pic: Dorm Room Robot

[Dominick Ferone]

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[Woolly]

As a college student and FIRST Alumni, you have no idea how much I've wanted to do something like this.
Though I have been helping a former teammate that lives down the hall with his quad-copter.

[aryker]

Way to stay involved--FIRST runs on dedication like that

[Whippet]

I want to build a kit frame at home so badly, but saving for college comes first.

Your dorm has the same carpet as my school.

[Mk.32]

Hm ... my dorm room has been graced with several quadcopters, my gokart, and soon to be mini tesla coil. Atm there are about 2 helicopters worth of parts sitting on my desk.

Keep having fun in college.

[Christopher149]

As a college student and FIRST alum, I now have the pleasure to be leading my high school team. I don't no need no stinkin' dorm room, we've got space in the high school. As college students, it also means that 857 and 2586 have mentors from 247, 216/244/288, 68, 2000, and others I can't recall.

Anyway, 857 (so I've been told) was founded when some guys from downstate came to Tech and started a team here.

[yash101]

My dream college dorm (I'm just in high right now):
All sorts of robot chasseys, 128 quadcopters, that are programmed to perform a task together, a thousand amp twelve volt Li-ion pack (just sitting there for playing with sparks ), Internet-based control on everything including the TV, the door locks and other things. Also, I want to build myself a smartroom!

Writing this, I felt like in heaven until I realized that half of these are impractical

Oh yeah, I forgot, a ten gigabit internet connection so I can be the king of the internet!


BTW, great job in building that with just hand tools! How much did it cost you? I would like to have a robot chassey lying around at home, for me to make my motorized chair on!

[Dominick Ferone]

Were Freshman at SUNYIT and the provost here wanted to start a team as soon as he started working here last year. Me, my roommate, and another friend of our from our team are working to start the team for this year. We bought a 2013 kit, hardware and a couple other pieces from lowes to build it. It will be used as a demonstration bot for now and hopefully later on we can add more, maybe use it as a back up bot next year, help teach kids. Its also fun to note Im mechanical and my roommate is Electrical so trying to program was a fun game for us.
Team 5030 will be attending the New York Valley Tech Regional in Troy March 13-15

[Mark McLeod]

I have something similar that I keep taking apart so that the new rookies can put it all together.
Yours looks nice than mine though.

358 will see you at Tech Valley!

[Dominick Ferone]

Can't wait to see hauppauge there, along with rice and the red dragons.
Also thank you so much for sending me a copy of labview.

[BBray_T1296]

This reminds me of a great story, that brings tears to my eyes as it was such a great memory.

2012 we competed at Texas Robot Roundup in the summer offseason. After lurking on Chief Delphi there was concern that there was only 23 teams signed up, and for proper eliminations you need at least 24. (before we knew everyone had brought a practice robot too!)

We (team 1296) offered to bring our practice bot, but it was in several crates, already having been entirely dismantled for the season.

We show up on friday with our competition bot, the tiniest toolbox imaginable, and bins and bins of robot parts, from critical (cRIO) to useless (Huge sticks of polycarbonate beam stock why?:->why not?) with the intent to build the practice bot there. We also stole the bumpers off our 2011 robot to have a second set (and shoddily taped red "7"s over the "6"s on them [1297])

We had some technical and mechanical issues (because our robot stupidly had 16 motors on it) on our main comp bot, so we spent all of friday getting it up to snuff. At this point, we still had no idea that there was actually enough robots. We gathered everything we had, and brought bin after bin of parts, a welded frame, motors, metal bits, power tools, rat's nest of leftover wires, and tons of crap, into the hotel with us that night.

The front desk clerks looked terrified. We assured them it would be "OK" and crammed into the elevator.

Overnight, in a hotel room, with 8 people (and a robot!) crammed into a room too big for 4, we constructed, salvaged, programmed, and tested a robot with barely more than a laptop and a single screwdriver.

We showed up Saturday morning and to everyone's surprise, we did it! it even had working (define working) autonomous.

It was basically a mecanum kitbot on wheels with a ramp lowerer (which I promptly destroyed by accident) and competed.

I was pretty proud of our extreme procrastination. (we didn't know it was due until the day before!)

[Dominick Ferone]

Yea for Ultimate ascent right before build seasons end me and my roommate brought the robot home spent 12 hours wiring, then the weekend was spent jumping to different locations to test and be able to have a final program before we bagged to make it easier for our second robot. At competition we had so much free time as compared to last year where we got to nyc and were 10 pounds overweight. It didn't even take long at nationals this year to assemble most of the robot and put the changes.

[savage]

I wish i could get my hands on all the old parts from team. Because my old frc team 1368 is no more, for the time being. Would love to build an ROV with my dad.

[runneals]

Nice robot! The team that I mentor (#2167 Radical T3ch) also works out of a dorm room at the Missouri Academy/Northwest Missouri State University. They really don't have a "shop". I think they *maybe* only have like 2 power tools.
Going from a team that had a nice university engineering lab last year, to a small dorm room this year is quite a challenge. It really makes one become more creative in how they tackle problems. If you guys have any tips as to how to build a robot in a dorm room, please pass them on I'm wondering how many teams are in the position that our team is in (no machine shop, super limited power tools, space, etc). I'm hoping to pull concepts from Team Neutrino's chassis that we built last year, and find a sponsor to help machine parts for us.