What does your team do during the summer?

[Jon Stratis]

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!

[IndySam]

Summer? We started back to school today!

[bardd]

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.

[Boe]

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

[wendymom]

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.

[Koko Ed]

This summer were moving.
Again.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

This summer were moving.
Again.

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)

[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. )