nomination Everyone must submit (i will count how many nominations i have)

Here is the link to a survey i have created. The winners will receive a certificate.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MNNQKQW

you can not nominate yourself

Last Day - By John

We are finishing up with our poster and everything else. I am really excited for State Competition! I finished my project on the evolution of tasks. We started gluing the poster and built the holders for the tablets. I think it turned out great.

Oi! THIS TITLE IS MEANT TO CAPTURE YOUR ATTENTION AND MAKE YOU WONDER WHAT IT IS ABOUT!!!! MAYBE YOU SHOULD CHECK!!!!

Today is the beginning of the end... or perhaps the beginning of the middle of the beginning... or even the beginning of the end of the end. And now I'm rambling.
Big things happened today (Friday, December 13th, 2013). I got a brownie! And cookies! And then school ended and I got to go to robotics and watch a printer make a tetrahedron.
Again, I'm off topic. Sorry.
During our actual meeting, serious work began. Our project posterboard is finally almost done! We are mounting tablets that will be constantly playing videos that pertain to our research and our solution to our problem.
Thank yous for the night:

Gatlin: You are officially nominated for MVTM (Most Valuable Teammate) and BBE (Best Brother Ever) for going A and B the C of D. I'm pretty sure you win the second one because I think we are the only people that actually have brothers. If you want to nominate me, though, I'm totally cool with that...

Seth: I'm nominating you for MVTM as well, cause you let us use your brand new tablet for our poster. That's huge, dude. I really appreciate, as does the rest of the team, I'm sure.

John: Thanks for being on the team dude. You are a HUGE asset to the team, building all that junk that led to better junk from Meredith and Gatlin and Seth to even better final attachments that most certainly were not junk. I nominate you MVTM.

Meredith: You're so fun to have around, listening to my silly title names. MVTM nominee right here.

Inother words, everyone is nominate MVTM.

NOW, AN OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FROM AN OFFICIAL SOUNDING TEENAGER!
MVTM Votes shall take place on the blog soon after the official state tournment. Keep checking back to see when the voting begins! We may have an actual poll, which would be so cool. There will be a post with the rules when it begins. It will have another eye-cathing title like this one.


THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Less than 15 hours to competition

Today we are furiously working on just about everything. We have worked on the table challenges a lot and we have been working on our project poster (we have one of the tablet holders secured.). On the table it seems that we have all of our programs working 9.5 out of ten times. Our skit is also coming along very well.

I cant wait until AZ states. I really hope we do well. It would be so much fun to go to nationals. But I'm not sure where it is. I'm not sure if anyone not working for FLL knows where it is because they might not have made it public yet. but at states they will probably say.

team journal

today was good.  we finished our skit and our poster. we still need to finish some things though

7/10

12/13/13 meredith

Today we did runs on the board. We had some problems with the programming but we fixed and tested them. We also worked on the skit and made a few mistakes. We practiced and got better. Then we worked on the project board and attached our tablets to it so that we could show videos. Last we made ques so that we would not talk over each other in the core values section.Over all i think we had fun and made allot of progress.

journal

December 6:

We didn't do much today. All of us finished early so there wasn't much left to do. We did get some things done, but today wasn't the most productive day.

4/10

December 7:
Today was good. We held a team-building exercise at the park. We also finished adjustments to our programs. We flew our Quadcopter! Other than that we didn't do much else.

6/10

Auto-generated compilation video

Progress: Eh...

We are furiouosly working to get our project poster done, but the video that we are going to use for our tablet isn't converting.

Please excuse me as I go and scream.

(After metaphoric scream)

I'm back. Let me explain my problem. We are currently trying new challenges that aren't working very well (accuracy, repeatability, etc.) and we are trying to create a trifold for our project. To show that we know what we are doing, however, we want to integrate tablets into our board (Gatlin's and Seth's I believe). But on Gatlin's tablet, we want a repeating video of our interview with the firefighters, and that is what's got me screaming into my pillow.We started converting the video so we can use it last night. It didn't finish by the time we finished our meeting, so we figured we'd let it run overnight. Of course, we get back this morning and I turn on the laptop and it HASN'T CHANGED! Finally, after twenty minutes of thinkig it's working, I look at it and realized that it aborted. *Sarcastically* Hooray!

