The Warlocks are looking towards a strong finish as we end our 5th week of the build season. The build team has been finishing up the shooter and the lift for our robot!
The CAD team has officially finished the CAD model of our robot! The CAD team is now spending their time helping design any last minute additions to the robot.
The PR team has started filming and editing the chairman’s video. They have also been hard at work planning their Chairman’s presentation, and have made all the goodie bags to pass out at the regional!
The programming team has continued their work from last week, continuing to wire, work on the shooter’s speed control, and fine tuning the VI.
The Warlocks have made great progress in the past 5 weeks! We look forward to the final week of build season, and competing at the regionals!
Week 4 has been another productive week for The Warlocks! Our build team continued to work on the field elements, as they finished building our castle. The build team has also been busy powder coating parts of our robot, making sure our robot looks as good as it’s going to perform!
The CAD team has been working towards finishing detailing elements of our robot. Our rookie members have been working diligently to help our CAD leader in anything he needs.
The public relations team has sent in the Chairman’s essay and the short answers, and has finished the script for the video! Packing lists have started for the regionals!
The programming team has started to wire our robot! They also worked on speed control for our robot, and fine tuned the robot’s VI.
As we start to reach the final stretch, The Warlocks continue all their hard work on making this year’s robot, the best yet!
I noticed this weekend, when I wanted to upload some photos of the team I took, that the link to the photo gallery was not working.
I dug into it and found out that an upgrade to the hosting site made the gallery stop working. Simply upgrading the gallery software to the newest version should have fixed it. As it goes with most web site stuff, it wasn’t that simple. I tried several times to repair and upgrade it, to no avail. I finally made a new installation on another domain, got it working, and copied the whole thing back to the Warlocks site. Mission accomplished.
During that process, the hosting company decided to shut down their MySQL web interface for maintenance, further delaying the process. Then my internet stopped connecting to any site at the hosting company. I could surf the web anywhere else, but any of my domains refused to work. It finally returned after I did a complete shutdown of my router, DSL modem, and several computers, but I still think it is coincidence and there was a problem within the hosts system, because I could not reach our site using my cell phone data either. I only had intermittent connectivity through a VPN proxy.
But that’s probably more than anyone wants to know. The photo gallery is back and working better than ever now. I’m looking forward to seeing many more photos of our team throughout the season. The photos are an important part of the team history and go back to the very first year of the team. I’m very happy that we have been able to preserve that history.
The Warlocks have had a very productive week three! The build team has been hard at work continuing to build the field elements. Meanwhile, the base for our robot has come in and has been riveted by a couple of our team members. The build team has also continued to work on different shooters and climbing mechanisms for the robot.
The CAD team has almost finished drawing our robot! While our veteran members were hard at work on the robot, some of our rookie members have been working on the layout for our pits this year.
The programming team has been prioritizing what they want their program to do. They have been contemplating how many cameras they will be capable of putting on our robot.
The public relations team has continued their hard work on the Chairman’s Award Essay. They have also been coming up with a script for the video for the Chairman’s Award as well. One of our rookie members has started working on the Media and Technology Innovation Award!
Our rookie members have really learned a lot in the past weeks, and have started using the training they received from the veteran members and the mentors to good use.
The Warlocks have come a long way since week one, and build season isn’t even over yet! We can’t wait to see our progress in the coming weeks.
The Warlocks have been up to some great things in week two! This week, our build team has continued to prototype different aspects of the robot. They’ve talked about different designs for our robots shooter, and eventually we decided as a team on our final design. The build team has also been working hard on making accurate replicas of the different defenses, such as rough terrain and the ramparts.
The CAD team has been hard at work attempting to finalize the base design. They’ve also been making attempts to fit our shooter in the size constraints.
Our programming team has worked diligently on vision tracking, and has continued to work on driving straight.
The public relations team has been hard at work! They’ve been working on the Chairman’s Award essay, as well as the Chairman’s Award video. They’ve also been busy taking pictures of the team, and thinking about team spirit ideas.
In the meantime, our entire team has learned about this year’s scouting app! Our scouting mentor took the time to train all the students on both the basics and the specifics on how to scout for this year’s game.
As always, the mentors and veteran students have continued to train and help the new students on our team in their respective fields.
Overall, The Warlocks have had a productive week in all fields. We hope that next week is even better, as we continue to learn and grow in all fields of FIRST Robotics!
