February 22, 2015 - Starting from Ground Zero!

Hello Blogger,

We are the Charging Champions, FTC Team #8660. This is our third blog (for February 22, 2015). Over the past couple of weeks, we have been making several changes to our robot.

We just competed in the Los Angeles Regional Tournament in Monrovia High School. Last Tuesday, we found out that we were moving on to the super-regional tournament (Hooray!). So we decided to redo our robot, as our old model was not very scale-able.

Earlier, our robot had one point for entry, and the same point let out the balls. This time, we plan to have a robot that collects balls in one end and lets them out through another end. We also plan to drag the rolling goals around.

We also planned on having two pulleys, one on either end to lift up the basket. This will give our basket stability.

There were several ideas put on the table for our basket. Some included:

1. A square basket with a gate in the back to let out the balls
2. An L-shaped tubular basket that tilts to let out the balls.

Those were the two main basket ideas. There were a lot of ideas, but team members with similar ideas combined ideas.

We hope to decide our basket design by the end of this week. 

That's it for this week! Stay tuned for more!

The Charging Champions
FTC Team #8660
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCopXKZO1IG3zsvQKCXF4ESQ
Facebook Page: facebook.com/chargingchampions
Google Plus Page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/112552147224383900922/dashboard/overview
Follow us on Twitter @FtcTeamCC!

January 24, 2015 Blog: A tilting basket and major changes

Hello Blogger!

We are the Charging Champions, FTC Team #8660. This is our second blog (for January 24, 2015). Over the past couple of weeks, we have been making several changes to our robot.

As shown, the pulley is made out of 80/20 bars. The first bar is a 1020 bar, and all of the other bars are 1010 bars. Now, the pulley only has 1010 bars, so it is a lot smaller.

Earlier, a servo motor used to pull up the brush on an 80/20 bar. However, the servo was very weak, and could not pull it up more than 3 or 4 times before burning out. To solve this problem, we used a DC motor with a re-purposed tank tread idler wheel to wind up the brush.

The basket was being flipped up and down by a servo. However, in the January 11, 2015 Perris Qualifier, the link to the servo was weak, and it caused the whole basket to tilt at a 45-degree angle. Because of this, we were unable to drop balls into the center goal. After the competition, we replaced the servo that tilted up the basket with a DC motor.

Because of all of these new DC motors that we added, there were no ports left in the controllers. As a result, we had to butt-splice the drive motors so that both of the left-side drive (2 motors) was fed into one controller. We did the same thing on the right side.


That's it for this week! Stay tuned for more!

The Charging Champions
FTC Team #8660
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCopXKZO1IG3zsvQKCXF4ESQ
Facebook Page: facebook.com/chargingchampions
Google Plus Page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/112552147224383900922/dashboard/overview
Follow us on Twitter @FtcTeamCC!

Our first Blog!

Hello Blogger!

We are the Charging Champions, FTC Team #8660. We are a rookie team from Irvine, California.

We have participated in 2 qualifiers; the January 11 Perris Qualifier and the December 7th Monrovia Qualifier. We are also really excited that we are moving onto the regionals!

Please visit our facebook page, our google plus page, our youtube channel, and follow us on Twitter @FtcTeamCC!

Facebook page: facebook.com/chargingchampions
google plus page: https://plus.google.com/b/112552147224383900922/dashboard/overview
youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCopXKZO1IG3zsvQKCXF4ESQ

Stay tuned for more posts!