Posted by Kevin Thorp on Saturday, August 31, 2013,
Cat 5 mentor Kevin Thorp, with assistance from Kaitlyn Vinson, created the game animation for the FIRST Tech Challenge. The Kickoff and game reveal is Saturday September 7. This is the only hint we can post at this time: Continue reading ...
Posted by Justin Wogamon on Saturday, July 20, 2013,
Events:
Dorchester Co. Hurricane Preparedness Expo Sat. July 27th from 9 am – noon at Lowes Home Improvements on Dorchester Ave. in Summerville with Red Cross.
SCRIW Sat. Oct 12th Robotics Scrimmage at Irmo High School in Columbia. Details at later date.
Team meetings:
Sat. July 20th 1-4 pm at Bosch. Planning/idea sharing for new demonstration robot & other season planning.
Posted by Justin Wogamon on Tuesday, July 2, 2013,
July 27th We are planning to debut our "speaking" robot in Partnership with American Red Cross at the Dorchester Co. Hurricane Preparedness Event at Lowes in Summerville. I do not know exact time yet. We can plan to two shifts. Please let me know if you will be available to help. Mr. Doug, Mr. Rob and Ms. Vickie will mentor for sure.
Posted by Justin Wogamon on Tuesday, July 2, 2013,
July 12th We need students to demo the robot at the Cinebarre Theater in Mt. Pleasant from 3-7 pm for the opening of Pacfic Rim. I have heard from about 2 team members. Mr. Mike and Ms. Vickie will take robot to Mt Pleasant. I need some more students especially those that can get the robot fired up and running with NO mentor help (going to be your show....) Mr. Rob and Mr Doug will come after work. Do you want me to see if we can get into movie after we have demo? RSVP is a must if you'd like... Continue reading ...
Posted by Justin Wogamon on Tuesday, July 2, 2013,
Tomorrow July 2nd we will meet at Bosch to put audio device on the robot from 4 - 6 pm. You do not need and experience/qualifications to help at this. Mr. Rob and Robert will teach you what they think needs to be done.
Posted by Kaitlyn Vinson on Tuesday, April 16, 2013,
June 5th Dorchester District Two VIP Fundraiser to benefit Career Readiness Programs (including FIRST Robotics) Golf Invitational Tournament at Yeaman's Hall Club, Registration required. Contact Dr. Minnie Blackwell 843-873-2901 ext 3035 or email mblackwell@dorchester2.k12.sc.us Continue reading ...
Posted by Kaitlyn Vinson on Tuesday, April 16, 2013,
May 23 – Team 3489 & Team 342 Season Awards and Recognition Celebration from 4 – 7 pm at the Wreckfish Restaurant http://thewreckfish.com/contact.html Students & their families are invited. The Wreckfish Restaurant is located near the Northwoods Mall. Continue reading ...
Posted by Justin Wogamon on Thursday, March 21, 2013,
If parents have access to sponsors for support to attend Championship we need your help. We are going to do everything in our possible to minimize costs and provide a great opportunity to everyone. Please contact Ms. Vickie with your ideas and points of contact. Continue reading ...
Posted by Justin Wogamon on Thursday, March 21, 2013,
WOW! Yes we really did win the Peachtree Regional and we are set to go to St. Louis to the FIRST Championship scheduled for April 24-27 (general event scheduled attached). Thanks to the generosity of Bosch our registration has been paid! Continue reading ...
Posted by Justin Wogamon on Wednesday, February 20, 2013,
Team & Parents Meeting Saturday, February 23rd at 4 pm at Bosch. We will be going over all of our plans for Palmetto Regional and Peachtree Regional. We are seeking donations of beverages and snacks/chips for lunches at our regional events. If you cannot attend please contact Mrs. Larson larson1sc@aol.com for information and questions. Continue reading ...
Posted by Justin Wogamon on Wednesday, January 2, 2013,
To prevent a giant log jam right after the Kickoff, FIRST has already posted an encrypted Game Manual. At the end of their webcast on the 5th they will display the decryption code. If you can bring a laptop to Bosch on the 5th, please download the manual now & unlock the PDF on Saturday. To download the encryped manual Right-Click here and "Save As" or "Save Target As". Continue reading ...
Posted by Justin Wogamon on Thursday, December 13, 2012,
We have an opportunity to demonstrate our Rebound Rumble robot in the ARHS cafeteria before and during the Ashley Ridge Basketball game this Friday Night, 12/14. We will also be doing some fundraising, soliciting donations from spectators that would like to try their hand at driving the robot. If you are available to support this event, please e-mail text Doug Dorn (Doug.Dorn@us.bosch.com, phone 406-5152). This is our opportunity to show off our efforts in front of the ARHS student body (a...
