Team 1538 (The Holy Cows)

This is pretty cool. Admin on day 1 after I have joined the infamous Holy Cows (god must love us). Blog, I write about my day. We have a nice 100 pound robot in the makings. There are muffins on sale ($1 a piece). Exciting.

I had to drop soccer to join this club, but all is well. We beat the freshmen at soccer every time anyway.

For the past few days, the RC (Robot Controller) has been crashing. I tried EVERYTHING to figure out what the error was; I even commented out the entire “Default_Routine()” function, but it still crashed. I finally resorted to pulling out all the “digital i/o” pwm cables, in a desperate attempt. I did not really expect this, out of all things, to do anything…. but it worked!

I ended up un-commenting all my code in the “Default_Routine()”, and ran it successfully. So why did it not like digital input? Well… it turns out that i am incapable of reading directions (like every other engineer in the world), and didnt add all the code so the encoders could initialize correctly.

I guess the moral of the story is to read the instructions…. (Haha, I doubt that is going to happen… :P)

++<3; /* more love to you all */

~ Amanda Canyon

/* Director of Programming and Electrical */

It seems that time has flown by so fast that it’s insane. There is a very short amount of time we ship our robot away and head up that way ourselves. We have been making awesome progress and I am confident that we will be well prepared for the competition.

See you in Vegas.(I wonder if what happens there really does stay there because if we win I hope people here will know about it)

wow it’s really comeing close I don’t really understand how time can fly this fast it feels like there should be at least twelve days left, But anyways as far as I can see the robot is comeing along great. Also it looks like we are gonna get this thing out right before the deadline so tension is gonna get high and people are gonna start getting really sour, I myself am going to do my best to stay out of the crossfire and work as hard as I can doing whatever I can. It seems that I am torn in two and i don’t know what to do I came here wanting to be a programmer and now I kinda want to be in public relations I think I should decide soon…… but I guess this is the end of my first post well I hope to post many more soon 

stay classy San Diego!!!!!!!

Shane Adams

So as the end of build season draws near the robot is starting to come together. We have our cahsee, claw, and lift systems built. Soon everything will be put together and ready to go. I am currently designing our control board which will operate all the robot’s systems. The design should be done by tomorrow and as soon as we get the parts in for it the control board will be built.

There are only 15 days until we have to wrap up our operations and ship off our beloved robot Daisy.  Parting with a robot on the day of Ship is much like saying goodbye to a loved one.  This robot has been the creation of our hard efforts over the last six weeks and it is not just the hard work and design that we have given time to, but the actions of the team itself, the relationship among the team members outside of the main goal, that has effected us the greatest.  Yesterday Amanda, Brittany, David and I drove up to Irvine and presented in the Sally Ride Science Festival at University of California, Irvine.  The experience was absolutely amazing!  I think we all got a lot closer to each other as a team, and we also got to present to young girls which was an experience in itself.

We were part of the street fair section of the Festival and presented to over 200 girls and adults alike.  We brougt our Aim High robot, Bessy, along with our VEZ robot and a LEGO Mindstorm robot to show kids how cool both small and large robots can be.

Hopefully we will get more opportunities to influence our community in the future, because yesterday rocked!

Peace and Love,

Cheyenne

It is nearing the end of this journey we call build season here in FIRST, and I must say, things are ramping up towards Ship Day.  Since build season last year our team has been making efforts to improve our community outreach and to become more involved, and I think we have accomplished many goals.  Right now I am getting a team together to help write the Chairman’s submission and it’s fun looking back and seeing how far we have come as a team.

I hope all teams do well in the coming weeks, in regard to building and completing their robots and maybe we will see some familiar faces at competition!

Peace and Love,
Cheyenne

Just felt like adding a blog. So, I missed a couple days, I was busy with internship, work and tutoring. So we’re still working on the design for the arm. We’ve gone through a couple different prototypes, and a couple issues we ran into were things like, the weight of the claw was too much for the motor. It looks like there may be issues with it even at the last minute, because it seems like it wouldn’t be very predictable. Hopefully we will come up with a design that will allow consistency. Anyway, thats all for now

Well, here I am, 4th week of build system, and I have been building every chance I get (although, I do have to do my internship and a physics class, so I don’t get to as much as I have). We’ve been working on the Transmissions and Chassis, and then the mast is working (you betcha, long hard hours went into that piece of aluminum) Oh, and btw, I was a victim of a Random Act of Management. Completely and utterly Random.  Thats why I’m writing (its all Amanda’s fault)

One of the coolest ways to get in contact with your community is through outreach.  This season may prove to be the most successful for The Holy Cows in aspects of community outreach.  The fact is that The Holy Cows are not just a group of people, we are a team and we love our community.  If we can influence our community even a small amount…we have made a change for the better.

This year I hope that everyone on the team will participate in a part of our efforts.  We hope to change society and push humanity to a greater future.  My question to everyone who reads this: What are you doing to improve your community and influence the future for the better?

 Love and Peace,

~Cheyenne