After Season Projects
 

Good (glances at clock) Evening, folks.
I have a very broad-based question for all the teams out there:
In the After-Season, is there anything that you all are working on that includes using anything from FIRST? Maybe a machine to help a disabled person play a sport; or maybe a special robot cart with a tool chest, compressor and lights (like ours this year (c: ); or even just a special cart to put your tool chests on for easy storage?
Team 134 is hoping to put together a website where other teams can share ideas for what to do with all those spinning light covers, or those miles upon miles of extra medical tubing...or maybe those Fisher Price Motors that everyone loves so much?
We figured that letting all those wonderful pieces of technology just gather dust in storage was a waste of time. So: we are asking all of you out there to share your ideas with us. Just tell us about whatever it is that you do with your extra pieces and parts and things and such.
Who knows? If this takes off, you may even give life to a robot on its way to the disassembly bench!
So, Post away, and email us with your ideas!
Jake Gallagher, Team Somethingorother
Pat Roche, Team Captain
Dave Kelly, Team Advisor

Re: After Season Projects
 

We would lile to work with the other Rochester region teams to create a float for the Labor Day parade. I think there was talk of another Rochester exhibition, which would be great. We have a summer picnic and other X-Cat based activities such as getting better with 3D Studio max.

Re: After Season Projects
 

We want to run a competition for college students and future FIRT rookies as well as current FIRST teams. See this thread
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=27317
for more information. We ahven't exactly decided what we will allow from the FIRST kit, and what we will provide in our own.

Re: After Season Projects
 

earlier this year i was designing a robot cart with a raising platform and and extending ramp, but due to a lack of funding, we never built it. maybe we'll save it for next year to help teach new members. either way, it would be a cool way to recycle the kit parts that we havnt used yet.

Re: After Season Projects
 

A few of the other students and I want to start a battle bots team possible using some of the spare parts from the FIRST kit of parts. We have alot of spare parts, we haven't used pnuematics in the past two years, we have six or seven atwood motors, plenty fisher price motors, and some drill motors. And all of the building material we need, after all it would be done in our engineeing shop.I have some mentors interested and the students and I are all for it. This would also get recruitment for our FIRST team. Also gives us time to train all of the newbies in any sub team they want.

Re: After Season Projects
 

Those ideas are great. When you finish your projects, send pictures on over to us so we can use them to start up the website!

Re: After Season Projects
 

My team (or what remains of it) is launching a campagn to keep our team alive...

Aside from CPR, our off season will be devoted to learning, creating training materials, building a test platform for next year's electronic's team, and fixing our cart.

Re: After Season Projects
 

Well with ChiefDelphi you certainly have the best resource available. Other FIRST teams who can help. If nothing else we all have each other.

Re: After Season Projects
 

Is your team really dead or just graduating? o.O

Re: After Season Projects
 

Well so is my team basically, we really need to recuit. I've noticed that many teams also had this problem. Does anyone have any suggestions? I mean all the people I've talked to if they're female they was cute guys on the team then they'll join. And for the males they want hot chicks on the team. We're hopeless both ways!!! (except for one girl, she has a boyfriend already), but HELP! So the other after season projects are going to definitely be fundraising.

Re: After Season Projects
 

Can we trade info? I'll tell you the amazing secret to getting more people on your team if you tell me what everyone left on your team is creating in the off-season. For example: Is there a specific project your team is going to market to get funds next season, like a machine developed to help out a person or business in your community?
Seriously, the only way I've been able to attract people to FIRST is by showing them what it is. You can't just go around telling everyone because there are some "Cool" people in the schools that really don't think FIRST is worth their time because "football is better." Try to get your message out across the town by making something useful for one of the public service groups, like the Police Station or the Fire Department. Sometimes you'll just get someone who didn't even know that the team existed.
That's how almost all of our members joined--word of mouth. I didn't know a thing about FIRST until the end of my freshman year, and I'm sad that I didn't know earlier.

