roborogue #1

the end

at this point in my life, build season has been long over, and i am just reminiscing of the good old times from way back when. nah, i'm just playing. it's only been a few weeks. at most a month. but as my memory is really bad, i'm just going to provide a quick rundown of the last few weeks of build season, so i can get to the really juicy bits. i.e. the gossip and intrigue that infest a high school robotics competition.

i'm making this sound a lot more exciting than it really is; i just have some theories and personal encounters at competition, and some real life stuff that makes it a story of drama. and you know me by now, dear reader. i love to spice up my otherwise boring life with a good ol' fashioned bit of hyperbole. now where would we be without that? i mean, i'm a god at almost everything, i know, but my life really wouldn't be this much fun to read if i spoke the honest to god truth about everything that happened to me. and isn't it sad that robotics is really the most exciting aspect of my life?

ANYWAY, i digress, as usual. pray do excuse my ramblings, for that is the way that i seem to have found myself created.

back to the task at hand.

when we attended the sunday meeting with both of our prototypes, mr. talbot agreed immediately that my suggestion was the better one, and i couldn't help but feel extremely proud and arrogant about that. but i wasn't the kind to rub failure in someone's face, so a simple "i won, you lost" and an "i told you so" directed at ethan was enough to satisfy me. hey hey hey people, i never said i was nice.

but unfortunately, my suggestion presented problems for us as well. in the end, after many days of deliberation, we decided on using a lead screw to lift a box with arms opening and closing with pneumatic cylinders as our design. the lead screw and support rods were easy enough to mount, but too many days were spent in doing nothing. by bag and tag day, the arms were barely complete, and the pneumatic cylinders that had to be placed in order to open and close the arms were no where close to being mounted.

we hadn't even figured out how to mount them. we knew the basic idea, but the specifics still had to be determined. where exactly were we gonna mount the cylinders? facing which way? we knew that we'd have pivot points and attachments for the throw of the cylinder, yet where would those pivots be placed? how much of an angle would the attachments have to make? and most importantly, how were we going to mount the cylinders?

you can't exactly just bolt them onto the robot. you kinda need a place to put them, and they can't be punctured just anywhere. in fact, it's a really bad idea in general to try to drill a hole into pneumatic cylinders. plus, they needed to be able to rotate. with so many undecided questions, and our first competition approaching, we needed to make decisions, and make them fast. i wasn't about to be one of the pancake bots at comp that didn't do more than drive about and play defense. especially since in this game, you couldn't really play defense without at least a switch mech.

thus, the tuesday a week before bag and tag, i drew up as many ideas for how to mount the arms and cylinders as i could. i tried all the possible ways i could think of, imagining in my head whether or not the arms would clash into the standoffs or not and whether or not they'd be able to pivot. though i was unable to come up with a conclusive design, at the very least, i had given my teammates a spring board off of which to bounce their own solutions. unfortunately, i would be unable to attend the meeting that night since i had an interview for a scholarship that i really wanted to receive.

when i met up with siobhan the next day, she told me that really nothing had been accomplished at the meeting. mostly, they had just talked. the week followed the same trend, and then it was bag and tag, and we were desperately trying to finish up as much as we could before dalton.

then thursday morning dawned, bright and early, and i was ecstatic. me and siobhan were going to drive up after school and help unload the bot, set up pits, get it inspected, and finish any repairs to the robot that we needed to do. the drive up to the competition was long, about an hour and a half. it seemed longer, as i was cramped in the back seat of siobhan's dad's truck.

finally though, we were there.

we hoped out of the truck, and began to take out the materials for our pits from the back. we had plastic shelving, pvc pipe for the banner, and a few other items. it was pretty easy to carry all of it in, as it was very light, and mr. talbot had the robot as well as the tools. all we had to do was set up the shelving and the banner. the rest was pretty unimportant. as we walked in, the members from the team 5900, who were conveniently located in dalton, were being super helpful. there was one kid with a pikachu hat that greeted us enthusiastically. (remember him. he becomes very important later on. nah i'm just playing.)

they helped us take everything in. while in the entrance to the pits, we realized that we had forgotten to grab our safety glasses, so siobhan's dad grabbed them. after that slight delay, we found our pits, and started to unload our materials.

my stomach was in knots from the excitement of it all. i had been waiting for this for a really long time. we were here at our first competition, and i planned to thoroughly enjoy myself. across the way, my old team was unpacking their own pits, and i longed to go over there and talk to them again. but something was holding me back. maybe the fact that since i'd left, they hadn't exactly been the friendliest to me. perhaps because they blamed me for leaving. in any case, i couldn't bring myself to go over. and even if i could, what would i say? i had nothing to talk to them about. after all, all that i had talked to them about before was inside jokes and stuff related to the robot. i no longer had either of those things to talk about.

anyway, instead of worrying about those asshats, i should focus on my own team. i got new peeps now.

we set up the plastic shelving, and placed our tool box on the table. the robot was not here yet, so we just stood around looking at the other pits. we really didn't have much of anything, as we still had to wait on our banner. our pit was rather sparse. i didn't know what to do, so i just stood awkwardly.

finally, mr. talbot arrived with the robot, and we rushed out to collect the robot. the guy with the pikachu hat was there as well. we brought the bot inside, into our pit, and then began the laborious process of affixing the arms to the robot and making sure that it worked. we didn't have more than siobhan and i there today, so we couldn't test any of the code. that would be something for the next morning. but we aimed to get as much done as possible, and to get the robot through inspection early the next morning. after spending ages filing the corners and edges of the arms, we got them to intersect without slamming into one another, and i put the foam on the surface of the arms for grippy stuff. they were mounted, and the pneumatic tubes were connected.

now all we had to do was get the code working and make sure all the controls worked properly, as well as the pneumatics for the arm and the kicker. so we called it a day, and walked out to wait on mrs. baler. while i sat there, the guy with the pikachu hat came up to me, and we started talking. i found out that his name was Fin and that he was a lot of fun to talk to. not to mention the fact that he was cute. i have no idea how we ended up talking for so long, but i had to leave to come home. i bid him adieu, and siobhan and i began the long drive home.

tomorrow was day one of the dalton competition. the excitement was mounting. my stomach was a ball of nerves. when i got home, i got a text from Fin asking for my snapchat. so now i had two things to look forward to for tomorrow.