Posted by Kevin Thorp on Wednesday, November 28, 2012,
SPAWAR is hiring 20 high school interns from the 4 lowcountry school districts. The deadline is Monday December 3 so you need to move fast! For more information see Mrs. Johnson at A.R.H.S. or Mrs. Mccullum at S.H.S. To aplply go to https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/332091700 Continue reading ...
Posted by Kevin Thorp on Thursday, October 18, 2012,
We are currently looking students to join the
animation/photography subsection of FRC Team 3489. This would be a great
learning experience for those interested in animated movies and/or special
effects to learn some of the tools of the trade.Michael Hoatson, our new mentor will be
teaching students how to draw story boards, model objects and creatures, create
textures, animate and edit. We will be competing for 2 contests: the pre-season
Safety Animation Award, and after the Kickoff, the Au... Continue reading ...
Posted by Doug Dorn on Thursday, October 18, 2012,
The main purpose of the “SC Regional Invitational & Workshops”
was to help get students (especially rookie students) excited about the
upcoming FRC competition. We had a fun time and learned a lot at the competition
in Columbia on the 13th. Team 3489 competed valiantly, finishing up the qualification rounds
with a #5 ranking.Very good,
considering we had a couple of newbies on the drive team.In the elimination rounds we teamed up with
Team 342 (Ft. Dorchester) and Team 3976 (Electric ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Justin Wogamon on Saturday, September 15, 2012,
Tuesday October, 2 Teams 3489 & 342 will be welcoming new members, parents, students, team members, and mentors invited From 5 to 8 pm at the Bosch Plant
Agenda
Welcome new members to the Teams
Explain & Give an overview of the FRC program
Start planning 2012-2013 Season including Columbia (SCRIW)
On October 13 Team 3489 will be competing at the South Carolina Robotics Invitational and Workshop (SCRIW) in Columbia. This friendly competition of about 24 teams helps us get ready for the 2013 season and introduces new students to the excitement of competition. http://scriw.org/ Continue reading ...
Tuesday July 24, a robot designed and built by Team 3489 will be making the 1st pitch at the Charleston RiverDogs game. The game starts at 7:00pm if you're working with the bot you need to be there around 6:00pm.
A limited number of free and discounted tickets are avaible please contact Doug Dorn.
Teams 3489 and 342 are having their "Celebration Night" Wednesday, May 30, 3:30-5:30pm at Big Horn's Sports Grill across from the Northwoods Mall (map). We will go over the teams accomplishments and honor the students, sponsors, and volunteers that made us successful. Students and their families are invited Continue reading ...
During the off-season we want to keep honing our robotics skills and work on Chairman's Award activities. We will be meeting every other Saturday, from 1:00 to 4:00pm.
Meeting Dates: April 7 & 21 May 5 & 19 June 2, 16 & 30 July 14 & 28 August 11 & 25
Team 3489 What an exciting competition! We had a storm going on inside the Coliseum (Team 3489 - Category 5) and one on the outside (a tornado warning). Cat 5 made a grand showing at Palmetto, continually improving our robot, driving/shooting skills and match scores throughout the competition. By the end of the Qualification Matches we had the highest cumulative points scored (357) of all 43 teams at Palmetto. We also participated in the first and only "6 Robots Balancing" match, and had the ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Kevin Thorp on Saturday, March 24, 2012,
Friday at the Palmetto Regional was a wild ride, with a lot of ups and downs (mostly ups)! With our robot and drive team finely tuned we were able to climb to 2nd place in the rankings. We have three more matches Saturday morning. If we can stay in the top 8, we go on to the Elimination Matches after selecting two partner teams. Elimination Matches start after 1pm. Continue reading ...
Robot Status - Thursday night Our robot passed inspection (dimensions, weight, materials, construction, etc.) and we were able to get a few practice rounds in. Two new additions are "parking brakes" to help us balance on the Bridge, and a second look-down camera to help see the basketballs when the robot is facing away from the operators. We have one of the strongest robots at this competition and we're looking for to our matches!
Note: Sorry about the confusion about who was supposed to show... Continue reading ...
Posted by Kevin Thorp on Wednesday, March 21, 2012,
Mrs. Hamblin and Mr. Powell have informed me that out of 25 Team 3489 students, only 3 have turned in their field trip permission slips. If you do not turn in a signed permission slip you cannot attend the Palmetto Regional Competition.
Posted by Kevin Thorp on Wednesday, March 21, 2012,
We are meeting at Bosch Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon 3:30-6:30. We will be making minor upgrades to the robot and practice driving & shooting. Wednesday will be more robot practice, then we will take part of our pit over to the coliseum. They allow unloading (but not setting up) from 6-8pm.
Posted by Justin Wogamon on Wednesday, March 21, 2012,
Our animation deadline is Friday March 30. We will also be meeting Tuesday & Wednesday night, 4:00-7:00 and Sunday 10:00am-1:00pm. The schedule next week is Monday through Thursday, 4:00-7:00.
