WEEK ZERO

The robotics team has a big tournament coming up. In fact, two weeks from today it will be done.  This is in what is called Week One of the FIRST robotics competition season.  Five more weekends events follow.

If you have your robot working, or more commonly, mostly working, there are opportunities to run it in a pre-season event called a Week Zero.  The field is a bit more plywood than aluminum and polycarbonate, but close enough for a practice event.  

Last year we could not make it.  Our robot was falling apart.  The year before, ditto.  Over the roughly ten seasons of the team's existence we've only managed a Week Zero twice.  As it is an excellent way to see what  works and what does not, its pretty valuable and attending one was not just a goal this year but a Prime Directive.  So off we went.  

Some things worked, some needed work.

Here's the on the field drivers meeting at the start of the day.  40 teams signed up, but a few were kept away by a spate of nasty weather the night before.

And out onto the field.  We managed to "answer the bell" for the first match of the season for anyone!

We knew our software team had not yet had time to get most of the control systems tuned up, or in some cases operational at all.  On the other hand, our mechanical build seems rock solid.  If you are, in effect, a big clumsy oaf crashing into things it helps to be durable! 

Our system for intaking those sections of PVC pipes is particularly twitchy.  Unexpectedly, when teams "miss" - and often as not this was us - and they pile up in front of the station, it gets hard to acquire them.  A short lived and very unsuccessful kludge solution was tried.

A good trip, much was learned.  We have a lot of work to do in the next ten days but we know what it is.  As software did their secret rituals in another corner of the room the 5826 pit crew was able to briefly engage in their traditional idles moments Uno game.