FIRST Team 1551

Our team member Josh built a boat during quarantine!

The governor mentioned one of our student members in his daily email today. Josh Gleason. That kid's going places. Apparently in a boat! ____________________...Continue reading

Okay, so we're not exactly ready, but we're awfully close!

Meeting day one post-kickoff: we have a strategy, a list of mechanisms, a general block-out of packaging, a good idea of how each mechanism will work, plans for upgrades if we pull this off, plans for downgrades if we miss spec, and have started prototyping. We've even done most of the math. :D

With heavy hearts, we share the sad news that Dr. Woodie Flowers has passed away. He will be greatly missed by the entire FIRST community. A message about Woodi...e can be found on the Inspire Blog: https://www.firstinspires.org/com/inspire/dr-woodie-flowers We invite you to share notes of condolences and reflections about Woodie in a comment on the Inspire blog post, on social media using the hashtag #WoodieFlowers, or on the Memorial Fund page (linked in the Inspire blog above).

I finally got a decent video of our climb! (Though it wasn't our drivers driving, it still looks pretty good!)

A few comments about things that are actually important to me (El Coach Mr. Freivald), rather than my usual flippant jibberjabber...about this year's robotics season. 1. Some people have asked if this is our "best season ever." The answer to that is both "no" and "yes." This year we went undefeated in qualifiers, but didn't quite take first seed (by two cargo over ten games!), while in 2010 we didn't sweep the qualifiers, but took first seed and were tournament champions. Th...e distinction is irrelevant to me. This year we had different kids and almost entirely different mentors than 2010, and the 2019 team really rocked it. The past is the past, and even when it was awesome, it's not as awesome as kids being awesome now. 2. Several people have reached out to me to express their sympathies that, despite our performance, 1551 didn't win any awards. Here's the thing...I don't care. And if I've done my job right, my kids don't care either. Seven-ish years ago I was the keynote speaker at an academic awards banquet, and the theme of my speech was predicated on a Richard Feynman quote doing the great thing is its own reward, and if you already have the reward, then you don't need an award. There's some value in some forms of self-promotion, and there's definite value in developing the public expression skills necessary to speak intelligently and effectively with the judges, but award-seeking too often strikes me as self-aggrandizement, and many team behaviors toward that end leave a bad taste in my mouth. I have no interest in winning a safety award...I want to teach my kids to be safe. I have no interest in winning a design award...I want to design and build the best robot we can. I have no interest in winning an engineering inspiration award...I want my team to inspire themselves and other kids to become engineers and scientists and regardless of their field active contributors to the betterment of humanity. And so forth. So while winning this or that award might be a nice feather in a cap, it's really nothing more than that. I don't want my students to pursue awards, I want them to pursue excellence. So if 1551 wins awards when they compete, cool. And if they don't, that's cool, too.

Several people have asked me about the live stream for the competition today and tomorrow. You can find both channels here: https://www.techvalleyfirst.org/index.php?page=webcast And you can find our schedule at https://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2019nytr ...though FIRST schedules are always approximate.... Go, 1551!

Quite a few people asked for our electrical diagram templates today, so we put them, along with this year's robot as an example, on our website.

The Hatch Burglar burgles hatches.

Scenes from build season, end of week three.

I sent this to Ryan Dognaux to explain how you can turn any pneumatic cylinder into a continuously-variable length gas spring. Full extension and full retraction are at 100% F = P*A, while any middle position seems to be not quite so strong. We haven't done extensive testing on it yet, but it's going to work great for DESTINATION: DEEP SPACE.