During last week we were able to get the robot running, although its 12.75 to 1 gearing meant it was very slow roaming the halls. This was a great help during the pep assembly on Friday were we got about 2 minutes, which doesn't sound like much but shows that the school is willing to work with us. We announced a naming competition for the team.  The guidelines will be announced soon, but we have stated that the person who gets the best name will win $20. We ordered some extra parts, new gears, battery cables, and chain tensioners. I went over to Franklin to get help from our mentors with programming.  Unlike us, they us labview, but with their help and a few phone calls back to Benson, the robot's default code was reloaded and it moved again (it had stopped working because of a program downloading problem that is still unresolved).

Progress as of week 1:

The robot is almost to the point of basic mobility.  The chassis has been built, control system mounted to a (temporary) wooden platform attached to the chassis, and all that is left is to attach the sprockets and hook up the chain.

We have been having some issues updating the firmware for the driver's station, in that none of the flash drives that we try work, but hopefully we will have that fixed by the time we need to put in a program.  If anyone has any solutions or ideas (although I don't know if anyone but Kevin and I actually check this site...), leave a comment on this post.

Build season has BEGUN.

For those who weren't able to attend kickoff on the 3rd, the video explaining this year's challenge is available here, as well as the kickoff '09 video (although the latter hasn't been uploaded yet).  A streaming version of the challenge video is also available here.

Basically, we will be meeting whenever possible, as we have only 6 weeks to build the robot (I've updated the site timer as well, as you've probably noticed).  One thing we need is more members.  We want to, if possible, include some people who have skill in accurately throwing things (ie basketball) for reasons that will be obvious once you watch the video.  We also need to make business cards for team members, so if anyone is in communications, or knows someone who is, it would be great to make the cards at Benson.

addendum:

We had a meeting after school, mainly electronics work and brainstorming.  We've come up with some ideas for our robot strategy/design, as well as finishing a decent amount of wiring, and charging a battery.