Posted on

No seriously, we do still exist!

So for any of you who follow our blog… Wow! You must really like us because we kind of dropped off the planet for a while. Don’t worry, we will do better from now on.

Meanwhile let me catch you all up from… seriously it was JULY since we posted last??? I had to look it up! Ok so to start off, we did NOT do any off season competitions. It turns out that somehow we missed the deadline for signing up and didn’t know it. We still did our Build Season 2.0 as a practice but the results did not get to compete. And that result? A WORKING SWERVE DRIVE!!!! Well… it WAS working until one of the gears slipped off and jammed a swerve pod. So it hasn’t ACTUALLY worked since August when we had to take them apart to fix them. And what was the sage advice from the manufacturer as to how to keep the gear from slipping off? “Put some glue on it…” Yeah… that’s what we got. And we did it too, as well as built a better drive base while we were at it. So it is ready to test right now, except… well we have been kind of busy as of late. Let me tell you about it. Don’t worry, I’ll be quick. You’re probably already thinking this is too long but hey, this is 4 months of catch up here. So…

In September we rebuilt the swerve Drive base and called it PS2 (Prototype Swervebot 2 not the popular game console) along with learned a new CAD program and prototyped a bunch of telescoping arms.
In October we took our robot to scare- I mean help families choose just the right pumpkin at the Gain FCU pumpkin Patch. We also participated at the Engineering Expo 2023 with team 589 and California State Senator Anthony Portantino to show the community exactly what robotics is all about.
In November we opened our workshop doors and invited the Burbank community and businesses to come meet us and see what we do. (There may have been some time off to eat large amounts of turkey in there too)
And in December we hosted the brand new FIRST Lego League Regional Competition in Burbank! Something we intend to do annually. Then, just this last weekend, our robot was working again, with a bunch of team 980 Santa helpers, helping to collect toys for the Spark of Love Toy Drive put on by the Burbank Fire Department.

Like I said, it’s been a busy 4 months. This week, preseason ends with our traditional family pot luck. I’ll tell you all about that next week along with some thoughts about the past season and the new season coming up way too fast.

So see, we really were here all along, and all the excitement that you missed is nothing compared to what is to come. Stay tuned!

-Alex
Co-Lead mentor

Posted on

Popsicles in California Heat

“Burbank Young Professionals: Grill and Give,” Johnny Carson Park, Summer, Off-season, 2023

Hot. But we had popsicles so it was pretty sweet. 

Besides that, we had a nice time hanging out with one another, meeting with important Burbank figures such as the Boys and Girls Club, Department of Parks and Rec., and California Senators Portantino and Menjivar while doing demos with 2022’s Kitty. 

Note to future us: don’t do demos anywhere near grass… cleaning it out of transmissions isn’t fun. 

All in all, thank you to the Burbank Young Professionals for having us! We look forward to working with more organizations to promote robotics across Burbank! 

— Luci, Captain of Team 980 

Posted on

The Significance of Singing Robots

“STEM Lego Robo Camp,” Central Library, Summer, Off-season, 2023

After weeks of planning and pulling people from within and outside our team, we’ve reached the conclusion of our Lego Robo Camp! 

Returning in person was a challenge, but our team pushed through in developing updated curriculums for Mindstorms and OnShape CAD as well as a new curriculum for 3D Printing. 

With over 30 students and 20 mentors, every team competed with a unique robot of their own, many with fun design details (so many swords…) or songs (one Rickrolled us…) to present to our judge. 

In the flurry of action, young students and our older students alike experienced how overcoming the challenges of mentorship can be rewarding, both professionally and personally. 

Thank you to all the mentors, people behind the scenes, and extra hands from friends of 980 and 1148 Harvard Westlake Robotics for all their hard work! 

— Luci, Captain of Team 980

Posted on

Psst! That box? I think it’s actually our s-[REDACTED]

“What’s happening with the ThunderBots?,” Burbank High STEAM Lab, Summer, Off-season, 2023

For a few months now, we’ve had a nice “not-a-box” box tucked away in controls that we had to ignore to focus on working through the rest of the season with Frankie. However… now we can talk about it as a “box” box!

People… we’ve got swerve drive!

For those who don’t know what swerve drive is, imagine a swivel chair and how it can go anywhere at any time — that’s what our robot can now do. Compared to our standard tank drive, we’ve a major challenge ahead of us when trying to figure out how this works.

No more rectangular frame. Individual swerve modules mounted to corners. And finally an electronics board. We’re now ready to move onto the hard part: coding.

Surprisingly, we already have a name: Prototype-Swervebot 1, aka, PS1.

Throughout the rest of the build space, we’ve been working on a major redesign, using summer to not have to worry about people going in and out during the school year. In Fabrication, we completely rearranged our shop, creating a dedicated storage space and different project tables. Business and Design have switched spaces, moving Design into the newly rearranged (former) Business office and Business into the larger area of the build space. Although Controls has not been the victim of a major redesign yet, there are talks of switching up the room’s layout while they work outside for the electronics board on PS1.

All in all, we’ve had our hands full with getting things done during the past few months as we prepare for the new school year, a more efficient work cycle, and fall off-season competitions.

Next up: Lego Robo Camp!

— Luci, Captain of Team 980

Posted on

New website, new projects, new job on the team

If this is your first time here, Welcome! If you have been here before, welcome back! There have been a lot of changes going on in Team 980. Our build space is being completely reorganized and new projects are being worked on. However I will let our team captain handle all of that in her next post because this is about our new (-ish) website and lead mentors.

Let’s start with the website. Underneath it is the same one we have had for years (hacks and all…). But the 980 web design team has been busy changing its look and content to bring it up to date with everything we have been doing and to make important information easier for people to find. It’s not fancy, no animation, no cutesy cartoon mascots, no background pics with text scrolling over them. But all of that just isn’t us. It’s the content that matters. So make sure you catch up on the blogs, check out the team history section, read up on all of our past robots (ok there’s only 1 past robot up there right now but more will come, just keep an eye out in announcements on the main page), mainly look around and see what we have done. We hope you like it.

The other thing is new jobs. The lead mentor position recently opened up and it took 2 mentors to take on a massive job like that. So welcome to your new roles Robin and Alex, Co-Lead mentors of Team 980.
-Team 980 Web Design Team