Team 980 hosts Fall Classic this Saturday in Burbank!

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Sep 212011
 

On Saturday, Sept. 24, the 10th annual Southern California Regional Robotics Forum (SCRRF) Fall Classic competition will be held at John Burroughs High School in Burbank. This is the fourth straight year Team 980 is hosting the event. We’re playing the 2011 FIRST Robotics Competition game, LogoMotion (with just a few rule modifications). Over 20 terrific teams have signed-up, including the 2011 FRC World Champion Greybots (Team 973) from Atascadero, CA.

Team 980 members will meet at the John Burroughs HS Gymnasium on Friday at 4 pm to start building the competition field. We will be laying down carpet, carrying field elements into the Gym, assembling the field and setting up pit area. The more students involved, the faster and easier the set-up will be. Please be there!!

Team 980 will also bring it’s robot and tools on Friday evening to set-up our pit and check-out our robot. We expect to finish around 8 pm. On Saturday morning, we will arrive by 8 am to direct teams for load-in, meet with volunteers and get ready to compete.

We will allow for a few practice matches starting a 9 am and will get the qualification round underway by 10 am. The elimination rounds will be in the afternoon, leading to the finals and award ceremony. After the competition, we’ll have a team social to share our experiences with other teams.

I’ve sent this message to our mentors, recruits, new students, current students and prior year team members. Please come to the event and invite anyone you think might be interested in participating in FIRST Robotics. Please pass the flyer on!!

See you soon!

-- David Brinza
FRC Team 980 Lead Mentor
818-522-1456

Midway! (Build season, not the battle…)

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Jan 272011
 

Team 980 examined the game, developed our strategies, and made key design decisions. We’ve moving into the detailed design and fabrication phase of our robot. Our students are eager to turn plans into reality. Let’s do it! In just three weeks, we plan to attend the SoCal pre-ship scrimmage at Harvey-Mudd on Sat. Feb. 19: a “shake-down” exercise for our robot.

Our meetings at the Burbank rose float barn are growing in importance. While building the 2011 robot, we’re using the 2010 robot for control system testing. We’re starting driving practice with that robot, leading to try-outs for the drive team.

We’ve kicked-off our team fund-raiser: FIRST Green LED bulbs! Members selling two cases of bulbs (60) will cover their travel expenses for FIRST Championship. We’ve set a sales goal of 980 bulbs to realize over $12K for this year. More information regarding these energy-efficient LED bulbs can be found here.

Beside building the robot, we’ve got work to do on our Chairman’s Award, designing team shirts and give-aways, and publicity.

Team 980 is kicking it into high gear!

Come join the fun!

Welcome to Logomotion!

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Jan 092011
 

Team 980 had a very successful kickoff and is very excited about the 2011 game: Logomotion

Here’s the animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxujTCgQPgg

Checkout the Game Manual – password: 5Time4For3Robots2to1Dance!

We will analyze the game in detail at our next meeting Monday (6 pm) at the Burbank float barn (map). We will then start collecting ideas in our brainstorming process. To make our process effective, it’s very important for everyone to understand the game and robot rules (Sec 3 and 4).

Here’s the FIRST Design video recommended by Dave Lavery (7 min). Please check it out.

Here’s the Chief Delphi thread on brainstorming. There are also a lot of discussions regarding mini-bots, scoring, etc in CD. I encourage members to join CD and get involved in discussions.

On Monday, we will inventory our Kit-of-Parts (KOP). We must report shortages before our Wed meeting.

Also on Monday, we’ll discuss team organization. We will have these sub-teams: robot mechanical, robot controls, mini-robot, business operations, Chairman’s, web-site, imagery and marketing/fund-raising. Students can participate in more than one sub-team. We will identify student team leaders and mentors for each of those areas.

If you haven’t already done so, please register at the FIRST Student Team Information Management System. Note: parental consent required to complete registration with FIRST:

https://my.usfirst.org/stims/site.lasso

Students, please complete the NASA team entrance survey:

https://rcs.arc.nasa.gov/rcs/survey/house/entrance.php

Other business:

Here’s a link to the resource page for the FIRST e-watt LED bulb fund-raiser. We should consider this for raising travel funds for our trip to Championship (St. Louis).

