FIRST Team 1432

Summer Program

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:39:06 -0600

The Marion County Fair is July 8–11, 2010 at the Oregon State Fair grounds. We will be meeting with the legislators and want to make a connection with the Salem team. We will be doing a similar program to what we did at the Multnomah County Fair but we will need more people to participate because its a much bigger venue. Marion County fair draws 40,000 people. We have an option to camp or drive down daily. It is 50 miles so car pooling would be a good idea for drivers and camping a very good idea for those that are willing. This is an event people pay to attend so a commitment is just that, if we get a pass for you to be there you need to be there. We will have the computers running with video,and game simulations. You can find us in the Jackman Long building.

Multnomah County Fair

Sat, 29 May 2010 21:00:00 -0600

Watch for us on TV tonight. We were interviewed by KATU today. They took pictures of the robots, interviewed Chase and then Alan. It was a very busy and sucessfull day at the county fair today. We had many visitors and several takers for a chance to drive the robot. You should come by and see us we have 2 more days. In case you've forgotten its at Oaks Park from noon till 7PM. The Lego League Team Zip also were kept very busy. All in All it was a great day.

We did have some trauma to the robot when one of the test drivers ran it through the goal, and then there was the one who tried to get the robot to go forward and backward at full speed at the same time. That one split the bearings. There were many exciting moments. Special thanks to Cameron, Chase, and Thomas for staying the whole day.

Multnomah County Fair

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:23:00 -0700

The fair is over and it was a wild ride! Thanks to Cameron, Chase, and Thomas for all of their hard work! We learned a lot and have much to discuss at the next team meeting. We made some great contacts too. We talked to a teacher from Umatilla that was so impressed with what she saw she plans to go back and start a team at their school. The Lego team Zip were great! It really worked well having both ends of the program there for people to see and made explaining what FIRST was all about much easier. The kids loved driving the robots! Some of those little ones were really good! The treads on robot 7 were shredded by the end of day 2 and the gorilla tape fix was gone several times on day 3. We discovered we need bigger batteries for this kind of activity though, Thomas, Chase, and Cameron would make a NASCAR pit crew proud with how fast they can change a battery now. You should have been there, though you might have cringed, when the little kids tried to take out the cast iron fence with the robot. Though the most hair raising was when brothers each had a robot and decided to see who's robot was stronger. The idea that these are not Battle Bots was difficult for people to understand. But they survived and so did we. It was a great deal of fun and the fair would like us to come back next year and maybe have a competition with other teams. We hope Team Zip will do it again as well. It would really be fun if they could have a Lego scrimmage and we could have a FRC scrimmage. The Bar-B-Que was going every day and some really good food was enjoyed by all. We sent several potential team members to the Gresham team and the Lake Oswego team and had a lot of interest in our team as well. Many thanks to Thomas's parents, Debby and George for being there every day and all day helping out, making buttons and handing out literature. Many, many, thanks to you all!!! Many thanks to Ed Charles worth for all his help setting up.

2010 Competition Update

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:47:00 -0700

Our second day of qualification rounds was a mixed bag. The robot was able to compete in all of its matches, however we continued to experience serious mechanical malfunctions which limited its functionality. Unfortunately, we did not qualify or get selected for the semifinals. The robot has been packed up will be returned to the shop. We are currently watching the semifinal eliminations, which is very exciting.

2010 Oregon Regional Competition

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:13:00 -0700

Here we are at the AutoDesk FIRST Robotics Oregon Regional Competition. So far we have had to deal with a few problems, but the robot competed well and we have done well in some of our matches. We are currently fixing a broken axel, but otherwise the robot is in workiong order. As of our most recent match, we were ranked in the middle of the pack. Tomorrow we will find out if we will advance to the semifinals, so stay tuned!

2010 Match Statistics

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:42:00 -0700

Below are the results from the 2010 Autodesk Oregon Regional qualification matches that Team 1432 participated in. Team 1432 and our scores are in bold.

