Today was the second practice, and the first day of school! This is our last practice before the Experience-The-Team nights, so we prepared our stations. An electronics board with two motors was constructed and tested. Every circuit playground and computer pair was tested. We also created some new code for revolution. Well, it had been created awhile ago, but never tested. We tested it a lot and debugged it a lot. At the end, we had it driving and shooting with the push of a button!

It is almost the start of the next training season, and so we are meeting again. Things done today:

• Slow Mode (Me): I made a 'slow mode' for the robot that slows down everything and rebinds all of the non-driving controls to the operator controller. This is designed for the state fair. A second version with slightly upped speeds and re-rebound controls will likely be made for the Experience the Team nights.
• Button board disassembly (Davey): Davey disassembled an old button board.
• Circuit Playground Setup (Serena, Griffin, Zack): Some prep work was done to get ready for the Experience the Team nights. This was slightly hampered by the fact that half of our good computers are missing and the worse computers don't work with the circuit playgrounds.

Signing Off.

We played in State this past weekend. Overall it went about as good as we were hoping, and we managed to get 3rd place, out of around 35 robots. Coming back from that, we are beginning to get ready for our summer work, the offseason.

• Debrief (Full Team): Finishing out our final competition, we decided on some projects we might want to do over the summer, and noted them down.
• Roses and Buds (Full Team): As we reflected on the season, we decided to think about what went well, and what we wanted to improve, based on our experience, and write these thoughts down to help us decide what to do next year.
• Offseason Goals (Full Team): Taking our list of projects we wanted to finish during the summer, we voted on which ones we would prioritize, and who was interested in which goal.

All in all, our season was pretty great, and I am excited for next year.

Click below for full details.

This is our final main practice before State. Exciting, but there is a lot to do.

• Sorting Sum-thing (Davey): Davey worked on sorting all our items, and packing for state.
• Data Mining (Zack, Griffin): We and some other people working on filling out our online scouting forms for state.
• Test, Test (Xiaohan, Zack): Zack, Xiaohan, and the Drive Team worked on testing our Autos, Understage passing, and cycling.
• Lime-... .-.light(Rowan): Rowan worked on reflashing a limelight to fix it, and ended up making it work.
• Merging and Packing(Augie): Augie helped with packing things for State this weekend, and finished the code for state.

"Ode to Garrulousisity" Davey has tattoos. Davey enjoys rats and fire. Davey is very very strange. Davey should get a Loofa. With the new Loofa, Davey can say goodbye to daily stains and dirty surfaces. These tattos are filthy, but just 3 shots from Loofa, BANG BANG BANG! And it sparkles like new! Look how it cleans this greasy hob, BANG BANG BANG! Goodbye dirt! Grubby arms, BANG BANG BANG! There, all clean again! New Loofa, now with laser sight and night vision for after dark cleaning.

Today we had our 2 robots out until 2! They were both at the practice field which led to the rest of the programming subteam to be unable to do any robot code work. However, at the practice field we had some amazing work done with our autos and general drivers practice.

• General Research (Serena, Davey, Augie): Back at the shop we had some really cool research done on some other options for software, we looked into things like Choreo for possibly better autos and Elastic for a better dashboard during comp. We also had someone look into how to actually MM (motion magic) tune a motor as currently only one of our mentors knows how to do it. Over the next few days we plan to continue research into possible better alternatives for software (Glass, A custom dashboard, and/or other alternatives we aren't currently aware of). We also plan to continue some amazing work on our super cool offseason projects.
• Drive assist mode! (Serena): For information see Orbit's robot reveal thread on CD.
• Updating Revolution code (Xiaohan): The code for Revolution was updated to be more modern.
• Many Other Things!

lots happening today as we get ready for state and dive into off season progects.

• Revolution Reprair (Xiaohan, Davey): Xiaohan and Davey worked on geting Revolution back up and runing.
• Pattern Language Work (Serena): Serena worked on filling out or pattern languge and what we learned from this season.
• PID Teaching (Rowan, Griffin): Rowan was teaching Griffen about PID tuning.
• AdvantageScope (Us Two): Zack and Augie worked on testing our AdvantageScope and figuring out how it works.
• Organizing (Rowan): Rowan worked on organizing our resources for teaching new programers.

Apologies for the lack of updates the past few weeks, but I've been working on other stuff and no-one else remembers to make these without prompting. Anyway, things that have happened in the past few weeks:

• Documentation (Me, Rowan): Starting now, documentation is going to be included in weekly reports. We began working on a pattern language document, to establish the best practices for a sucessful programming team. I also finished my long-term project of
• PID Improvements (Serena, Davey): Davey and Serena improved the PID tuning on the shooter, and Davey learned how to PID tune in the process.
• AdvantageScope Testing (Me, Davey): We got Advantage kit and scope working.

Captains nominations have also started. The candiates for programming are Rowan, Liam, Serena, Xiaohan, and I. Of Programming, Davey, Serena, and Zach were nomintated for Team Captain.

I'm learning how to write a blog post! that's pretty cool

• and how to make bullet points ":)"

yay.

Today was primarily a day of reflection, and making plans for state.

• Github Cleanup (Me): I deleted 75% of the branches that were on Github and were just taking up space.
• Documentation (Me, Rowan): We started a document with some best practices for programming.
• Limelight work (Xiaohan, Davey): There is a new and more reliable software for limelight out now called Megatag 2. These two updated our limelights with it.
• Faster Revdown (Serena, Zach): One of the issues we have been having is unreliable amp shots. These two made the motors drop in speed quicker so that the shooter wouldn't overshoot.

Nothing more to say, really.

10K Lakes was not as good of a comp as Duluth, but we still did good. Highlights:

• We placed 14th in the rankings.
• We got picked up by the #2 alliance and then proceeded to lose twice in the playoffs.
• We won the Industrial Design Award.
• We will not being going to worlds this year.