My Senior Year

[Antinos]

Over 7,000 headed down to Wayne State University for one of the biggest high school football games of the month and the climax of the weekend:

You could tell who had the spirit at this game:

There were many booths, decorations, grills, etc set up just for today's game:

The Air Force was there giving away a ton of free stuff:

The stands filled up. Brother Rice in orange, and Catholic Central in a mix of blue and white:

Our team took the field in our special orange jerseys. We looked very sharp:

The game started and it was obvious from the beginning that the game was defense based. After the first quarter, the score was tied at three:

Early in the second, our kicker sent the ball skyward and it refused to come down for quite a while. It allowed enough time for a few players to rush down the field. The Catholic Central receiver was absolutely rocked after he caught the ball and he fumbled. Rice jumped on the ball. The turnover resulted in a touchdown. The score at the half was 10-3, Brother Rice.

During half time, both bands performed and a few students played a game of punt, pass, and kick. Rice ended up winning due to a freshman's 60 yard throw. This was the first time I saw our band perform, and I must say, they looked and sounded sharp:

The second half started, and once again, the defense on both sides was strong. CC's offense was limited to 80 yards in the second half and Rice was stopped in the red zone twice. Early in the fourth, CC threw a 40 yard bomb into the endzone, only to be intercepted by a Rice defender. This was the turning point. We rushed back down the field. One of our plays included a rush where four CC defenders tried to haul down our rusher, but he still managed to get 20 yards with all of them on his back. We ended up rushing in for the touchdown with two minutes left:

CC had two minutes to make something happen, and on their second play, their quarterback threw straight into the hands of the game's MVP, #20 and the game was over. Brother Rice did it:

At the beginning of the season, we were ranked 5th in the state, but three losses meant that we were unranked. Catholic Central, the 2009 division II state champs were ranked 1st and were on a 20 game winning streak. We pulled off a massive upset, and every Warrior was able to walk away proud of their friends and proud to go to Brother Rice:

Honestly, this weekend was just too good. I don't know how they expect us to work in school tomorrow.

Also, here's a link to a story about the game if anybody is interested in reading it:

http://www.freep.com/article/20101010/H ... ntral-17-3

 

[LiveForTheLaunch]

I'd say that is actually pretty cool, but what isn't cool is the fact that you can SEE the Detroit skyline, which means my house is like ten minutes away and you didn't come visit . You buttthole.

Seriously though it looks like you guys have a lot of spirit, reminds me of my highschool when it comes to football. Plus, your colour is orange, can't go wrong with that!

 

[Antinos]

Taylor, you aren't even home right now, so what's the point of visiting you?

EDIT: Here's a good video with a lot of highlights from the game if you're interested:

http://www.clickondetroit.com/video/25350092/index.html

 

[LiveForTheLaunch]

^ Oh yah, I forgot about that little glitch.

 

[Antinos]

The robotics team finished our chassis today. It's four wheel drive with 8 inch diameter wheels powered by two CIM motors(one each side). We have ten days until our first competition and we still need to build our appendage, but we have everything math'd out and it should be a quick build.

Here's a snapshot:

And a video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvymFyItCXk[/youtube]

 

[Xpress]

What transmitter are you using? A crappy Futaba Tactic 4 channel tank radio?

 

[Hixee]

Oh... it's made from Mechano.

 

[Pierre]

Why just leave this at your Senior year.

Why don't you carry on and give us an enthralling occasional documentary on your day-to-day life from now on?

 

[Antinos]

Xpress; it's a Vexnet system bundle. Vex control systems use wifi.

 

[Pierre]

You didn't answer my question.

 

[Xpress]

Xpress; it's a Vexnet system bundle. Vex control systems use wifi.

WIFI can be any frequency out there. I know VEX systems use 75mhz FM PPM which is approved by the FCC for Surface Use applications only, and there are specific channels on which 75mhz can legally operate. There are industrial applications which use 75mhz as well. Looks like 6 channel.

However, that doesn't mean newer versions use 2.4ghz, which is a very common frequency for cell phones, wifi, car remotes, and such.

So, which does it use??? :? :?

 

[Antinos]

I don't know what frequency it uses. It's operational, and that's all I really care about.

 

[Antinos]

This Friday, University of Detroit Mercy is holding a tech day and my Advanced Engineering class is taking a part in it. I'm entered in two competitions with a friend.

King of the Hill

There is a slight incline on both sides of the 'hill' and the point is to build a vehicle, powered by stored energy, to reach the other side of the hill. The catch is that there is another car trying to do the same thing on the opposite side. Basically, whoever gets to the other side wins.

Toothpick Bridge

This one is pretty straight forward. You build a bridge out of flat toothpicks and elmers glue, and they put weights on it.


