First Basics, for those of you who are wondering

Okay, so many of you are probably wondering what FIRST is and what we are trying to do this year. I posted a few things on twitter, but since there's a word limit, there's only so much I can explain on there.

FIRST Robotics is a 6 week robotics competition. This year's challenge is to build a robot to score different shaped inner tubes. Another part of scoring is deploying a minibot that must climb an 8 foot pole.

Currently, the robot stands at 4 feet, 10 inches and reaches with a single arm to a maximum height of 9 feet. The arm is hooked up to belts and a fisher price gear box motor setup for greater torque. Two springs counterbalance the arm, so the center of gravity maintains stable.

The team is now in week 6/6 of the competition. (Because we missed a week for bad weather, time has become even more of an issue than usual.)

Right now, the robot is working, but it is a bit unstable, so the FIRST team is working tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, on until the job gets done (or, more likely, until February 22, the robot send off date- though they will meet consistently after that as well).

FIRST Robot Ship Date coming soon!

Our FIRST team is working frantically to finish the robot in time for...

ROBOT SHIP DATE

on February 22 at noon.

Carolyn Mason and the team are working constantly on this; wish us luck!

Official JETS update email example

So I'm signed up to get updates from the official JETS website (Junior Engineering Technical Society for those of you who are wondering) and this is one of the emails they send me. You can see more of what they do at www.jets.org!

(Oh, and we have a workday tomorrow - get excited!)

Twitter!

Hey, make sure to follow our twitter! We're at chs_engineering, and we WILL be updating it with jokes, updates, and anything else related to our team, solar cars, or engineering in general. Czech it out! (pun intended)

www.twitter.com/chs_engineering

We've been back (since X-Mas) and making progress!

We've been back from the Holiday Break for a month now, and despite all the ridiculous weather conditions Coppell has experienced in the past few weeks, we've made significant progress on the car!

Our two teams are still functioning, with the seniors working on fixing the old car and the juniors and underclassmen learning the mechanics and skills they need to design another car. We recently started welding again; it's pretty exciting! It's great to be back :)

Monday

Tomorrow's Monday, meaning that it's a workday. We're going to get more work done on the car-- it's going to be fun!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from CSRT!

We are meeting over the holidays to continue to work on our various tasks. As of right now we have divided into two groups; the senior members are working on Aurora, fixing certain aspects of the car, while the new members are learning about the mechanics of solar cars. Kaelan has taken charge of the underclassmen and is leading them through the work that the team has done in the past. If we can't learn from our mistakes, then we will just repeat them. We are trying to pass on our knowledge to the new members so that we can have a repertoire of experiences to draw from in the coming year and those that follow!

2011! :)