Team 980 2010 Wrap-up

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Dec 202010
 

The 2010 FRC season has been a remarkable year for Team 980. We competed in four events, earning the Motorola Quality Award in Arizona and Finalist Trophy in Los Angeles. We participated in the Indiana Robotics Invitational and hosted the SCRRF Fall Classic at John Burroughs HS.

FRC Team 980 ThunderBots is now a 501(c)(3) public charity. Corporate and individual contributions to our team are fully tax-deductible. Our Paypal “Donate” button makes supporting Team 980 simple and provides a receipt for tax records.

JBHS students formed Robotics Club: Team 980, boosting our membership.

We have started a partnership with the Burbank Tournament of Roses Association. Team 980 members will become involved in float design and construction and will be provided work space for building our robot.

For more info (including 2011 plans), please look at our FRC980_2010_Wrap-up.

Students need to register in FIRST STIMS: https://my.usfirst.org/stims/site.lasso

More information on the 2011 will be posted over the next few weeks…stay tuned!

Prepping for the 2011 FRC Season: 5 weeks to Kickoff!

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Dec 022010
 

The 2011 game challenge will be unveiled five weeks from Saturday! The Team 980 Kickoff event will occur on Jan 8 at TBD site.

Team 980 is registered for Regional competitions in San Diego (Mar 10-12) and Long Beach (Mar 24-26) and the FIRST Championship in St. Louis, MO (Apr 27-30, return on May 1).

Before the kickoff event, Team 980 needs to prepare for the season.

Here’s our “Things To Do” preparation list:

Students sign-up in STIMS the official FIRST participant registration site.
Work with Burbank Tournament of Roses Association to secure and prepare robot build site.
Learn SolidWorks CAD skills. Team 980 has access to 25 student “seats” for SolidWorks 2011. We will have a couple of high-performance workstations in our design center. Team 980 students will be able to install a 1-year licensed version of SolidWorks on their own computers for design robot parts. Start with a on-line robotics design tutorial (9 units, less than 2 hours viewing time):
Develop fund-raising strategies to pay for travel expenses. Championship travel, lodging, and team meal will be $750 (TBD) per student. FIRST will soon release details for team member sales of a new energy-saving LED light (a big technology improvement over compact fluorescent lamps). Look here for more information about FIRST Green e-watt savers.
Spread the word about FIRST to friends, teachers and members of the community. NASA has just announced major long-term support to the FIRST program. The story is in the Reddit Top-10!

Be ready for the 2011 season!

Check this website and the Robotics Club Team 980 Facebook group frequently for updates. Team members can also checkout the Robotics Club Team 980: John Burroughs group for more information.

Robotics Club Team 980: John Burroughs HS

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Oct 232010
 

The Robotics Club Team 980 of John Burroughs HS held its first meeting, Friday (Oct. 22) in the school’s Woods Shop (Mr. John Benne, instructor). Seniors Aaron Rifkin, Galina Malakhova and Alex Martinez introduced a large group of students the FIRST Robotics Competition program. We are VERY pleased that 17 students have expressed interest in joining Team 980. Recruitment is an important part of getting ready for the 2011 season and we’re off to a great start!

Team 980 has registered for the FRC 2011 season!

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Sep 302010
 

Team 980 has registered for it’s 10th season in the FIRST Robotics Competition program.

We’ve registered for the Los Angeles Regional, to be held at the Long Beach Sports Arena on March 24-26. This is our “home” regional event where we have won two of our three Regional Championships and twice were Regional Finalists. The Los Angeles Regional is held in an excellent location and will feature many of the top FRC teams from California.

Team 980 has also registered for the FIRST Championship in St. Louis (April 27-30). Since Team 980 did not participate in the Championship event last year, we are eligible to register early and did so! Team 980 is no stranger to FIRST Championship: we’ve participated in seven Championships in our history, with two appearances in division eliminations. Will we go to Einstein this year??

We plan to register for one additional regional event, most likely the San Diego Regional held March 10-12. This popular week #2 regional will teach us much about the new game and will feature a very competitive field: Teams 399, 599, 968, 973, 987, and 1538 have already registered.

We will learn about the new game at the Kickoff event, to be held Sat. Jan. 8. Between now and then, we have much work to do. We need to secure our build location, add new student recruits, obtain more sponsor support and add to our skill set in CAD, programming, web-site development, …

Welcome to the 10th season for Team 980 – let’s make it our best ever!

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