What does your team do during the summer?
 

Our team's summer program is about to get kicked off tonight. Like in previous years, we're holding a 2 week program in the evenings (so Mentor's can attend). It serves as a great way to get returning students back into it, and to start educating new members. This summer we're planning:

- Micro Bugs for each student to build and take home
- The creation of a Rube Goldberg machine, where the students will have the chance to build sections of it in small groups
- A mousetrap car competition
- Guest speakers, professionals in web design
- Standard team/FIRST intro and information
- Discussions on what the team can do to increase PR efforts
- Standard ice breakers to help everyone get to know each other
- Introduction to programming using Alice


So, what does everyone else do with their team over the summer? We're always looking for new ideas for next year!

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Summer? We started back to school today!

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

We're doing several things.

First of all, education.
A few weeks ago we had a five-day summer workshops for all the new people joining the group (to prepare them to offseason events and 2013 Season). We had three courses: Building (a combination of Mechanics and Electronics, in our team both are adressed as one. In that course students learn to build a basic robot, a simple drive train with an additional mechanism, this time a piston that acted as a ball-kicker), Programming (JAVA basics, OOP, and robot programming in JAVA) and CAD (use of Autodesk Inventor).
In addition in the later half of August we will haev some lectures for the whole team (we can't do anything until then because our school is closed since all of it's employees are on vacation).

Secondly, work and preparation.
During the past two weeks we worked on our 2012 robot, fixing it and improving it for the offseason event we were supposed to have on August and was recently delayed to October. We made sure the new students were occupied all the time, so they gain experience. This too will continue in late August, but on a smaller scale.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

this summer 2175 is:

• Code Training sessions
• CAD Trainging classes
• Designing and constructing a new DS
• Creating a new pit
• returning 2011 robot to working condition for demos

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Exploding Bacon is spending this week with a group of 30 2nd to 5th graders getting them excited about all kinds of science, math and robotics.

Today we did hands on centers about physics, built marshmallow cannons and started teaching simple engineering design and programming. We have Chemistry, Simple Machines, Wind and Solar power and then on Friday we have a mini Lego competition.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

This summer were moving.
Again.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Funny, that's our plan for next summer! Our new build space is actually "planned" to be completed in January, but we told the school there was no way we'd be moving in until after the season was over (We currently have a space off-campus) :)

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Don't worry Ed, I've been working on this for months. This will be the last time the teams are moving for the foreseeable future. We just finalized plans for the new larger shop.

You will love the space. It will be the envy of FIRST!

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Summer camp for 180 kids.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

It's funny that no one has mentioned sleep. :p
Usually no one misses it until the last few weeks of build season.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Here is our summer project goals. We didn't get everything accomplished but we did a lot and we still have two weeks to get a bit more done.

http://goo.gl/whQcB

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

This summer like last summer team 842 competed in AUVSI's Robosub competition. In this competition teams have to build and underwater robot and have it complete an obstacle course autonomously without any human interference at all. Here's our teams website for the competition as well as the competition's website itself. The team's there are as gracious as FIRST teams and we recommend everyone takes a chance to look into it :D .

Our Website:
https://sites.google.com/site/falcon...csauvteam/home

Robosub's Website:
http://www.auvsifoundation.org/found...tions/robosub/

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Unfortunately, a good number of our summer projects never seem to get done...

I've been kinda out of it since I am preparing to leave to go to college, but in the past we have designed and built a swerve drive and a t-shirt cannon. We also do some CAD and programming training, demos, and sponsor presentations. For the past couple years, we built a robot that dumps candy to drive in the 4th of July parade. Today we just did a demo at the public library for a bunch of elementary school kids.