Just to clarify: We're just working on putting together a site to showcase things that teams have made with spare parts and such. You may remember at Kickoff they showed a team that designed a contraption to help a guy in a wheelchair play Bocce so he could join the school Bocce team. We're looking for stuff like that, mainly.
I don't mean for you to stop posting about fund-raising ideas, because those are helpful too, but what we're looking for are the practical uses for old robot parts.

PS--What FIRST guy isn't cute? Take me for example... ;-)

Re: After Season Projects
 

Well, our team does a lot of stuff.

First off is our annual LEGO League Summer Camp, where we take parts of old FLL games, make our own and have elementary kids from around the county play it.

Then we have parades and such where we drive our robots down the street.

After that we start our pre-season machining. Last year we made 20 or so steam engines that work off the robot air compressor that you get in the kit. We're giving them out as awards.

I do marketing. Any questions about our marketing strategies, IM me. I don't want to change the subject on this thread.

I hope this has been helpful!

mandy

Re: After Season Projects
 

We plan to use our fisher price motors to build fake segways as we can not afford real ones. One of them may have a gyro to stabilize but probably just casters. We have never used those motors so we have six in the shop (traded two).

Re: After Season Projects
 

That sounds really cool. I wish I had a segway (or even a custom-made knockoff :P). When you get that done, send me some pics at the email mentioned above!
Anyone else have anything like this they would like to share?

Re: After Season Projects
 

I'm doing a gyro and software balanced fakeway and will be done by mid-May. At the start of the LA regional, we started designing a robot that will show people around a museum in India, that has to ship in a couple weeks. And a few days ago I started next year's shifting transmission design (which is almost done in Inventor) which we will be implementing for an off-season event like IRI. 12.5" Omniwheels may be a possibility as well.

Re: After Season Projects
 

Shifting transmission, eh? o.O that's really cool. If it weren't something that might be a team secret, I'd ask how you're doing it. Know what would be really cool though? Send us the specs of your fakeway whenever you're done with it. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there (like myself) who would love to build one of their own, and that's what Recycled FIRST is going to be about--sharing ingenius ideas that aren't completely competition oriented.

Re: After Season Projects
 

I was wondering if anyone had any good pneumatics projects for someone wanting to learn. That's something I've really wanted to learn, but I've had no oppurtunity. We have this giant stack of Pneumatics equiptment in the back of our room. I'm also building a knockoff of Swampthings hovering robot (thanks for the great design idea).

Our team seems to disappear during the off-season, and then restart a little after school starts. :( something I'm hoping will change this year.

Re: After Season Projects
 

Does any one have some events that they are running. We all have fun at off season competitions. This gives a chance to recruit new menbers by taking them to a competioion and show them what FIRST is all about.

Re: After Season Projects
 

My team is going to hopefully be making a motorized cart if we have the funds. Also we want to try to get a make a small pit. Since this year we just had a few unorganized crates and it was impossible to find the right tool. Lastly if all goes well we will be looking for some sponsors.

Re: After Season Projects
 

A motorized cart would be really cool to see. This year our team made a cart that had a toolbox, lights, a horn, and a compressor build right in. It was really cool.

Re: After Season Projects
 

How about a concurrent season project?

Team 839, Rosie Robotics is also a Lemelson/MIT InvenTeam. What is an InvenTeam you ask? A group of High School students that have come up with an idea for an invention, applied to Lemelson/MIT for an up to $10,000 grant, has been selected as 1 of 10 teams throughout the country (of the over 100 that applied) and are currently in crunch time to prototype our pothole detection apparatus. We are working with 2 companies, who are providing technical assistance, one of which may even buy licensing rights when we finish prove out of the system.

Follow the link to the InvenTeam website.
http://web.mit.edu/invent/www/InvenTeam/

Re: After Season Projects
 

Perfect! This is the kind of stuff we're looking for! Thanks!