Posted by Webmaster Justin Wogamon on Wednesday, March 21, 2012,
Teams 342 and 3489 will be eating lunch together in the Coliseum parking lot. There will be a 5th wheel camping trailer and a shade canopy set up. The lunch cost per day is $5, including the following:
Team 11 (Mort) is collecting old iPods and mp3s for a charity Music and Memory, a non-profit organization that is using an innovative method to help patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia. This organization uses donated iPods to play personalized playlists, which are actually able to trigger positive memories and make patients happy. This method has even shown to be effective with people who were not musical when they were younger; upon hearing the music, they are awakened to their past bec... Continue reading ...
We received this from the Palmetto Regional Organizers: The Citadel School of Engineering Presents: The First Robotics Social 2012. Join us on Friday March 23rd, for an evening filled with fun, competition, and exploration of the field of Engineering.
Highlights of the Event:
Dinner in the Citadel Mess Hall with videos
2+ hours of Exciting Competitive Games
Prizes for winners of games!
Ten Engineering Company displays and a chance to talk with representatives from the companies
Parents on our sister team (#342) are organizing lunches for Friday and Saturday next week. If any Team 3489 parents want to assist please call at (843) 760-7448 or email me at kevin.thorp@us.bosch.com. Continue reading ...
This event is coming up very soon, with setup and practice rounds on Thursday, March 22 and the competitions running Friday and Saturday. All Team 3489 students and their families are invited to attend. You must pick up a field trip form from Mrs. Hamblin or Mr. Powell, have it initialized by all your teachers and signed by your parent/guardian. The event is held at the North Charleston Coliseum. Transportation will not be provided. More information: http://ece.citadel.edu/robotics/home
Dean Stevens, News 4 anchor, would like to visit Bosch to do a report on FIRST Robotics and our two teams. This might happen Saturday morning or early next week, depending on when we can get approval for them to film in our plant. When we know the day we'll ask you all to wear your Cat 5 t-shirts.
As you know we cannot take our competition robot out of it's bag, but we have the practice 'bot mostly functional again, and would like to practice picking up balls, shooting and balancing on the ramp. We also have a few enhancements planned:
Smoother PVC plate on bottom of Drawbridge Faster Lower Conveyor Pneumatic brakes on 2 wheels Tilting mirror in front of camera to shift from goal to carpet (to see basketballs) We had a better than average robot in Orlando, but with these changes and a li... Continue reading ...
We knew the Orlando regional would be one of the toughest in the country, but we though it would be a good learning experience, and help help us prepare for the Palmetto Regional here in Charleston. We had some programming issues the first day of the competition, followed by a joystick failure (our robot could still drive, but only in circles!). But our team worked together and solved these problems and soon we started showing what our robot was capable of, with our alliance earning a high s... Continue reading ...
Posted by Kevin Thorp on Saturday, March 10, 2012,
We weren't quite ready when the matches started Friday. Could not get the computer to talk to the compressor, so our shooting and bridge climbing ability were crippled. We finally got it resolved mid-day but by that time we were pretty far down in the rankings - 30 out of 63. I guess we might consider that a "glass half full", since we're better than average.
But we have a strong robot now and expect to do much better in our next 3 matches:
Posted by webmaster on Thursday, February 23, 2012,
Besides updating our web site and photography, they're working on Team 3489's entry in the Autodesk Design Excellence Award. We have to create a 30 second 3D animation describing how the iikos (an alien race) help the earth solve some type of educational problem. This contest has a March 30 deadline. The image bellow was created by Melissa.
Posted by webmaster on Wednesday, February 22, 2012,
Twitter makes it MUCH easier for us to get timely
information out to students and parents. If you are a student traveling to
Orlando and you have a cell phone, you must register on http://twitter.com, then follow
Team3489 and set it to send tweets to your cell phone. If you have any trouble
setting this up, please see me or a student who has already signed up. Continue reading ...
Posted by Kevin Thorp on Wednesday, February 22, 2012,
What a difference a few days make. Just before "Bag n Tag" we weighed our robot again. With our new Lexan cover panels it weighed 121 lbs.; 1 pound overweight. Those panels weigh 5 lbs each. We need to go with thinner Lexan or cut a lot of holes in the existing panels. Doing either should save about 3 lbs total.
Posted by webmaster on Wednesday, February 22, 2012,
Unfortunately we didn't get any drive time
before bagging Hugo 2.1, but we still have Hugo 2.0 to experiment with for the
next 2 weeks. Any changes to the hardware & software can also be done to our
competition robot in Orlando.