Match	Red Alliance			Blue Alliance			R Score	B Score
1	3292	1432	956	847	2002	2542	1	2
15	2130	3145	1432	957	2471	488	2	4
26	955	2951	1595	2865	1432	1983	3	5
33	2192	2147	1432	956	2550	1700	2	0
47	360	3024	2990	2898	1432	2517	2	2
59	2605	3013	1432	3165	1510	3188	0	3
70	1571	1778	368	1432	2522	3311	1	2
78	1432	2922	2557	2374	3223	2910	3	7
87	1432	948	955	2046	3131	997	2	8

Field Elements Under Construction

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:36:00 -0700

We're currently in the process of building the key field elements, including the tower and the bumps (which we have christened the Viper Landing Tubes). Amusingly, the carpet we got for free to cover the carpeted field elements is what can only be described as... hideous. It has bowling pins. and bowling balls. and "Strike" randomly written throughout.

Parents' meeting synopsis

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:30:00 -0700

The following is a message from PR Mentor Rebecca LohKamp summarizing the Parents' Meeting of Thursday the 14th.

We opened with introductions of the Team mentors and then the parents who also told us whom their child was, what grade they were in, what school they went to, and what experience - if any- they had in robotics. We then watched a video (address to follow) that explains what FRC and FIRST is. It's about a 6 minute video but explains a lot and worth watching ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig0xwD4MyT0&NR=1 ). The only correction I have to make about it is that there isn't $8 million in scholarships, this year there are $12 million for participants on FIRST teams.

After a question and answer session we moved on to our most pressing need: Food.
Our most pressing issue at this point is the food issue. Most high school students eat little or nothing for breakfast and even less at lunch. By the time they get to robotics they're starving and when we are asking them to stay late, think and work with power tools we need to feed them. Every night we provide dinner for the team. I can't be the only one providing meals for 15 teenagers and 6 adults. We need each of you to volunteer to provide food for one night each week, Monday through Sunday. You don't have to cook it. You can buy pizza if you want and bring juice or soda. I have provided the meals every night so far, last night we had tomato soup and garlic bread, tonight we had noodle casserole. Last year Jesse's folks brought taco salad, somebody brought lasagna, its wide open. I then sent a calendar around for people to sign up on. The Crawfords (Jesse's parents) have signed up for Thursday nights. The Hastings signed up for Wednesday, Sheri Bandes (Jacob's mom) is providing dinner on the 16th of February, and Tony G is bringing Pizza on the 12th of February. Danyelle Web is cooking this Saturday at the Knights of Pythias so there are still lots of open days looking for someone to volunteer.

We then took a general look at the calendar. There has been a big focus on Kick Off and Build season, but, while that is a really important part of the program this is a year round program and there is a lot more than just building the robot to do.. For those of you who don't know this is a very expensive program to be part of. An absolutely minimal, basic program costs between $6,000 and $10,000. Our next fundraiser is February 13th and is a Valentines Dinner. We are charging $10 per plate and are offering a chicken entree or a manicotti entree. Tickets can be bought on the web site. How many of you have been to the team website? If we can sell 200 or more plates we have been promised a matching grant for the money we raise at this event.
Jesse, team captain and senior at Cleveland High School, did a presentation on the team website which can be found at http://www.team1432.org/ The Valentines dinner tickets can be ordered on the peach colored line directly below the Swooshed Beaver.

At the bottom of the page you will find a link to Member Resources. By clicking on the Member Resources you will be brought to a page that has helpful links to US FIRST, Oregon FIRST, the Yahoo group - for sending e-mails to everyone at once, and mandatory paperwork for the team. Under the links is the calendar. Probably one of the most important pages for parents and team members to know how to access. Please take a look at it as soon as possible. You will note a number of dates on the calendar that do not have a name on them. This means that no parent has signed up to bring food yet. Please send Rebecca an e-mail with the dates you will be bringing food.

