Build Year 2024: Image Blog
The Inaugural Season

On Saturday, February 17, Team 9662's robot was fully operational and successfully ran all systems needed for this year's game.

In six weeks, our team has built our first fully functional robot. This would not have been possible without the support of three area coaches, their mentors, and their robotics teams. Each of them has been exceptionally welcoming and willing to help whenever we have needed it. The support of fellow teams is one of the outstanding parts of the FIRST robotics experience. 

Thank you to Team 5712 for allowing us to practice on their field.

In less than one week, Valley Lutheran's Team 9662 will be traveling to Kettering University in Flint for their first competition weekend. Our team has been actively learning the capabilities and quirks of our robot to play the game the best we are able.

With the addition of the business logos, our robot looks like it is ready for NASCAR. Thank you again to our business sponsors for making this all possible.

 By the way, since this year's competition is music-themed, the students named our robot T.E.M.P.O., which stands for Technologically Enhanced Musical Performance Organizer.  Go T.E.M.P.O.!!! 😊

During the first fifteen seconds of each match, the robots operate autonomously and run the scripts that they have been programmed to run on their own.

Teams get points for launching a note (orange disc) into the speaker (the hood-shaped goal) and then for driving forward a certain distance to cross a line on the field (not shown).

We added some flair at the end of our program by having TEMPO spin around.

Kettering University in Flint hosts an annual practice competition called "Week 0" where teams can come and test out their robots and play simulation matches with other teams.

Valley's Team 9662 participated in this year's contest on Sunday, Feb. 25. It was definitely a learning experience as driving on a field solo is far different from doing the same with five other robots trying to score their own points.

Besides learning to drive with obstacles, we had some other difficulties like not getting our robot connected in a few matches and getting our bumper cover to fit. Overall it was a great experience and the team feels more ready to compete for real this weekend. 

After Team 9662 got their baptism by fire in the Kettering competition, we spent this week repairing damage to TEMPO (our robot's name), brainstorming possible improvements, and getting ready to improve on our performance at the next event at Midland Dow High on March 22-23.

Our team is undertaking its first "from scratch" component build, which will add the capability of our robot to climb the chain in the endgame in order to make our robot higher scoring and therefore more valuable to the top teams who choose their alliance partners for the playoffs. It has been thrilling, frustrating, and an exercise in communication, organization, and compromise.

Will it all come together in time? Tune in next week to find out. 😊

This is a video of our robot's first successful climb. We found that the gear reduction in the gearbox is not sufficient to hold the weight and needs to be upgraded. In basic terms, the slower an electric motor spins, the more torque (the ability to turn something) the motor produces. Our new gearbox will spin four times slower.

Fixes for the upcoming week will be replacing the "high-strength" string with steel cable because it kept breaking. Also, the pulley connector bent under the weight so we will replace it with a stronger pulley which is attached to the chassis.