Green Machine Competition!

[Not2B]

Our's has been ordered...

[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

[FourPenguins]

We're in. Our mentor actually said something about one of our graduates from way back when being involved with FirstFuelCell, but I don't know how true that is.
This same mentor was about to assign the project to three sophomores until we told our physics teacher and he had a heart attack. Now there's a more experienced team on it. (Read as "kids who have actually taken chem.")
I haven't read up much on the competition because it's out of my department, but I'm interested to see what comes out of this. It takes FIRST back to its early days. In recent years, robots have become more and more commonplace, which makes FIRST less and less avant garde. We're still inspiring future scientists, but the wow factor is starting to diminish now that clean, pretty commercial robots are hitting shelves. Fuel cells are on the cutting edge, which is right where FIRST should be in my opinion.

[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

[+()c|D]

Does anyone know when the build season is, Team 4 is in, but i have no idea about any of this stuff.

[pufame]

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?

Most of our team comes from one school and a few come from two others. So we are going to do all of the Fuel Cell work during school (Engineering class, AutoCAD class, lunch, other moments of downtime) or immediatly after school. The regular build will take place in the evening in a seperate building (we would have it in the first school, but no machine shop ) This could get tricky trying to fit homework in there, but we wouln't have to attend both meetings ALL the time. I hope that works out for us.

[laurenlacy]

Originally Posted by pufame

Most of our team comes from one school and a few come from two others. So we are going to do all of the Fuel Cell work during school (Engineering class, AutoCAD class, lunch, other moments of downtime) or immediatly after school.

Ah you are so lucky to have a school that has CLASSES for that stuff!

Our team has a specific fuel cell group, though honestly it doesn't seem like it will be that insanely difficult... but the plans during the build season are just to have everyone do what is necessary, and the fuel cell team meet as necessary to get their job done.

PS that shipping charge was very unfortunate and unexpected!

[+()c|D]

Originally Posted by pufame

Most of our team comes from one school and a few come from two others. So we are going to do all of the Fuel Cell work during school (Engineering class, AutoCAD class, lunch, other moments of downtime) or immediatly after school. The regular build will take place in the evening in a seperate building (we would have it in the first school, but no machine shop ) This could get tricky trying to fit homework in there, but we wouln't have to attend both meetings ALL the time. I hope that works out for us.

Those classes are awsome

[Conor Ryan]

Has anyone heard more on the kit? I heard they were having some issues with getting it distributed. We ordered ours about a week ago and we've yet to get it. Did anyone else have the same problem?

[pufame]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

Has anyone heard more on the kit? I heard they were having some issues with getting it distributed. We ordered ours about a week ago and we've yet to get it. Did anyone else have the same problem?

Just got ours ordered today, didn't know of any problems in shipping.

[Kims Robot]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

Has anyone heard more on the kit? I heard they were having some issues with getting it distributed. We ordered ours about a week ago and we've yet to get it. Did anyone else have the same problem?

I emailed Diane twice this week (accidentally put the wrong shipping zipcode on ours!!) and called a bunch of times. I didnt get an answer at all, and she seems pretty prompt, so it makes me think she is out of the office or something.

As for how the game is going to work, it seems like we are going to design a game and either one will be chosen or we build a robot for our game. But remember this is a pilot program, I think there is a lot of flexibility and they seem pretty open to ideas & questions.

Schedule is:

The competition game is in four stages: TIME LINE
1. Research and Development Deadline: November 30, 2006
2. Building and Testing a Fuel Cell/System Deadline: December 31, 2006
3. Challenge: Design a Game (played by fuel cell hybrid robots, including game floor) Deadline: January 31, 2007
4. Inserting your hybrid fuel cell system into FIRST competition robot design Deadline: February 9, 2007

[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....