This is the first year I believe that we have done a programming project during the summer; my brother is leading a small group trying to make a targetting system for Rebound Rumble specifically but will hopefully be applicable in future games. I think they are still working on identifying the hoops. Thanks to everyone who explained their own vision systems on CD.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Summer:

In the FRC land, we go to the IGVC mini-tournament, MARC, IRI, and Kettering Kickoff. We finished all planned robot improvements for IRI, and ran new drivers at IGVC and MARC, with a new operator at IRI. New drivers will drive at the Kettering Kickoff, too.

We've also been taking the robot to a bunch of schools for demonstration. Most of the kids love it when we shoot foam basketballs.

We also have some *SUPER SECRET* design ideas we came up with during the last season that we want to prototype. Sometimes, the designs Bryan comes up with are just awesome.


We started talking about VRC about a week ago. I go to Kettering now. Kettering has a co-op program, so I will be at work during the summer and winter, and at school during spring and fall. Bryan (BJC) is on the opposite schedule, and one of us will be available for design review or consultation during the VRC and OCCRA seasons (which are almost entirely student-led).

Speaking of VRC, we're having a meeting sometime this week, and we're going to talk about the design process, and we might do a nice high-level game analysis before we properly start talking about robot objectives (but, as usual, individuals have already jumped way ahead and are already drawing concepts in their notebooks). It's really nice to see some of the current students put in the effort to build good VRC robots.

We're also going over code architecture of both my 2012 FRC and 2011 VRC/OCCRA code with the prospective programmers, gearing up for the VRC season. The hope is that they understand the various possible ways to architect embedded software (especially when compared to "traditional" software), and write "good code" in the future. As always, we take existing code architecture or entire blocks and build on it for the new robots.

All of that is just from the engineering side. I'm sure the PR/Marketing guys are busy writing newsletters, preparing for or actually presenting sponsorship presentations and demonstrations, and a bunch of other great stuff.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

A Combustion summer is pretty busy...

-A variety of visits to half a dozen or so local (anywhere from 10 minutes away to that 4 hours) summer camps.
-Running the pilot year of our week-long Rocket Camp (30 kids, middle school) and the third year of Science Camp (120 kids, elementary school)
-Training in animation and web development for our team and any others interested
-CAN and 2CAN developmental work. Gotta get ready for beta testing!
-Formation of a booster club. Our school is tired of having to deal with our money
-Complete redesign of our website with expanded content (an annual event)
-Operation PEDRO. Building a t-shirt shooter at the request of our school's cheerleaders
-Adopting a Street with our city
-Visiting and thanking our sponsors, we couldn't exist with out them
-Getting in contact with our politicians, being recognized on the state, parish and city level
-Several of our students and alumni also have summer internships with a few or our sponsors

(And personally this summer included the Dean's List Trip which included meeting to FIRST staff, vomiting in Dean Kamen's house, giving a speech 20 minutes later, talking to suppliers, etc. )

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

The team just finished its free robotics academy in the school library for 8th graders from local feeder schools. After that one week academy, they were actually able to gain enough interest from some of their students to help them host their next academy, Kalani Robotics Academy, which features students grades k-8, in four different classes, Letry, WeDo Lego, Vex, and FLL.

Five recently graduated seniors also took the team fundraiser, Bristlebots, and started their own business, Bristlebots LLC, which they hope to develop into a program that not only helps to support the teams in Hawaii but also provide all FIRST teams with another, fun, means of fundraising (in addition to the LED lightbulb). Bristlebots is a small toothbrush robot (for individual kits) that are for ages 3-103. Discounts are available for larger orders (classroom kits, etc).

A mentor that helps out several teams on the island also invited Kalani and Mililani to Hickam Air Force Base, to flew the KC-135 Simulator (every student had a chance to take off and land). In return, the team demonstrated their Rebound Rumble Robot and T-Shirt Cannon.

The students have also worked with carrying out parts they designed in April, just after Championships and are striving to finish a prototype chassis by the end of fall. They should be very prepared for the next FRC season.

And of course, they are currently building their VEX robots for the next few competitions, as well as working on recruiting new individuals for this amazing program.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Nothing? Does that count?

