Pre-Kick Off 2012

The week before Kick-Off 2012 spent by prepping our build space, prepping our lives, and getting organized for a brand new activity at Kick Off -- Team PyroTech led a first time ever Human Player Game at Kick Off available to all NC teams.  It was crazy!

Summary of Week 1

First of all: we survived, one way or another, the first week of 6 in the build season -- yay!

Despite the illnesses, we've made a lot of progress.  We:

• Have a working robot!  It moves...
• Talked to an FTC team to see how an FTC robot works, its capabilities, and its components.
• Got all of the electronics working with each other
  
• Finished the inventorying and ordered 1 replacement part
• Ordered our FIRST Choice order from AndyMark
• Placed an order for bumper fabric/new CIMS, and some new batteries from AndyMark 
  
• Total cost our team has spent so far for getting the Lair ready and parts:  Approx $1700
• Total hours worked the first week after build:  18ish
• Added another consulting mentor (Justin:  Labview)
• Figured out our top strategies:
  

1. robot mechanism to move robot around
2. robot mechanism to put tubes on pegs (either single post or claw)
   
3. automation first 15 seconds
4. mini-bot

We also went from everyone brainstorming together to having 4 defined teams for this week:

Electronics/Programming:  Goal:  Get all sensors working and be able to read them and control them with Labview

Scott:  Elise, Zak, Christian, Kevin

CAD/Arm Design:  Goal:  Design the arm so we can order any extra motors by early this week and rest of design by the end of the week

Doug:  Josh, Clark, Keegan, Carl

Chassis/Drive Train:  Goal:  Decide on wheels/gearbox, talk about other areas of the chassis, build bumpers, mini-bot deployment?

Danny:  Fred, Megan, Robby, Ben

I think right now our limitations are:  no laptop with Labview working and waiting on the arm design.