After showing us all the bells and whistles we discussed the more complete calendar.
February 22 the robot has to be complete because it ships on the 23rd which is also the date the Welcome baskets have to be done. If you hadn't heard our team really scored a coo by being asked by the Regional Director, out of all the teams in Oregon, to coordinate the making of "Welcome Baskets" for the out of state teams coming to the Oregon Regional this year. If you know anyone we could write to to request a product donation, or if you would like to ask them yourself, we are making 35 baskets. We are in fact making miniature apple boxes to use for the baskets. There were lots of questions as to what it was - the kind of product we're looking for. The truth is anything. There are lots of candy companies right here in Portland, Van Dynnes, Godiva, Michelle's. There is also Reeser's Fine Foods, Beaver mustards, several chip companies, then there are the apple growers, pear growers, filbert growers, Tillamook Cheese, Blue Heron Cheese, Rogue River Cheese, Tillamook County Smoker, and it doesn't have to be food, how about hand sanitizer, wet ones, pocket kleenex. We will take anything and we will cheerfully put a catalogue or flier from the company in the box with their donation and we will list them on our website and put up a link to their company's website.

Competition is of course March 4-5-6. We need to be sure that every student has their school work done and their grades up so that they can go to the competition. There are in fact 3 different permission slips that have to be signed for attending the competition. This Segment was presented by Fritz Staats. FIRST has a release form that has to be filled out and signed everytime someone attends a FIRST sponsored activity. You signed one for kick off and you will need to sign one for the competition as well. In addition to that the school requires a school permission slip. The permission slip from the school not only needs to be signed by you but by everyone of your student's teachers, and they are only going to sign if your student is current on their homework and have adequate grades to allow them to miss school. So please remind your student that if they want to go to competition with the team they have to have their school work done! The third permission slip is for the team. In order for your student to travel in a car with anyone other than a parent there has to be a signed permission slip provided by the team that specifically states where we are going and that you are aware that your child will be riding in someone else's car and has your permission to do so. Anyone can of course come to the competition with their own parent or on Saturday but it would be a shame to miss out on the whole team experience. We would like to send you all e-mails to remind you of what's going on but for many of you we don't have addresses.

There will be of course another fund raiser in March - date to be announced after we know if we are going to the World Championship. In April we will be hosting a dinner for the members of the Reedwood Friends Church. They have been very supportive of the team throughout the years and never charged us for the use of their building for our fundraisers and they have even let us practice driving the robot on their carpet. Might I also say they didn't charge us when we left a divot in the wall from the robot crashing into it. 75% of their membership is currently unemployed and fixing them dinner is the least we can do. The date of the dinner is of course dependent on whether or not we go to the Championship. The Championship is April 15-16-17 in Atlanta, Georgia. Is it possible that we'll go? It is more likely this year than it ever has been before. It is so possible Mr. Swafford is scared because he'll have all of the paperwork to do. The cost of going back to Nationals is $30,000. If we win our way to the Championship we wil have to do some really heavy fund raising after the regionals.

April also begins the recruitment season for next year's team. Recruitment involves middle school visitations. Again we need students who can speak plainly, well, and have their school work done and grades up so they can miss school to do this. April 29th is the team awards dinner - details to be announced after we know whether or not we go to the Championship.

May is the Multnomah County Fair. They are planning on making us a big draw item. We have to have multiple robots in drivable condition as well as presentation materials, speakers, videos, hand outs, and pins to just name a few things, which means on top of everything else we are doing after competition we have to get things ready for the fair. We will also need to schedule your students to man the booth at the fair. These robots are worth $10,000 apiece and we can't afford for one of them to go missing- not to mention we signed an agreement that we wouldn't sell any of the hardware they gave us and if someone steals one they won't be doing it to keep it intact. We also have a PTA visitation in May to show off the robot and tell them about our program.

June begins the process all over again with our yearly planning session, team elections, and goal setting.

That's a year in the life of a FRC team in a nut shell.