Wish us luck. We're gonna need it.

A new Yarnell Fire report

http://www.azcentral.com/news/arizona/articles/20131204emotions-run-high-relatives-firefighters-react-report.html

THIS IS A HUGE SUPRISE

we only have two more meetings that everyone is going to be here. Two fridays unless john comes on sunday.

to become stronger as a team

As most of you know the area we did worst in was core values.

I have come up with an idea to become closer as a team and it should help us with all pf the sections of core values that the coaches book gives. some of those are friendly competition, sharing your experience with others and discovering things with your coaches.

I had the idea of having a friendly competition to see who can complete the grey tower challenge on the board the fastest. (if you were wondering the grey tower challenge is, there is a tower that has three of the five sections already built so your bot has to deliver the two other pieces and rebuild the tower.) We would stay friendly with each other and get help from our coaches and mentors. The contest (if all goes as planned) should help us with core values and the table.

I am not sure if we will need to use a whole meeting or half of a meeting or multiple meetings but this should help with all of our core values

If you were wondering the core values are...

1. we do the work to find the solutions with the guidance of our coaches and mentors
2. we know our coaches don't have all the answers; we learn together
3. we honor the spirit of friendly competition
4. what we discover is more important than what we win
5. we share our experiences with others
6. we display gracious professionalism and coopertition in everything we do
7. we have fun

ps. if you are wondering how this will help with #5 when someone is done they cab help others finish.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!!

December, everybody. The month of winter (thank you for this miracle, God.), holidays (even if Hannukah came really early as far as I can tell,) and most importantly, the State Competition. Our competition is not that far away. In fact, its on December 14. Spending time with family is important this month, though. But this is easily fixed. Invite your family! We need a fanclub to cheer us on during the robot game. Homefield advantage, people! So remember, December 14, invite your family, and have a great holiday season, everyone. I wish you all the best.

Team journal

November 30th and 29th

Today we went over new ideas on how to earn more points.  We decided to skip the trucks and do the tsunami instead.  We also looked at if we needed to change the order of our tasks.  We eventually kept our original plan and moved on.

30th

We practically finished everything! I got the tsunami done,  I finished the plane,  and I got the case for the tablets done!!!! everyone else also got their parts done! Yahoooooooooooooo!

:)

Once Again, a New Script

Most recent edits are italicized in red.

Lines that need memorizing are bolded in blue 

Notable improvements to blocking are underlined in green. If you can't read it, ask me.

Notable things that need remembering are (parenthesized) in pink

Lines that should be memorized but can be on notecards are bolded in orange

Lines that people could split between them have (split) in front of them in purple

New lines are highlighted in red

Before:

Presenter 1: Judges, are you ready for us? *Wait until judges are ready* Our suggested project is a drone to see and warn wild-land firefighters of approaching fire.

Presenter 2: Please watch this skit of the firefighters before the drone.

******

Fire: *Slowly move in towards fire fighters*

Fighter Lookout: (This is with a walkie-talkie) I gotta move out!

Head Fighter: Okay. Stay safe.

Fighter Lookout: *Exit scene*

Fire: *Get even closer*

Head fighter: *Sees fire* Everyone!!! The fire is too close. Get out your blankets.

(All fighters pull out blankets and get on ground)

Fire: *Lay down on the firefighters*

Fire: *Continue moving*

Firefighter: We barely made it out alive! These fire blankets aren't very reliable.

After:

Presenter 1: And now, the scene after the drone has been introduced.

Presenter 2: Places, please!

*********

Fire: *Slowly move in towards fire fighters*

Lookout: (With other firefighters) (This is without a walkie-talkie) *Holding iPhone controlling drone* Hey guys, the fire is a half-mile away

and the wind will blow it through that area in the next half-hour. You should move out.

Firefighter: Roger that. We're heading out now.

Firefighters: *All exit scene*

Fire: *As fighters leave scene, slowly move through after them**Continue on, off set*

Firefighters: *As fire exits set, come back in* Wow! Without that drone, we would have been left to our

fire blankets. And everyone knows those things don't work all the time. Thank you, Desert Drone 52.
(Through walkie-talkie) Hey, Al, thank those kids at DCRobotics for this great fix. Nothing like this has been implemented in fire-fighting before. You think that we would have thought of stuff like this by now.  