I am building the car for king of the hill and my friend is building our bridge. We already have the design for toothpick bridge and it should work very well. Our car is more of a challenge:

This is what I have so far. The two wheels mounted on the k'nex rod are powered by a rubber band that wraps around the other axle. Once we modify the other wheels, we will mount them to the other axle. The other axle is a bolt and we are going to attach a ratchet to prevent the car from being pushed backwards. We are also going to have a wedge on half of the front and a wall on the other half so the opposite car starts to rotate and loose traction.

We are currently trying to figure out a way to attach the wheels to the bolt besides glue. If anybody has an idea, please reply.

 

[CMonster]

I swim!

Robots are cool tho. Just not a sport obviously.

 

[Xpress]

This Friday, University of Detroit Mercy is holding a tech day and my Advanced Engineering class is taking a part in it. I'm entered in two competitions with a friend.

King of the Hill

There is a slight incline on both sides of the 'hill' and the point is to build a vehicle, powered by stored energy, to reach the other side of the hill. The catch is that there is another car trying to do the same thing on the opposite side. Basically, whoever gets to the other side wins.

Toothpick Bridge

This one is pretty straight forward. You build a bridge out of flat toothpicks and elmers glue, and they put weights on it.


I am building the car for king of the hill and my friend is building our bridge. We already have the design for toothpick bridge and it should work very well. Our car is more of a challenge:

This is what I have so far. The two wheels mounted on the k'nex rod are powered by a rubber band that wraps around the other axle. Once we modify the other wheels, we will mount them to the other axle. The other axle is a bolt and we are going to attach a ratchet to prevent the car from being pushed backwards. We are also going to have a wedge on half of the front and a wall on the other half so the opposite car starts to rotate and loose traction.

We are currently trying to figure out a way to attach the wheels to the bolt besides glue. If anybody has an idea, please reply.

KNEX!

As for the wheels on the bolt, use a Medium CA from a local hobby shop. See if they have stuff labeled as Insta Set+, it's got a blue cap and a blue label on it. CA (also commonly known as super glue ) gets brittle when it cures onto metal, so you can break it off pretty easily. What you could do is glue a metal washer in place to position the wheels, then if you need to move it or something then just break the glue joint.

The medium viscosity of the glue will allow you to position it better, without it flowing everywhere. You could also use a THICK Ca as well, which will be more like a gel that won't go anywhere too fast, but they take a long time to cure up.

 

[Antinos]

Competition is tomorrow and I had to do a lot of modifying to our design. I concluded that a ratchet created too much friction and the wedge on the front was way too heavy. I hacked apart the wedge and swiss cheesed it to reduce weight. I also found that the ratchet makes a good counter weight on the back. I have tested it on two carpeted surfaces, and although the actual surface is a bit different, I got the car to travel over four feet. The 'hill' is three feet long and three inches high, so I think I can get to the other side.

Today was also our last official meeting before our first robotics competition. We had one motor to mount and a ball funneling device to build(although the funnel was never worked on). Once we finished, we were able to test, and our robot works:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYrOlrSBA0Q[/youtube]

Our design is basically two rails that are positioned at about a 45* angle. Above the rails is a heavy duty fan belt that moves the ball up the rails. At the top of the rails are a pair of wheels that shoot the ball. The point of the game is to clear a five foot fence that divides the field in half. The catch is that the balls are a little under deflated so finding the right compression is a little hard. It works though, and that's what matters.

Once we finished, we walked out of school to this sight, a double rainbow(although you can't really see the second):

Is it a sign? We'll find out. I'll post some pictures of tomorrow and Saturday.

 

[Antinos]

We left school this morning at around 8:00 and arrived about 15 minutes later. We figured out where our events were and split up. First, we found all the free stuff:

My friend and I played 'How Much' afterward, which is basically a game of estimation. A few friends played 'Twenty Four' and afterward, we headed to Jeopardy. The preliminary round was simple and my group only got one wrong. I headed back to the main area to compete in King of the Hill. Overall, my car was 2-2. It wasn't good, but it certainly wasn't the worst there:

After King of the Hill, I watched a few of our catapults:

I went back to Jeopardy for the second round, but there was a wait, so I checked out the egg drops:

Our second round of Jeopardy was a landslide. We were answering questions before the guy finished reading them and our round ended early because we couldn't be caught. While waiting for the final round, we played some ninja. There were four teams in the final round for Jeopardy; two from my school(including my group) and two from other schools. We ended up taking third in Jeopardy. Later on, we found out that our toothpick bridge won second place. Sadly, we could have taken first, but we didn't add extra trusses.

Group shot:

Overall, we placed seven times:

Catapult:
1st place
2nd place

Toothpick Bridge:
2nd place

Jeopardy:
2nd place
3rd place

How Much?:
1st place
2nd place

Our sister school, Marian, even placed in a few competitions, so we kicked some ass.