At this point Gabe asked if we could show the parents this year's game so we watched the video of the animation of this year's game. You will find it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iheq7yar5c4

We discussed the game for a while and then we closed with the fact that we were the little team that shouldn't be because we are up against teams sponsored by people like Daimler, Chrysler of Canada, Dupont, we sponsor ourselves. To close we watched the wining Chairman's Award video and then we looked at in what ways we were similar to the winning team. (Video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8MT7pSRXtg)
They are a team composed of students from many different schools, many of their students are from distressed backgrounds, they make their own robot, they have awesome mentors and so do we, the mentors are very proud of what the students accomplish, they help others and so do we, they are spreading the word about FIRST - we go to the Union Labor Day picnic each year with one of our robots to show it off and spread the word about FIRST, they share their experiences - we mentored two rookie teams last year, they have robotics classes during the off season we do too but want to do more, they have mentors that are alumni - we have 5 alumni mentors currently, they have an enthusiastic team and so do we.

Our differences: They are sponsored by Dupont, they have a lot of out of robotics activities for fun, they give out personal recognition awards at competition - we have never done that before but even before we saw this video we had decided to do just that this year, they have several yearly service projects, they have an award winning website, they have a huge amount of parental support.

This is where we are and this is where we're going. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8MT7pSRXtg&NR=1

If you want to see another winning video, you can look at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwmqShpkmgA&NR=1

Build Progress

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:02:00 -0700

As of today, we've finalized our robot design and are beginning construction of the chassis and drivetrain. We'll be going back to an older design this year, which will be a nice return to comfortably familiar territory. Things are proceeding well, we're happy to say.

Competition Manual

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:26:00 -0700

When brainstorming design ideas, keep in mind that there are many rules governing what the robot can and cannot do. Please make sure to familiarize yourself with the Breakaway Rules, particularly Section 8 (The Robot). Below are some of the major rules which we will have to be aware of. This is by no means a comprehensive list, so before implementing anything major, check the official rules.

The maximum dimensions of the robot are 28 x 38 x 60 inches
The maximum weight of the robot is 120 lbs
The robot may only be in possession of one ball at a time
Balls in the robot's possession must be touching the ground at all times
Balls must be no farther than three inches beyond the robot's bumpers
Bumpers are mandatory

2010 Competition Announced: Breakaway

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:30:00 -0700

This morning, FIRST officially announced the 2010 FIRST Robotics Competition challenge, called Breakaway. This year's competition entails various new challenges, including climbing dividers and lifting robots onto platforms. There is also the standard ball manipulation component. Find out more about this year's competition by watching the 2010 game animation or kickoff video, available from NASA's robotics page. Stay tuned for information detailing our upcoming meeting schedule and other important information.

2010 season funding

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:25:00 -0700

Unfortunately, we are very short on funds for the 2010 competition season. We fully intend to participate, but may not be able to if we are not able to secure over $3000 very quickly. We are thus urgently seeking donations, both from individuals and from businesses. You can donate via credit card at the Contribute page, or hit Contact Us if you're interested in a sponsorship. Thanks for the help, jc

Awards Dinner

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 20:43:00 -0600

On August 15th we held our annual Awards Dinner. Over pizza we presented medals to team members and discussed the triumphs of the season.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors, without whom we couldn't have competed this year:

The M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust
The McGuire Bearing Company
Boeing
The Order of Knights of Pythias
Platt Electric
Intel
Hankin's TrueValue Hardware

We'd like to extend a special thanks to Deb Mumm-Hill, who helped us secure the last-minute funding to participate.

This season has been a fantastic one for our team. We created one of the best robots in our history, we continued our upward trend in the regional rankings, and we gained so many new experiences. There were definitely challenges - but challenges are part of building robots, and we overcame them - and we like to think we overcame them with style. It's been a great year.

We look forward to the 2010 competition season.

J. B. Crawford, Team Captain

Robotics Wiki

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:13:00 -0600

In addition to the new website just launched, we’ve also been working on a new Robotics Wiki. The wiki currently has some comprehensive information about FIRST, FRC, and our team, but we’ll be adding more in the near future — if there’s something more you’d like to see, let us know. Stay tuned!

New Website!

Wed, 27 May 2009 10:55:00 -0600

Me and Jacob Bandes-Storch are proud to introduce team1432.org v2.0 — Now with 40% more shiny!