1/1 | Happy New Year’s!
Happy New Year’s Day!! That means only 4 days left until Jan. 5, the Destination: Deep Space kickoff! BEASTBot will be at Central High School for kickoff this year.
Hopefully we can have a better season this season than last year, where we tried to be too ambitious and ended up coming in last place… This year we hope to do much better and have a good season like we did back in 2016.
11/1 | Howl-O-Ween at the MOA
We spent another spooky halloween with AFAA (Anaphylaxis and Food Allergy Association) at the MOA this year, providing a place for kids with food allergies to have fun in an allergen laiden place.
Along with Central’s team 4536, we set up an area for kids to drive robots and get their first FIRST experience. Everyone had a blast, especially Sparky, who was dressed up as a spooktacular ghost.
10/13 | Minnesota Robotics Invitational 2018
Today was MRI 2018, an off-season tournament hosted by team 2846 the Fire Bears at Roseville Area High School.
We came in 26th place out of 36 teams, which is actually better then Sparky did back at MRI 2016 where it came in 27th place, however Sparky was picked for eliminations where our alliance came in 1st place. Unfortunately no one picked us for eliminations this year.
During qualifications we had many good matches, our best were Q11 and Q38 both of which we won with over 400 points! While those were the only matches we won, we played well in all of our matches only losing one match by over 100 points, and never letting our opponents get over 325 points.
9/28 | First Java class
Yesterday was our first Java training meeting. We made sure all of our computers had eclipse and the correct plugins installed, then everyone used robot builder to make an example of the electrical systems of a robot.
Almost the whole team showed up, so we’re looking forward to having plenty of people doing programming this year, so we can hopefully pull off an advenced autonomous. Last year we tried, but due to a lack of time for testing it ended up not working well and we had to simplify it down to just driving forward and sometimes releasing a Power Cube.
We have another Java training meeting planned for next week Thursday (10/4), so if you’re interested, we’ll see you then .o/ (Want to be notified by text/email?)
9/20 | New recruit meeting
Today we held our first meeting with this year’s new members. We had an good turnout today with 6 new members showing up, and are planning on meeting more soon so we can get our robot ready for the upcoming off-season tournament, the Minnesota Robotics Invitational, on October 13th, and for Java programming classes so we’re ready to code our robot when build season comes.
If you or anyone you know is interested in robotics, we always welcome new members! If you want to try out 3D modelling/printing or working on our robot show up next Tuesday (9/25), or if programming is more your thing show up next Thursday (9/27) to start learing Java. Both times we plan to meet in room 1222 (get signed up for team notifications here), we hope to see you there!
9/13 | Como open house
We were set up in the 1200 hallway and the new Cougar Commons where we drove the robots, showed off 3D printing, and passed out flyers to everyone interested in joning robotics.
Unfortunately about two thirds the way through the open house Sketch E had troubles with the chain that drives it’s elevator, so we had to quit driving it so we could attempt to fix it.
On the bright side, our flyers were very popular and we hope to see many people show up at our upcoming meeting on next thursday, September 20th, where we plan to give a brief introduction to the FIRST Robotics Competition, show people how they do 3D modelling (even on school iPads!), 3D print their creations, and more! If you’re a Como student, we hope to see you there!
9/10 | BEASTBot will be at the open house on 9/13!
We plan to be in the new commons so stop by before, after, or between periods to see us driving the robot, 3D printing, and explaining how you can get involved in FIRST robotics!
If you’re already convinced you can head over to the Join Us page to let us know you’re interested and get signed up for team meeting notifications so you’ll never miss a meeting.