Fundraising

Ok. I am going to start posting regular updates here regarding everything from build info, to fundraising info.

Anyway, first topic:
Fundraising.
We need to go into a heavy duty fundraising mode starting next week. Whether it is selling candy at school, making donations to the club, convincing neighbors/family members to make donations or organizing events, we need to really start earning money so that we can actually do something this year. I already have a number of ideas and I am working on making them happen, but everyone needs to contribute and everyone needs to help me with this. My first big idea is a Volleyball Game/Cookout at the beach. If I can work out the details, and we can get 50 people to show up, we could rather easily earn $500+ in a single day. Other ideas involve either car washes at school, some sort of event at a Sam's Club(which will match whatever we earn), concert of some sort, or some sort of tournament. I will be looking into all of these, but I would like everyone else to do their part and start by simply coming up with some ideas.

There are other ways of getting money though. I would encourage everyone to contact friends and family to see if any businesses wish to sponsor the club. I am also going to be looking into the possibility of getting a grant for the club. Brian will probably be selling candy at school, and I would encourage other people to start doing that as well.

Ultimately, my fundraising goal for January is $12,000. I am hoping for more, but I am expecting less.

In line with these lower expectations, I am going to be proposing a rewrite of the club charter, as well as a reorganization of the club in general so as to better facilitate the spending of club funds. I will also be encouraging teams to focus on making Beetle/Ant weight robots. We may still have a 15lb bot that we work on as a club, but I do not believe that we will be able to do any more than a single 15 lb bot. Copperhead will be needing some minor modifications, but nothing extensive will be necessary.

first meeting

Hey guys,

we're having our first meeting this Tuesday, September 1st. It will be in Mr. Seider's room 6th period. thats the room next to the art room. Please, if you know somebody else who's in the club can you guys check to make sure that they know about the meeting. This meeting is mainly for people who were in the club last year cause there's some organizational stuff that we need to talk about. New people, while you are certainly welcome to come to this meeting I'm recommending that you not come till next tuesday when, hopefully, the club will actually have some sort of plan. As always if you have any questions or concerns come see me.

-Julien

Club Charter V2

Ok, for anybody who hasn't seen it yet this is the latest version of the charter:

Club Officers

v The Club President oversees club operations and upholds the Club Charter. The President’s decisions can be overruled by a majority vote of Tier 2 members. The President is elected from Tier 2 members by a majority vote of Tier 2 members. The President cannot be reelected except by a unanimous vote by all club members. Member of the Board of Review

v Vice-President acts in the place of the President if the President is not able to fulfill his duties any given week. Acts as the Chief Engineer for the club, helping teams when necessary. Appointed by the president. Chairman of the Board of Review.

v The Event Organizer organizes all events that club members participate in (builds, fundraisers, etc.). The Organizer is in charge of any administrative duties involved with events. The Organizer gets final say at events but can be overruled by the President. The Organizer works with the Treasurer to obtain money and materials needed for events. The Organizer is elected by the entire club and assumes office upon approval by Club President. Member of the Board of Review.

v The Treasurer handles and keeps records of all financial aspects of the club. The Treasurer is responsible for all fundraising efforts. The Treasurer works with the Organizer in keeping track of money and materials involved in events. The Treasurer is elected by the entire club and assumes office upon approval by Club President. Member of the Board of Review

v The Team Captains represent their team and get final say amongst team members but can be overruled by a majority vote. The Captains oversee their team’s activities and are responsible for keeping their team organized. The members of each team choose their Captain pending approval by Club President.

Board of Review

v A minimum of one week prior to any competition, all teams planning to attend must present the Board of Review with: completed Documentation, proof that the robot functions properly, a demonstration of safety procedures, and have an appointed driver. Each team member must demonstrate a basic understanding of the robot’s design, functions, and strategy.

v All decisions made by the Board of review require a majority vote. In the case of a tie, the presenting team is entitled to submit the proper items to the Board again, after which the Chairman will decide for the Board. Should any member of the Board be a member of the submitting team, either the President or a tier 2 member not in the team will fill their place.

Modus Operandi

v The Club will have three tiers of membership. Tier 1 will consist of all club members and the Team Engineers. Tier 2 will consist of the Team Captains, the Event Organizer, the Treasurer and the Vice President. Tier 3 will consist of the Club President, the Parents, and any other adults involved in the Club.

v Tier 3 members will act as mentors and guides and are not allowed to mandate changes in robots.

v Tier 2 members can initiate an impeachment vote of the President, but they must have an elected replacement ready. All club members must participate in the vote.

v Candidates for the positions of Treasurer, Event Organizer, and President must have been club members for one year.

v Persons cannot be excluded from participating without probable cause.

v Only the members of a team that built a robot participating in an event may attend that event with the exception of the President and the Organizer.

v Each team will have a minimum of two members and a maximum of five.

v Each team may only be involved with one incomplete robot at a time. A complete robot is defined as fully functional, possessing an adequate safety device, and has a team member selected to drive the robot.

v In order to start building a robot, a team must have most of its fundraising completed and be granted approval by the Board of Review after submitting a report detailing the robot’s design and estimated cost.

v Teams are required to keep the Board of Review and President up to date with any and all progress on their robot and fundraising efforts.

