Good (glances at clock) Evening, folks.
I have a very broad-based question for all the teams out there:
In the After-Season, is there anything that you all are working on that includes using anything from FIRST? Maybe a machine to help a disabled person play a sport; or maybe a special robot cart with a tool chest, compressor and lights (like ours this year (c: ); or even just a special cart to put your tool chests on for easy storage?
Team 134 is hoping to put together a website where other teams can share ideas for what to do with all those spinning light covers, or those miles upon miles of extra medical tubing…or maybe those Fisher Price Motors that everyone loves so much?
We figured that letting all those wonderful pieces of technology just gather dust in storage was a waste of time. So: we are asking all of you out there to share your ideas with us. Just tell us about whatever it is that you do with your extra pieces and parts and things and such.
Who knows? If this takes off, you may even give life to a robot on its way to the disassembly bench!
So, Post away, and email us with your ideas!
Jake Gallagher, Team Somethingorother
Pat Roche, Team Captain
Dave Kelly, Team Advisor
We would lile to work with the other Rochester region teams to create a float for the Labor Day parade. I think there was talk of another Rochester exhibition, which would be great. We have a summer picnic and other X-Cat based activities such as getting better with 3D Studio max.
We want to run a competition for college students and future FIRT rookies as well as current FIRST teams. See this thread
for more information. We ahven’t exactly decided what we will allow from the FIRST kit, and what we will provide in our own.
earlier this year i was designing a robot cart with a raising platform and and extending ramp, but due to a lack of funding, we never built it. maybe we’ll save it for next year to help teach new members. either way, it would be a cool way to recycle the kit parts that we havnt used yet.
A few of the other students and I want to start a battle bots team possible using some of the spare parts from the FIRST kit of parts. We have alot of spare parts, we haven’t used pnuematics in the past two years, we have six or seven atwood motors, plenty fisher price motors, and some drill motors. And all of the building material we need, after all it would be done in our engineeing shop.I have some mentors interested and the students and I are all for it. This would also get recruitment for our FIRST team. Also gives us time to train all of the newbies in any sub team they want.
Those ideas are great. When you finish your projects, send pictures on over to us so we can use them to start up the website!
My team (or what remains of it) is launching a campagn to keep our team alive…
Aside from CPR, our off season will be devoted to learning, creating training materials, building a test platform for next year’s electronic’s team, and fixing our cart.
Well with ChiefDelphi you certainly have the best resource available. Other FIRST teams who can help. If nothing else we all have each other.
Is your team really dead or just graduating? o.O
Well so is my team basically, we really need to recuit. I’ve noticed that many teams also had this problem. Does anyone have any suggestions? I mean all the people I’ve talked to if they’re female they was cute guys on the team then they’ll join. And for the males they want hot chicks on the team. We’re hopeless both ways!!! (except for one girl, she has a boyfriend already), but HELP! So the other after season projects are going to definitely be fundraising.
Can we trade info? I’ll tell you the amazing secret to getting more people on your team if you tell me what everyone left on your team is creating in the off-season. For example: Is there a specific project your team is going to market to get funds next season, like a machine developed to help out a person or business in your community?
Seriously, the only way I’ve been able to attract people to FIRST is by showing them what it is. You can’t just go around telling everyone because there are some “Cool” people in the schools that really don’t think FIRST is worth their time because “football is better.” Try to get your message out across the town by making something useful for one of the public service groups, like the Police Station or the Fire Department. Sometimes you’ll just get someone who didn’t even know that the team existed.
That’s how almost all of our members joined–word of mouth. I didn’t know a thing about FIRST until the end of my freshman year, and I’m sad that I didn’t know earlier.
Just to clarify: We’re just working on putting together a site to showcase things that teams have made with spare parts and such. You may remember at Kickoff they showed a team that designed a contraption to help a guy in a wheelchair play Bocce so he could join the school Bocce team. We’re looking for stuff like that, mainly.
I don’t mean for you to stop posting about fund-raising ideas, because those are helpful too, but what we’re looking for are the practical uses for old robot parts.
PS–What FIRST guy isn’t cute? Take me for example… 
Well, our team does a lot of stuff.
First off is our annual LEGO League Summer Camp, where we take parts of old FLL games, make our own and have elementary kids from around the county play it.
Then we have parades and such where we drive our robots down the street.
After that we start our pre-season machining. Last year we made 20 or so steam engines that work off the robot air compressor that you get in the kit. We’re giving them out as awards.
I do marketing. Any questions about our marketing strategies, IM me. I don’t want to change the subject on this thread.
I hope this has been helpful!
mandy
We plan to use our fisher price motors to build fake segways as we can not afford real ones. One of them may have a gyro to stabilize but probably just casters. We have never used those motors so we have six in the shop (traded two).
That sounds really cool. I wish I had a segway (or even a custom-made knockoff :P). When you get that done, send me some pics at the email mentioned above!
Anyone else have anything like this they would like to share?
I’m doing a gyro and software balanced fakeway and will be done by mid-May. At the start of the LA regional, we started designing a robot that will show people around a museum in India, that has to ship in a couple weeks. And a few days ago I started next year’s shifting transmission design (which is almost done in Inventor) which we will be implementing for an off-season event like IRI. 12.5" Omniwheels may be a possibility as well.
Shifting transmission, eh? o.O that’s really cool. If it weren’t something that might be a team secret, I’d ask how you’re doing it. Know what would be really cool though? Send us the specs of your fakeway whenever you’re done with it. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there (like myself) who would love to build one of their own, and that’s what Recycled FIRST is going to be about–sharing ingenius ideas that aren’t completely competition oriented.
I was wondering if anyone had any good pneumatics projects for someone wanting to learn. That’s something I’ve really wanted to learn, but I’ve had no oppurtunity. We have this giant stack of Pneumatics equiptment in the back of our room. I’m also building a knockoff of Swampthings hovering robot (thanks for the great design idea).
Our team seems to disappear during the off-season, and then restart a little after school starts. 
something I’m hoping will change this year.
Does any one have some events that they are running. We all have fun at off season competitions. This gives a chance to recruit new menbers by taking them to a competioion and show them what FIRST is all about.
My team is going to hopefully be making a motorized cart if we have the funds. Also we want to try to get a make a small pit. Since this year we just had a few unorganized crates and it was impossible to find the right tool. Lastly if all goes well we will be looking for some sponsors.
A motorized cart would be really cool to see. This year our team made a cart that had a toolbox, lights, a horn, and a compressor build right in. It was really cool.