Ok folks, it’s a new year. Time to reflect on what went well last year and how you’re going to make it better this year.
What went well the last year? What’s your feeling going into kickoff this year?
My win - We made a lot of progress on organizing one of the offices last week, it is much nicer to work in. Also my parts to experiment with miniFRC came in and I got a chassis assembled, probably spend some time on electronics this weekend. They are so cute if you add scale bumpers too
I started school again and didn’t die. Also spent some quality time with our former mech captain
I (along with some friends) made a drone that will spread pesticides over farmland and will automatically dock and recharge itself. Its powered by a 20v drill battery for the motors and a secondary 11v battery for the control system. Plus submitted our first draft of our research paper detailing our process and our results.
Filmed an episode of our podcast with Team 254. It was very fun and we are excited to show all of you (in about 2-3 weeks as we work through our backlog of episodes to edit and release).
(24inch frame, shoots a 8" dia 3 lb hockey puck across the field at 40ft a sec)
(for the 2019 F4 game)
Gonna be honest if it wasn’t for the bumper numbers I would of thought this was a hightide robot.
Well the color scheme is the pre 2022 hightide colors
teal is such a nice color on robots
oh, and if you or anyone wants to look more indepth here’s the tech binder 
the onshape docs are hyperlinked in the descriptions of each subsystem
Idk if it’s just me but it looks small enough where it should fit in your hand
By the way, if any of yall are interested in more low-key design-focused cadathons hit up @howlongismyname . Had a ton of fun alongside the ~30 teams that competed!
I’ve spent a bunch of time this last week programming stuff.
One I’m most excited about is the hours tracking device for the team. Everyone gets an rfid keychain, they can scan in when they show up, and scan out when they leave. Hours get tracked automatically on a Google sheets spreadsheet.
It was my first project ordering things off of AliExpress too. Now that I’ve crossed that hurdle, there’s so much I want to buy.
Good luck, I’m still dealing with a chargeback from an order made in June that just never showed up according to USPS (and me) but they swear up and down USPS told them it was delivered.
That’s exactly what I worry about.
I’m also just not patient enough to wait that long to verify my order is correct.
Massive win:
Released Pairwise: get rankings and pairwise ranking scores from simple qualitative comparisons of teams. Year independent - you make the rubric - all set to go for the 2024 game with mobile device support.
You should look up the DeWalt FPV drone powered by a DeWalt Battery. Seems like something that would interest you
It’s definitely good to make a few small purchases from AliExpress/Wish first, hopefully 2-3 tries for orders of electrical components or lanyards, or other odds and ends gets you familiar with the system, at least on a basic level, so your expectations of the system are correct.
Yeah, I’ve made several over the years without issues. This was the first time I’ve had an issue.
AliExpress, and to an even greater extent, Alibaba, require a tremendous amount of trust, tolerance for risk, and patience.
I purchased around 24 Ender Pro 3D printers early in the pandemic to distribute for face shield manufacturing (some users of this forum received those printers!). I got the units for nearly half the price, landed, as I would have from a U.S. dealer.
However, my items shipped from China to CANADA before making their way to me in California, all because the shipper decided to save like $20 on customs duties (which I had already paid for at US prices). The shipment took a week to leave the factory, then another week in customs, then went on an uncrackable ship. I think about six weeks later I got a UPS tracking number for the shipment from Canada to me. I waited for customs in Canada, transit, and customs in the U.S. Not to mention, the units were not shipped in a way conducive to residential delivery, so I had to go to my local UPS depot and negotiate with them to break down the pallet in the back.
Shockingly, all of the units were genuine and arrived in great shape. Thousands of dollars, for me personally, on the line as I waited, though. If I didn’t have credit cards with robust protections, I wouldn’t have tolerated this risk.
Not to mention the vendors liked doing business at 10pm my time, and every vendor was constantly trying to undercut the other, except for the fact that the 30 vendors I was talking to were really all being run by the same four or five companies.
If it wasn’t early in the pandemic when I had nothing to do after work or on the weekend, it would’ve driven me mad. Was definitely a fun activity at the time, though.
My promotion to a Senior Information Security Engineer is finally official according to HR even though it was approved by my leadership change and the request submitted to HR over a month ago.
Started our team’s first ever public build blog! Very proud of 177 students and mentors for taking on this task.
We successfully ran an outreach event in the middle of the school day to kick off our robotics curriculum we are supporting in grades 5-7 at the Innovation School, a charter school providing STEM education to lower income students (80% on free/reduced lunches). This has been in the works since the fall, and it’s super exciting to finally get it off the ground!
Also, our code co-lead found this incredible penguin shirt (I think it should be allowed to be worn at comp as part of our uniform 
)
