Another year, another 'Snow Problem thread for Robot in 3 Days! We are extremely hyped for FIRST Power Up and we’ve been working hard in preparation for this year’s build. Our goal is to give you a bunch of quality content in videos, white papers, and social media as we possibly can.
We’ll be posting our content in the following places:
- CD-Media – All our white papers will be posted here, including our strategy analysis, our prototyping overviews, and our final robot walkthrough, as well as anything else we want to talk about along the way.
- Ri3D YouTube – We’ll be posting more polished daily overviews on the official Ri3D channel, as well as our reveal video and robot walkthroughs
- Our YouTube – This will be more “uncut” footage on here following our prototyping groups from concept to prototype to final execution, as well as uncut footage of our robot reveal video shooting session
- Twitch– As always, we will have a live stream, with audio and a nice view of our whiteboard wall for the strategy session, and no audio because the copywrite fairies don’t like us blasting sick jams after that.
- Twitter – Follow for robot memes and notifications when we release new content!
- Facebook– Will have Facebook-y things on it. Like updates. Probably, I guess.
Note: Facebook and Twitter are largely there for people who are already invested in those platforms–we don’t intend to release anything major to those platforms exclusively-- you really should be able to follow the main takeaways from our build via our whitepapers on CD-Media and the videos we’ll be posting to YouTube. We realize there’s a lot of information out there for people to sort through, and intend these various channels to make it easier-- not more difficult-- to find the biggest things we learn during the build.
Our stream schedule will be approximately as follows (all times CST):
- 2PM - 7PM, January 6th – Strategy Discussion, into Prototyping Discussion
- 7PM-12AM, January 6th – Drivetrain building, Prototyping
- 9:30AM-12AM, January 7th – Prototyping
- 9:30AM-12AM, January 8th – Prototyping and Final Fabrication
- 9:30AM-12PM, January 9th – Finishing touches
We will also be doing a reviews stream, where we talk about some of the products we’re using to build our robot, and giving you our honest thoughts on them. That will be at 7PM each night, on our Twitch Channel. We’ll also be on FUN during their daily recaps.
Additionally, we will be targeting releasing the following white papers:
- Strategy Analysis - Saturday Night
- Prototype Concept Analysis - Sunday Night
- Prototype Overview - Monday Night
- Final Robot Technical Walkthrough - Wednesday Night
We have a few other ideas for white papers to do, including one on the hydro-dipping process we’ll be trying out this year, on our manufacturing techniques, and autonomous strategy, but may or may not be able to get those out during the build. Let us know if you want to see something in particular!
As always, thank you to our sponsors-- AndyMark, REV Robotics, PHD, iR3 Creative, The University of Minnesota - College of Science and Engineering, Anderson Student Labs, CSE Expo, University of Minnesota - Student Union and Activities Fund, and all the parents and friends who keep us fed through the 3 days! We could not do this without their extremely generous continuing support. We would also like to thank FRC teams 2169, 2175, 2220, 2470 and 4778, as well as FTC teams 8686, 9205, and 11190 for their support during our previous builds. This community is awesome and the reason we keep on doing this!
It’s been a long few days! I’ll fix that!