Presidential Limitations and Qualifications

v The President shall be restricted from creating any team or teams independent of any restrictions set forth in this document. The president may participate in any individual team activities.

v The President must not neglect his or her presidential duties in the participation in any team.

v The President may also perform the duties of either the Treasurer or the Organizer provided that no suitable member is appointed. The president will not be permitted to perform the duties of both positions.

v Should the President perform the duties of Treasurer or Organizer he or she will be restricted from joining a team.

v The candidates for the position of President must have previously been club members for two years or have shown enough merit to warrant a nomination by the former Club President.

v The next year’s President must be elected no later than one month before the end of the current school year in order to give the previous President time to transition out of office.

v The elected President will assume office immediately after the school year has ended. The new Treasurer and Organizer must be elected by this time and the chairman of the board of review must also be appointed by this time.

Financial Policy

v All club finances will be kept in a club account. Each team will be allocated a sum of money equal to the funds raised by this team. Any additional funds requested must be approved by the Board of Review.

v Money and materials that do not belong to any specific team will be available to all teams from the club account on a first come first served basis once the team has obtained the Board’s approval.

v The Treasurer has the right to prevent withdrawal of money from the club account in order to pay any fees, taxes, or other charges attributed to the whole of the engineering club.

v Each team is responsible for paying any fees, taxes, or other charges attributed to their robot and/or team. This includes but is not limited to registration fees, shipping charges and trip expenses.

v Each team must have probable cause in order to withdraw money from the club account.

v Each team will submit a request to the Treasurer to obtain or order any and all parts or materials.

New 15 lb Robot

I have begun to work on a new 15 lb robot to replace Dethinator. Like Dethinator, it will be a Full Body Spinner, however, it will have angled sides in an effort to better defend against the numerous Vertical Spinners(Drums, Beaters, Blades, etc).

Also, to ensure a greater stability, the robot will be a mere 2.25" tall, and 16" in diameter. Spinning the shell will be two AXi 2826/12 Brushless motors at 14.8V. Shell should spin at around 2000 RPM at top speed, and these brushless motors should have enough torque to get the shell up to speed quickly.

As you know, this year, Dethinator was troubled by the fact that the shell was made out of Aluminum, which led to a weakness in the shell that ultimately contributed to its defeat. To prevent this from happening again, I intend for this new bot to have 3/16" 6-4(Grade 5) Titanium for its shell. This, together with the angled sides of the shell, should result in an incredibly resilient robot that will withstand a lot of punishment, and do a lot of damage.

Also, if the robot has enough weight, I plan on using Neodymium magnets to apply a downforce to reduce the ricochet when we hit another robot.

Here are some screencaps of the model of the shell that I made today:

End of the year

Hey everyone, due to AP Exams and Finals being soon we're pretty much done with meetings for the year. Next year the club is going to be organized into teams of 2-5 people so start thinking about who you want to be in a group with. Each group will be responsible for either upgrading a robot or for designing and building a new robot. Each team will also have to do their own fundraising. More details about what we plan on doing next year should be available soon. If any body has any questions about next year contact either me, Alan or Brian.

post-trip.

okay. The whole trip ended up much better than it seemed like it was going to.

Dethinator was gonna be in the big 15 lb rumble (we updated the shell after our ring exploded... adding about a pound but no one cared lol) but when we went to test it, the weapon motors didn't work. At all. I then got pissed off and had to cool off a little cause things were just going so badly at that point... but then we heard that there was going to be another rumble so i replaced the motors and they worked and we fought (dethinator vs quasar (built by eddie) and tornado mini (built by senai at UT@arlington) which was fun. we lost horribly because one hit from tornado mini and our shell dented enough to catch a wheel stopping us from both driving and spinning... but it was fun. :]






copperhead got to grudge match this team who had a crappy wedge and wanted to go home with pieces. So we helped. :P The audience loves us and they filmed the entire match. I really wish we had more opportunity to fight... copperhead just DESTROYS things so much better than the vast majority of other bots out there.

Watching the pro bots was really cool, and having the film crew everywhere and getting interviewed and filmed and all was also really cool.