Posted by Webmaster on Wednesday, February 22, 2012,
As per the FIRST rules, we bagged
& tagged our robot (Hugo 2.1) at 11:58 pm February 21. We cannot open the
bag until it is inspected at the Orlando competition. Thank you to all the
students and mentors who worked late to finish it.
As with humans, an overweight robot is not good. To pass inspection, all FRC robots must weigh no more than 120 lbs, not including bumpers or battery. As of Feb. 17 our robot "Hugo II" weighs 113 lbs, so we're good... for now. But we need to make sure we don't add more than 7 lbs.
We have 2 robots under construction. Our plan is to "Bag n Tag" our best one, as per the FIRST rules, but keep working on the prototype robot. That 'bot cannot be used in competition. One of our biggest problems last year was the driver didn't have much pre-competition practice. This year we'll use the prototype 'bot for extra practice time. (click image to enlarge).
Posted by Webmaster on Thursday, February 16, 2012,
We must "Bag & Tag" our robot no later than midnight, February 21. It remains sealed until the Orlando Regional Competition. We can work on up to 30 pounds of "accessories" and complete a 2nd robot for testing & practice. This second robot cannot be used in the competition.
So Saturday, Sunday and Monday will be long days in the workshop!
Posted by Webmaster on Thursday, February 16, 2012,
Our website redesign is pretty much complete, and we're registered for the Website Award at both the Orlando and Palmetto Regionals. The deadline is noon, February 16. If you have any suggestions, please contact our webmaster, Justin Wogamon: jwogamon@sc.rr.com
Posted by Webmaster on Saturday, February 4, 2012,
Dr. Minnie Blackwell has friends in high places. She was telling Mr. Les
Phillips of Phillips Industrial Services about what a great robotics
team we had, and he was so impressed he bought us a trailer! It's a
nice trailer: gloss black with diamond plate chip guards, 6' x 12' long,
mag wheels, side door, reinforced drop ramp and an interior light. Mr.
Phillips even had his crew paint the interior walls and epoxy-coat the
floor. This will be great for taking our robot and pit equipment ...
Posted by Webmaster on Thursday, February 2, 2012,
As noted on your application, all students must pay a $50 resource fee, to help cover the costs of this very expensive program.
Make the check payable to "Dorchester School District Two" and write "FIRST Robotics" in the memo field. Please give the check you your FIRST Robotics school teacher:
Posted by Kevin Thorp on Thursday, February 2, 2012,
Saturday, Dec 31 is FIRST Robotics Night at the Stingrays Hockey game. It starts at 6:00 pm when our partner Team 342 drops the puck. Our robot will come out at halftime to smack the puck around and (hopefully) score a few goals.
Stingrays Tickets We have the opportunity to buy tickets at a discount and raise money for our team. Tickets normally cost $17-$18 plus a $4 "handling fee". FIRST Robotics team only pay $15, and $5 of that comes directly back to our team. So pl...
Posted by Kevin Thorp on Thursday, February 2, 2012,
We met the safety animation deadline on December 9! The winner will be announced live at the Kickoff on January 7. Click here for links to other team entries. Below is our video. For the best quality click the YouTube link, then "720p" and full-screen. Continue reading ...
Posted by Kevin Thorp on Thursday, February 2, 2012,
Our new electrical mentor, Rob Larson works at Boeing. Last month he submitted a grant application and we just found out it was approved. This is great news! We are now definately going to two Regional Competitions; Palmetto and Orlando, FL. Plus we'll have a cool Boeing logo on our robot and T-shirts.
Posted by Kevin Thorp on Thursday, February 2, 2012,
Columbia was a lot of fun. Even though we were the only rookie team there we finished up in the middle of the pack. Cat 5 made it as far as the quarterfinals before being eliminated.
Our drivers and coach (Dustin, Steven & Evan) worked well with our alliance partners; sometimes hanging tubes and sometimes playing defense. They were great at blocking and generally harassing the powerhouse teams, limiting their scoring ability. Rasaun (from the Multimedia Team) was selected as our human player ...
Posted by Webmaster on Thursday, February 2, 2012,
The "Category 5" T-Shirts finally came in. Mr. Thorp will bring them to the scrimmage, so students can change in the school restroom. If you have a Cat 5 t-shirt already, please wear it. These shirts are for the new students. If you're not going to Columbia you will be given t-shirts in February.
Posted by Kevin Thorp on Thursday, February 2, 2012,
Evan, CeCi and AJ will demonstrate our robot, along with Team 342, to the Lowcountry Manufacturing Council Tuesday evening, Oct. 17 at Trident Technical College. These LMC leaders could be potential sponsors and/or might help start up new teams next year.
Posted by Kevin Thorp on Thursday, February 2, 2012,
Twitter is a great tool for getting the latest team news to students and parents. When we “Tweet” news it is instantly sent via text message to all team member phones, wherever you are. No need to check email, log in or go to any special web site.
