What does your team do during the summer?

[reymac]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

This summer were moving.
Again.

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!

[cgmv123]

Summer camp for 180 kids.

[daniel_dsouza]

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

[AllenGregoryIV]

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

[Rangel]

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 .

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

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

[Alex.q]

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.

[apalrd]

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.

[rachelholladay]

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. )

[GRT808]

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.

[ttldomination]

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.

[JamesCH95]

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.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

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.

I support this plan.

[Brandon Zalinsky]

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.

[Kageshini]

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.

[tickspe15]

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