Wed 3 - 6Thur: 6 - 9 Saturday 9 - 4 ...

Need to be ale to quickly acess the contact information for a person?  No problem, just sign in on the home page of sjafirst.com and got to "Quick Contacts" on the left under User Menu.  You can see the Name, username, email, and phone number of all member son the team at a glance....

People present:  Students: (some since 8 a.m.!) Chris, Lee, Tank, Ryan, Nick, Allie, Ian, MichaelMentors: Bryan, Mr. Fickes, John Walthour (Norwich student), Dr. PThings we did:1.  Assembled Kitbot Chassis2.  Cleaned a 20x20 workspace in the automotive workshop for the team's use3.  Kitbot electronics 90% completed4.  Model field constructed (will use BoeBots on it!)5.  Attempted to get C compiler loadedWrite in with your ideas!  We're talking strategies and designs every day. ...