In the summer, everyone is in a state of lul. The leadership/mentors always WANT to do something, but things rarely ever materialize. This is more of a collective fault rather than the fault of one specific group of people.

However, school starts on Monday and things will immediately kick off. This includes a busy VEX season (potentially 10+ teams), off-season FRC, and of course, recruitment of new members.

- Sunny G.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Just ordered a big pile of RC truck equipment. We're going to be building and racing a pair of RC trucks among the team.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

I support this plan.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Sleep.


Summer is pretty slow for our team (against my will, of course). It's just a huge time of relaxation and time away from the long stressful hours of being an FRC team, and lets the teacher mentors recharge. Although we do play Capture the Flag and LaserQuest....

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

This summer, the PVC Pirates are planning and running the RoboExpo, a huge exhibition featuring multiple FRC, FTC, and FLL teams! It'll be August 18th at the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua, NH. If your team is interested in demo-ing your robot at the event, please email me at clutch1058@gmail.com.

We're also rebuilding our chairbot, which is a sofa chair bolted to the chassis of our 2003 robot.

Lastly, we're preparing for Savage Soccer, a VRC event hosted by WPI this fall. It's a great event to train new members.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Being a rookie team were gunna build a new robot for same game but learning how to use wheel encoders super shifters and how to make a an arm for future references we're hoping that we will be able to master these for future games.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Solid Works Classes- Saturdays
Java Classes- Tuesdays and Thursdays
Electronics Classes- Wednesday
All open to the public and other teams

A dozen or so outreach events

Helping other 15 other FLL teams and 2 other FRC teams grow

Built Motorized Cart/Prototype testing robot

Learning How to work with arduino to make small robots

Re designing websight

Presentations to existing sponsors and new sponsors obtained from outreach events

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Since May we have been meeting almost every week to train members and new mentors.

Mondays are Solidworks and Drivetrain design
Tuesdays are VEX Team meetings
Thursdays are Pneumatics workshops

Raising money and finding new machines/tools to purchase..

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

In case anyone is interested...

Here is a video of the truck chassis selected by one of the coaches who knows way more about RC cars than I do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHIiyA-s7sI

We got the unassembled version, so students will have the joys of building everything, right down to pressing in bearings and greasing up gears. The complete CAD model of the chassis is available through HPI, so replacement parts will be machined out of plastic or aluminum in-house and upgrades (arduino? BB RS540/encoder back-shaft?) can be modeled and built exactly to fit.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

You certainly got some very expensive (but very fun to bash) trucks.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Well, we didn't get the whole brushless motor RTR kit, we're putting in much less expensive motors and controllers into that chassis.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Our team has been quite busy this summer. We have ...
1. Retrofitted our practice bot's drive train to be more reliable and replaced the shooter to be more accurate
2. Build new structures to aid in doing the electrical work for IRI
3. Resurrected the 2003 Technokat/Mark Koors Ball Drive robot
4.Working on a different drive base
5. Working on a speedy robot
6. Repairing and updating our new years ball
7. Prototyping!!!!

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

summer:

well are team pass out letters to get sponsors and we went to the linden mill days and we did some fundraising at Bd Mongolian Grill, maker faire and now getting ready to go to the taste of fenton.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

Need pics and vids asap. Always wanted to see that in action.

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

I'll try to get some at our next meeting on Tuesday

Re: What does your team do during the summer?
 

The team I've just joined, 1405, has a very busy summer:

• We ordered parts for, and are now constructing, our own CNC Mill
• Working on upgrading the 2012 robots for the Rah Cha Cha Ruckus in October
• Working on a new gearbox/wheel housing design for use on future robots (in place of buying gearboxes)
• CAD training classes for incoming students
• Creating a 2010 style robot for soccer based demos (Mentor quote: "I want to be able to make half field shots. We're the half time show!")

That's all that comes to mind right now. We've got ourselves a very busy summer.