Re: After Season Projects
 

Team 1028 is going to try and build a simple and effective robot to show local police video of the inside of a house or building. We will also be working heavily on recruiting and fundraising.

Re: After Season Projects
 

[quote=rforystek]I was wondering if anyone had any good pneumatics projects for someone wanting to learn. That's something I've really wanted to learn, but I've had no oppurtunity. We have this giant stack of Pneumatics equiptment in the back of our room. I'm also building a knockoff of Swampthings hovering robot (thanks for the great design idea).

Our team seems to disappear during the off-season, and then restart a little after school starts. :( something I'm hoping will change this year.[/QUOTE


Not to limit people but i think what we are trying to get out of this post is some ideas like swampthings hovering robot. I know this year our team made our pit from all the PVC we had left over from 2001 and 2002. I know in the past ive heard ideas like a team building a pnuematic machine that crushes soda cans and they gave it to a local recyling center. Thats more along the lines of what we are looking for.....all ideas are still welcome. Please dont hold back criticism on the idea of the site either....this is sorta like the whole CD and FIRST community responding to this idea.

-Thanks

Pat

Re: After Season Projects
 

In the off season, we compete in the BEST Robotics competition. This is a fun competition for or team and a good way to introduce team members to robotics. We are also currently building miniature robotic submarines that grab washers off the bottom of a tank of water and then place them in a bucket.

Re: After Season Projects
 

Just for the record Team 230 was responsible for the Bocce ball mechanism. A couple of our Engineers, Teachers, and Students made it off season last year. I really admire teams that manage to keep momentum in the off season. For the most part we tend to crash following the Championship and by the time FIRST withdrawal hits us we are scattered doing various other summer activities, including work, and do not tend to regroup until the fall. For all of the teams that manage to keep going ... keep up the good work.

http://www.shsrobotics.org

Re: After Season Projects
 

Thanks for the clarification...I'm horrible with remembering the team numbers. Do you think you guys could send us some pictures and/or the system specs for your bocce mechanism?

Re: After Season Projects
 

We use our old robot parts for our ROV(s) (remotly operated vehicle), it's an underwater robot. And we hook our old robot up for demonstrations and stuff. But we don't just work on "robotics". We work on electric cars, trebuchets, and hosting FLL.

Re: After Season Projects
 

I have posted pictures of the bocce shooter and they can be found at:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pi...gle&picid=7467
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pi...gle&picid=7466
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pi...gle&picid=7465

More information will also be posted on the teams website shortly.If anyone wants more information please let me know.


The Bocce shooter
It consists of 3 wooden channels, one for the ball which is 5” wide and two smaller 3” channels in either side to hold the 4 bungees. And a metal block that rides along the inner channel that pushes the ball. It started off as just one wooden block that pushed the ball, with no motors. This was used to first see if it could launch the ball, and after a successful trial, it was then worked on to incorporate motors and switches. It was complicated, to first figure out how to pull the block back, and figured out that a lead screw would work the best. It is locked into the motor and on one end, and to the block at the other. As it turns, it slowly uses the torque from the motor to pull back the block. The lead screw works best, in that it takes a lot of force off of the motor and is thus able to pull the block back. The next problem to figure out was how to release the block from the screw and motor so that the bungees could take over and shoot the ball. This was accomplished by using 2 separate blocks, one that pushes the ball, and one that is attached to the screw. By putting a motor on the one that is attached to the screw, and putting a hook attached to the motor shaft that hooks into the other block, someone could hit a button to release the two blocks. 2 square tubes are attached to the shooter and special mounts that go onto the wheel chair. Tubes attach these two pieces thus allowing for a shock mechanism. Four casters were mounted on the bottom of the shooter for mobility.

-Two switches are used to control the bocce shooter. One moves it back and forth and the other is used to move the hook which releases the two blocks.

Re: After Season Projects
 

Thanks everybody for sharing your ideas. This is great. With a few more responses/ideas we can take this to our schools computer tech people and our web team to get things rolling to make the webpage.

-Pat