Sorry for the lack of posts since build season has ended, but we have been up to quite a bit. Starting with the last day of build season, Kitt, our project coordinator, and I went to a dinner with Dean Kamen. With representatives from Saguaro and Arcadia also in attendance, it was a night to remember. While we were at this dinner, the rest of the team was back at the room were preparing and finally bagging the robot. Since then, we have met to debrief on the build season and decide what needed to be worked on from now until our first competition, which is Arizona’s regional, coming up on March 22-24. Currently, our to do list includes pit planning, new scouting system, additional work with the robot components that we held back, and final revisions to vision and robot code.
That about sums up our post-season plans. We will update if there is anymore breaking news. See you at the Arizona Regional!

Since we are unable to bring a robot to the Microsoft Store today, we are Live Streaming our build today. Check out our Live Stream here. The Microsoft Store is located at Scottsdale Fashion Square, 7014 E Camelback Rd, Scottsdale, AZ 85251. Stop by and see us! We’ll be willing to answer any question you have.

Today is Duel in the Desert. Even though we were unable to attend, we did send representatives there to meet with other teams and discuss robot things. The rest of the team stayed behind at Mr. Jordan’s room to work on the robot. Mechanical Team had to wire up the motors, then hand it over to Programming Team to have them upload the code and see if it all works correctly. The fire alarm also went off today (Just for a few minutes) and we have no idea why. That’s Saturday for ya, check back tomorrow for a Live Stream of the build!

Hey everyone! We are working away on trying to get our robot done in order to attend Duel in the Desert tomorrow. Our robot has been affected by some unforeseen problems so we are attempting on addressing these problems before tomorrow. Programming is working away on the robot’s code and integrating the vision system with that code. Website Team in happily working on less time sensitive projects, such as the Chairman’s Award video. Hopefully we will be able to attend tomorrow, but no matter what the future may bring us, you all have a good one!

We get to stay an hour late today to make some last minute touch ups to M1-A1. Website Team is working on the Chairman’s Award video, Programming can be found typing away at their terminals, finishing up the robot code. Happy Thursday everybody,

We’ve been making slight changes to the website ever since we uploaded it. We want everything to be easy for people to access. If you have any suggestions on anything that could make it better, feel free to comment on this post and we will see what we can do. Submission for Judging is tomorrow at noon, so wish us luck! As for the rest of the team, Programming has been discussing about what they need to focus on and what they need to accomplish in the next few days for the robot to be functional. Mechanical Team have been very busy bees working on our robot, which we are calling M1-A1 because it has treads. We should have it ready for “Duel in the Desert” this coming weekend.

The website is almost done! Just a few more things to add and iron out and we’ll be ready to release it to the public on Wednesday. The blog has been edited slightly to match the look of the new site too. It will be getting more of a makeover later on when the full website is released. Keep in mind you can still access the 2011 Award Winning Firebird Robotics website at this link here and at the bottom of the sidebar on the blog.

As we are approaching our final week of build season, everyone is hard at work finishing up all aspects of the robot and website by their respective deadlines. Mechanical is hard at work tying up all of the loose ends of the robot. Programming is busy working on Kinect and Axis camera code and getting our new mini-Crio operational. As far as the website, I just finished up writing the rest of the content, so all that’s left is adding a few more features and general clean-up. It is looking really awesome and I can’t wait until we release it next week. We should be posting videos and photos of the robot in the coming days, so stay tuned!

Apologies for the week long hiatus but all teams have been hard at work on their respective projects. The website development team has been very hard at work on the new website redesign, which should be live by this Sunday. On the programming front, work on the kinect is wrapping up and should be ready to go next week. We have also been messing around with our axis camera, which, if it stays on track, should be ready to be used by Sunday if the kinect is not operational. Mechanical team is diligently working on finalizing all aspects on the robot.

Hello, fellow humans! Today, the programming team mounted a green light on the kinect for improved visibility. The website team got a 3D spinning chair working while they wait for the photography studio to open up. Eventually we will replace the chair with a 3D spinning robot. Mechanical is working away, refining the robot into a lean mean basket ball machine.