Presenters: And because of the drone, (split) the firefighters didn't have to rely on the unreliable fire

blankets (variations), (split) and they all lived happily ever after.

ALL: THE END!

Presentation of Facts lines: (Everyone stand in a shoulder-to-shoulder line with Gatlin and Meredith.)
Meredith: In addition to being able to alert the wild land firefighters of approaching fire, our drone has some other features. Our drone will be able to fly above the fire, and can stream live video to a phone or tablet. (video of drone flying?) However, this drone is a proof of concept and will not be able to do everything we have planned.
Gatlin: Some of these planned features include infrared cameras, communication relays and a further range. Infrared cameras can "see" through smoke because they sense heat, not visible light. Because of this, it can see through smoke and at night.
(Split) :We plan to have it work as a communication relay point because, if a firefighter gets stuck in a canyon or valley, their communication could be blocked by the surrounding mountains. And finally, our current drone only has the range of a wi-fi network. We can connect our phone's to the wi-fi network and then use an app to fly it. We intend to remedy the fact that the range is only as far as this network can reach.

Regionals

Regionals was a great experience. This year, making it to state really booisted our energy, but we were happy and skipping and laughing all day.
People really enjoyed coming over and getting candy, as well as atching Gatlin yo-yo all day (Thank you!) and walked around looking at other posters. At one point, people offered me water and food. At another point, I helped a kid practice his presentation by listening and asking questions, which was cool.
At the table, I was super pumped up in the sidelines (though I got frustrated a bit.) Good job guys at the table. But remember, the three rules of Lego Mindstom Competitions: alignment, alignment, alignment.
During the judging, we need to work on speaking over each other. Perhaps we can have one person coordinating the efforts (ex. Judge: *ask question* P1: Um... P2, would you like to answer? P2: Sure.)
Otherwise, I felt that we did a really good job. Congratuations guys. State competitions, here we come.

And remember! Always remeber: http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/p/keep-calm-and-align--54/

Recap of Regional

Compliment section:

• Gatlin- thank you for providing a super fun activity for in between the table challenges.  You lightened the mood of the day.  The yo-yos were a blast and you captured a lot of onlooker attention.  In the spirit of being friendly, shall I buy a bunch of yo-yos, for the State and you can teach onlookers or will you be too busy?--Diane
• Logan- thank you for putting together such an amazing project with all the research you did.  You helped us win that trophy!
• Seth and Meredith- you kept your cool at the table and it showed.  Great job.
• Gatlin- you are always amazing at the table and just in working with other people.  You are the whole package.
• Brett- our trifold and table was EXTREMELY professional looking.  Colored print outs were above and beyond the call of duty.  It was totally appreciated.  The candy and quadcopter was great.  Let's bring all that again!  Shall I provide a tablet to attach to the trifold?  A multi-media presentation?  Say the word
• Anyone want to make a Youtube video?  I wish I could have seen your skit?!!!

What the judges asked:

FILL IN

journal

November 23

Today was competition day! We WON the round robin and we also had the best project! 2 TROPHIES!!!!
We got 3rd place overall too! YAY!!!!!! I had to rebuild the ball bearing, but it rocked!!





overall progress: 999999999999999/10

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Hear ye, hear ye! The Great Compilation is begun!

Today, we began the compilation of every program we are using is now on one file. We are calling it 1 Full Run to keep it at the top of the program list on the project, and we have a complicated logic chain going into it. 

The program works like this:

1. We have a wait block that waits until there is a change on the brick's buttons.
2. When there has been a change, the wait block sends the button ID to a compare block.
3. If the button ID is not equal to one, then the statement is true and the next section of the program begins.
4. If the button ID is 1 (the left "arrow" button), then the statement is false and it goes to the false part of the switch block, which consists of a half second wait before moving to the next logic chain.

This makes skipping from one section of program to another very easy and simple. The bot asks you a question (Get People?) and you choose the button you need.

On the Subject of Names

We have officially names our bot the Technotoroise. However, our team has no name. Arizona Ice ducks was the only name that made it through preliminary voting. However, a second person voted it out and now we have no name. We need help now.

We are now officially the Fantastic Five