This season wasn't nearly as successful as last year's, but it was still fun. We made some friends, and kicked some bot. Our sightseeing in san francisco has been really enjoyable too. Julien and Brian have high hopes for next year, and I wish them all the best of luck. I probably won't have too many other posts other than to post footage and TV-show schedules, so I thank all the readers and the team. Take care.

Dan Curhan

first competition update (and probably only one)

both our bots are out. Dethinator lost twice, Copperhead was 1 and 2. I didn't like the judges decision for copperhead's final match. We are putting both back in for rumbles and grudge matches.

we'll see what happens.

documentation

The documentation is DONE. I scanned all 70 pages of it (that's right. 70 pages) and uploaded it here.

It is also in the links to useful stuff box.

Sorry I couldn't put a direct link to it, it was too big (18 MB) to upload to Google.

documentation for sanfran

EVERYONE GOING TO SAN FRANCISCO MUST READ THIS.


(http://www.botsiq.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/botsiq-doccheck-for-2009.pdf)

Anyone showing up to the event without their composition will be barred from participating.

Also read the rules. I will not be held responsible for not telling you something if you get in trouble because you didn't actually read this.

(http://www.battlebots.com/downloads/rules/BattleBots_Tournament_Rules.2009.pdf)


I'll be working on documentation all day...

status updates

Sorry I haven't had much time to write here... I've been up working on the bots every day this break from 9 or 10 in the morning until 12, 1, 2AM... It's been a long week but things are finally coming together.

COPPERHEAD
Copperhead is being assembled for the last time (thank god, cause it takes about 2 hours...). We painted the frame and shaft clamps an extra-flat black. It looks really cool. The drum is also freshly painted a very shiny copper. As we all know, the pretty paint won't be pretty by the end of the competition, but at least we'll look good for photos when we get there. :P
We've been having some issues with very temperamental electronics... We've got a Victor 883 for each drive motor, and a Thor 883 for the weapon. AIL/ELE are mixed with a mixer/booster chip, and we're using a signal driver cable for the weapon. The driver cables are SO BAD! We have three and they work sporadically! I don't get it! I'm contemplating just going all out and dropping $35 on a booster chip and just regular 12 inch cables (since we certainly don't need the 36" ones we have... :P). The other problem we're running into is on one of our motors, I think the back emf from it is interfering with the mixer chip, so the radio signal becomes intermittent when that motor is running - to the point where it loses signal, then doesn't come back until you reset power to the bot. But ONLY the mixer is affected. The weapon never loses signal. It's really odd. I'm trying to contact a friend of ours who lives close by to see if we can borrow an end cap from him that could potentially have good RF-suppression capacitors in it (if ours are bad and that's the problem...). All our testing concluded that the MOTOR was the problem, not any of the electronics. I don't know. Hopefully we'll figure it out. The drum still spins beautifully, and actually maxed out at 3453 RPM when we tested it. A far cry from our purported 4900, but nonetheless impressive. If we do the math... it comes out to a tooth-tip speed of 88 mph. Our weight (when we checked yesterday - it was missing a few small things) was 119.50 lbs.

DETHINATOR
The Dethinator actually works! The spin-up time is impressive, and our final RPM is pretty impressive too, 2200 RPM. Alan is learning how to drive it for San Francisco. We need to come up with a safety device and locking mechanism, so it's not quite as crappy as Miami was. I made a shunt resistor to measure current draw, and we figured out at the beginning of Thursday that the inrush of current (with the shell on) was over 130 A, and it settled around 60-70A to hold max speed. The battery is only rated for a max continuous discharge of 60A, so this explains why it was getting hot. We put the flux rings back on the motors (my bad... :P) and this greatly improved their performance and decreased the temperature that they were running at. We also put air scoops on the top to push air through the holes. This will keep everything much cooler as well and shouldn't have TOO big an impact on our RPM. Hopefully we'll be good to go for San Fran, but we're bringing a bunch of extra motors just in case. Final weight - 14.90 lbs


THE CRATE/SHIPPING
We are almost done building our crate (we just need to make the top piece and then we'll be set to go). We pack it up tomorrow, so any changes we need to make to the bots needs to be done by tomorrow. I need everyone's stuff to ship who is going to San Francisco. I'll call everyone today to figure out when to pick up/when you can bring it to us (the better option!).. We have a slight shipping fiasco however because we were gonna do one thing, somebody promised us a better price, then we cancelled the first thing, then the better price guy realized he was talking to a complete IDIOT at UPS who was quoting him for one-way prices or something like that, so we had to uncancel plan A... it's a mess.





So yeah. That is our status.
More videos to come.