The Warlocks are excited to begin the 2016 season! Week one started out strong with the reveal for this year’s game, Stronghold, and we have hit the ground running! After our crowd was informed of the basics with the game, we broke up into small groups. Each group focused on different aspects of competition, including strategy, field elements, and design. We even did a human play through of the game!
Throughout the school week, our build team has been working hard on prototyping different designs for our robot’s shooter. They have also been brainstorming and prototyping different ways to drive over different defenses.
Our CAD team has been very busy drawing up models of possible robot designs, drafting scenarios of different ways to get around the field and different types of shooters.
In the programming room, programmers can be found working diligently in LabView, designing a possible camera to place on our robot. In addition, they have been working on improving our program for driving straight.
The Warlocks rookie members have been very hands on, learning their respective field such as CAD and build, while also learning the ins and outs of how a robotics season works.
As a team, we continue to discuss strategy, breaking into teams trying to get the most points possible. So far the Warlocks have had a great and busy week one. Here’s to an even better week two!
On January 9th, 2016, FIRST released the new 2016 FRC game called FIRST Stronghold. FIRST Stronghold is played by 2 alliances of three teams each who compete against each other to breach their opponents defenses, weaken their castle, and capture their castle’s tower. For more information about this year’s game, make sure to check out or about the game page on our website
For six weeks following the release of the 2016 game, high school students will be working with one of thousands of teams across the globe to build a robot to play and compete in this years challenge. High school students, along with their fellow teachers and mentors, will be tasked with the challenge of designing, building, and programming a 120 pound robot to compete at regional and district competitions across the country and around the globe. To check on the progress of our team throughout the build season, check out our weekly build season updates on our blog.
Lockport Robotics FIRST team 1507 would like to thank Reid Petroleum and ExxonMobile for partnering with the WARLOCKS again in 2016! We are building a better future for today and tomorrow!
ExxonMobil is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. ExxonMobile is the world’s 5th largest company by revenue, and the third largest publicly traded company by market capitalization. Reid Petroleum is a family business, and a leading marketer of transportation fuels to customers throughout New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
Each and every year, FIRST releases a new game that requires each FRC team needs to design, build, and program a new robot to compete in. In addition to the human driver period, called the teleoperated period, each game has what is called an autonomous period. The autonomous period is a portion of a match where the robot is controlled via pre-programmed instructions. During this period, the robot is allowed to use its on board sensors to aid it in completing its tasks. One of the many different sensors that can be used is a simple network camera.
This network camera can be used for tracking different objects on the field, such as the tote pictured above. Each game provides opportunities for vision tracking, which usually involves detecting the location of retro-reflective tape on a game piece or around a goal. In the past, the Warlocks have experimented with vision tracking using an old network camera out of the kit of parts from ~2009. With the older style robot controllers in the past, it was difficult to implement vision tracking on the lower powered CPU.
This season, the warlocks plan on using a new IP camera obtained from CCTV Camera World and the newer robot controller to improve upon our vision tracking efforts of the past. With the new camera and faster on board processor in the RoboRio, we can now perform vision tracking on board rather than processing images on the driver station laptop. With the new camera, we will also be able to capture clearer and more accurate images for use in tracking objects as the robot is moving. We can also utilize its network connectivity for sending images back to the driver station laptop to help the drivers maneuver the robot during the teleoperated period.
The Warlocks will be participating in the 1st ever Mini Maker’s Faire at the Barnes and Noble Clarence store on Saturday Nov 7th. The Warlocks will be present from 12-6pm and will be demonstrating our robot and accomplishments with the public. We encourage everyone to stop by the Clarence Barnes & Noble to check it out. Students who are presenting the robot at the fair should arrive at 11am for setup.
If you wish to support the Warlocks at this event, please print and bring this voucher with you. If you use this voucher at the store or in the Cafe, a percentage of your purchase will go towards supporting Lockport Robotics! In addition, you will receive a discount on your purchase
Barnes & Noble stores across the country will be hosting a Mini Maker’s Faire between November 6-8. The Mini Maker’s Faire will allow technology enthusiasts to meet and collaborate with each other. More information on the Mini Maker’s Faire itself can be found here: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/h/makerfaire
The Barnes and Noble in Clarence is located at:
4401 Transit Road Suite 800
Buffalo, NY 14221