Green Machine Competition!

[Wayne C.]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

wow i guess our team did not get in. Is there a list of what teams are in the game and what is the objective.

actually Shaun- we were made an offer but management decided to pass for this year. We'll talk next Wednesday.

WC

[Nica F.]

Build Season for the project overlaps FRC Build Season for about a month or so, what are your teams planning to do during that time? Do you have a group for FRC and another group for this?

[laurenlacy]

1816 is doing it

[Not2B]

Our's has been ordered...

[pufame]

does anyone know how the actual competitions are going to work? Is this purely a mail in thing then trip to Atlanta if your one of the lucky few?

Just not really clear in all the literature...

thx

[pufame]

This is beginning to get a little frustrating, I realize it's just a pilot but the details are just WAY to vague. A few questions I had that others may have answers to or are wondering themselves...

1) On the site is says that March 1-3 are the competitions. It then links you to FIRST's website and a list of all FRC competitions. Does this mean that we are expected to model and/or show and/or play our game at all of our competitions?

2) When it says design a game for the robot to play, does this mean we are ACTUALLY making an entirely new playing field and set of rules? I mean I could see making this with pen and paper but to actually have to build the field, especially during build, seems a bit cumbersome.

3) When it says "install your fuel cell system into a FIRST competition robot," does this mean that we are intalling the rigs into our FRC robot or are we building seperate robots to play the games we designed or are we just makeing something that can move and power itself with the Hydrogen.

4) In the most recent e-mail, it says that ALL participating teams are invited to Atlanta for Nationals. Does this mean that we will
a) Compete in the FRC competition w/ the fuel cell rig in the robot
b) Compete in the FRC competition and show our fuel cells rig
c) Not Compete in the FRC competition and play our designed games in a seperate area
d) Compete in both FRC and a seperate competition
e) Some other odd combination of the above

5) How are we supposed to use our fuel cells rigs at any FIRST event, were not allowed to have flamable gas like Hydrogen at the event. Will there be a seperate area for Fuel Cell robots? Will we charge the batteries for our FRC robots outside or in a seperate area? Is there some other system?

6) Since all of these tasks say "Design" or insert into "design", does that mean that everything we do short of makeing a Fuel Cell System that can output power just be done with pen and paper? Will there even be a new robot or possibility of running our FRC robot off of Hydrogen, or will these just be hypothetical?

If anyone has any answers plese post it... I'm trying to get the answers through e-mail myself but I think I'm just spinning my wheels alot of the time.

[UCGL_Guy]

476 is in and excited -- all I can say right now is to be patient. I believe it is up to these 50 teams to figure stuff out a little along the way.
Items of note; H2 is extremely flammable very broad flammability range -hence check out the MSDS. I would like to caution all teams working with this that it is lighter than air so be wary of places that it could pocket in your ceilings. You may also want to invest in a flammabilty monitor and possibly some ventilation.
2. I believe a 10 cell stack puts out 12 watts so 2 of these together are not going to power a lot. Battery charging may be the answer.

This will be interesting to see where this leads.

[Nick 568]

568 is in! However, we have yet to get our fuel cell kit....apparently, FedEx shipped it all the way to Washington state, then sent it back... I think someone needs to tell FedEx that even tho Alaska is usually on the bottom of the map in it's own little section....that's not where Alaska really is....

[Mr. President]

Team 1891 is in. We have had some setbacks in our process. our order "fell through the cracks" they thought we werent doing it anymore until they got our report. that kinda freaked them out. We didnt get our fuel cell till the 11th. and our membranes came the next day or something like that. then we realised we didnt have a torque wrench that went to the 8 inch pounds. so we talked to one of our Mentors from Micron and he got us one to use. Then after we got it assembled we had to wait for our hydrogen which didnt come to us until the 21st. we tested today for the first time, but didnt realize how fast we were going to run out of hydrogen. so now we have to get more hydrogen before we can do anymore testing. Are we the only ones who have been having thses problems, or is it like that for everyone?. Anyway its frustrating.

How many students does everyone else have working on this project? we have 3 students with 2 mentors.

But anyway this turned out much longer than i expected. But we are very excited to be doing this, just hope we can cram everything in and get it done.

David-

[Alex698]

Originally Posted by Mr. President

we tested today for the first time, but didnt realize how fast we were going to run out of hydrogen. so now we have to get more hydrogen before we can do anymore testing. -

Were you running the cell system closed?
Were you running the cell system at 3 psig?

Can anyone post fully completed photos of their systems especially the fuel line system?

Thanks
Alex

[Mr. President]

We ran ours at a little over 1 PSI dead ended. We have pictures, but not here

[WahooWa]

Team 476 is running around 10 students and 3 mentors.

[WahooWa]

So has everyone gotten in both parts of the Green Machine Pilot thus far?

[Kims Robot]

1511 is in!! Our application was accepted. We actually have a mentor who took some coursework recently in FuelCells for work, so we just need to free him of his real work duties so he can come mentor our kids all the time!! lol.

This is going to be so cool... I think some of our mentors are actually more excited than some of the students! lol.

Originally Posted by RAWRimaPANDA

Build Season for the project overlaps FRC Build Season for about a month or so, what are your teams planning to do during that time? Do you have a group for FRC and another group for this?

We havent lain a solid plan, but the majority of the group interested in the fuel cell project is our electrical team. While some of them will have to work double duty, it is nice that it doesnt completely overlap build season. They can get some of their preliminary work done before fuel cell gets hectic in the last few weeks, skip out on us for two weeks, and then rejoin us once the final submission is in.

Plus I dont know if we plan on killing ourselves over it... it is a pilot program, and we are more in it for the chance to play with the cool new technology than to win anything.

All that said, it is a little easier for our team as 90% of our mentors are electrical or programming by trade. (go figure, software defined radios??)

Anyways, good luck to everyone else!!

On a similar note, would anyone be interested in sharing/discussing on CD? ie should we ask for our own Board (like the NI Labview board?)

[Alex698]

Originally Posted by Kims Robot

All that said, it is a little easier for our team as 90% of our mentors are electrical or programming by trade. (go figure, software defined radios??)

SDR's? cool my explorer post just picked up some of those to play with. Amateur radios of course. What applications do you plan to use them with?

-Alex