 

[Antinos]

I'm going to hold off on writing about the robotics competition so I can get some good photos from my friend, but overall, we did pretty well.

After the competition, we headed down to Ford Field in downtown Detroit to watch our football team play St. Mary's for the Catholic League Championship. We scored a touchdown on our first drive, but they answered back with a touchdown as well. Our next drive, we kicked a field goal and at half time, we were up 10-7. Early in the third, they scored again and we were down by four for most of the second half. With 5:30 on the clock, and the ball at the 50 yard line, our quarterback tossed a 50 yard bomb. One lone Warrior ran right underneath it, got his fingers on the ball, almost dropped it, and gained control for a touchdown. The catch saved the game and our playoff chances. Unfortunately, St. Mary's had time to make something happen. Throughout the night, our defense wasn't looking too hot, and the ball ended up within 20 yards with 30 seconds left. Finally, our defense turned on the guns and held on the two yard line to win the game. It was more exciting than us beating Catholic Central. We clinched a playoff spot and have continued to shock many(last weekend, our team traveled to Indianapolis to play Cathedral. They were number one in Indiana and we beat them).

 

[Antinos]

We were really anxious to get on the field for our first match. We wanted to see what our robot could do. We were in match 4, so we had to wait.

Remember 469 from my other robotics topic? Well they were in the first match, and ten seconds in, the world champion finalists and Michigan state champions tipped over on the bump.

Fast forward to our match. We discovered that our robot's appendage could not clear the fence like we wanted, so we changed our strategy to driving up the bump and pooping them out the other side. We ended up winning, but not how we wanted.

We needed to do something about our shooter, so we wrapped surgical tubing around the wheels to add traction. If it helped, it was minimal. Right before our second match, they called a break for lunch because they were running behind schedule. We decided to raise our shooter wheels one inch for more compression and a steeper launch angle. We started unbolting, measuring, drilling, and bolting, and ended up finishing our modification as we were called to the field.

We headed out and our alliance partner's bot died ten seconds in. We were against a very good team and we couldn't keep up, although we showed that we had a powerful robot. There are five neutral balls on top of the bump at the beginning of the match, so we pushed our partner's dead robot up the ramp to bump them to the other side. Unfortunately, our partner ended up rolling over them and brought them back down, but we showed that we could push.

Our appendage leader showed up after this match after taking the ACT and inspected our modification. He noticed that there was too much tension on the shooter wheel chain, so he added a small piece of aluminum flatstock in between the motor and the angle bracket that the motor is mounted on. It was time for our third match. We were partnered with a good team and crushed the other team, but with 30 seconds left, an idler sprocket fell off the right side of our drivetrain, so we were dead in the water. We still won, but the breakdown was easily preventable.

We had to put the chain back onto the sprockets, but something wasn't aligning correctly. We ended up breaking some chain and we were still putting it back together when we were called for our last match and the last match of the day. I tried to attach the master link as well as three others and it wouldn't snap on. Our coach and some referees stepped in to help and after five minutes, they finally got it.

Our chain wasn't tensioned and we just made it onto the field. We were against Catholic Central and we were the only offensive robot on the field. The match started and we were chucking balls like crazy. The number of balls on our side of the field dwindled until we threw the last one. Everybody cheered as we got the first Clean Sweep of the competition.

After the match, everybody was talking about us. I can't wait until the next competition on Thursday, but we have a lot of work to do before then.

 

[Antinos]

It's been a while since I last posted in here. Not too much exciting has happened.

Unfortunately, our football team lost in what sounded like the worst way possible. We played better, yet we had to beat the refs, and from what I heard, almost every call was 15 yards on us. I think the final score was 37-27, and it was a back and forth game until the last minute or so when the refs completely threw it for us. I heard that one of our assistant coaches had to be restrained from charging a ref and our offensive coordinator sprinted after a ref after the game ended. I felt really bad for all the senior football players, having to go out like that. They worked their asses off for the past month by winning the homecoming game, beating CC, the number one team in the state at the time, beating Cathedral, the number one team in Indiana, and beating St Mary's, the number one team in the state at the time to win the Catholic League Championship, only to have their dreams and hard work crushed.

Last Thursday, we had another robotics competition, and once again, we were kicking ass and taking names. Our first match was with the number two seed, against the number three seed, and one of our school's rivals. It was a very fast paced and exciting match because all four robots could throw a ball over the fence. We ended up winning, and overall, we ended up in fourth place. Our next competition is Saturday. Here's a photo of one of our matches:

You can see the red ball about to cross the fence. You can also see everybody watching us in the background.


Tomorrow is open house, so I'll probably have something to say about it. Saturday is another competition, so I'll have some photos of that. Next week, I will be on a three day retreat, which everybody has said that if you go to Brother Rice, it's something that you should do before you graduate. I'm sure I'll have a lot to write about when I get back.