November 14th, 2009 Pre-season Workshop

This workshop is useful for anyone participating in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). This event is typically attended by students, mentors, and anyone else interested in being involved with FRC at the team level.

Final Schedule is posted here.

When:

Saturday, November 14th, 2009. Plan on arriving between 9:15 and 9:30am. Plan on departing at 3:15pm.

Cost:

There is no cost for attending the event. We are serving lunch from 12 to 1pm, more than likely the standard pizza/water combination. Everyone should bring $5 per person with you if you are going to eat lunch that we are providing.

Where:

Who:

This event is open to all team members, mentors, prospective mentors, rookies and veterans!

Veteran teams are encouraged to bring their robots. There are going to be lots of new folks very interested in seeing what your robot does. This will be a non-driving event as we will have several hundred people and nowhere safe to operate the robots. You can arrive between 9am and 9:15am if you are bringing a robot with you.

What:

We are attempting to hint at the level of entry for the workshop sessions. In general, green colored workshops are intended for those new to FIRST. Blue are topics for everyone. Red are topics of a more technical nature. Don't be overly influenced by the coloring, all workshops are open for you, and we expect to see rookies in red colored classes, and some veterans will end in green. Just a friendly guideline as to what you can expect from the workshops.

Click here to download full schedule and descriptions (3 pages)

Click here to download the schedule with room numbers but no descriptions (1 page)

 

FIRSTWA FRC Pre-season Workshop
Saturday, November 14th, 2009
Activity / Workshop Session	9:15	9:40	10:00-11:00	11:00-12:00	12:00-1:00	1:00-2:00	2:00-3:00	Facilitators	Room
Doors Open	X								Commons
Welcome & introductions		X						Kevin Ross	Commons
Lunch
Media Team + Website Design			2 hrs			2 hrs		Alex Herreid + Brian Thomas	305
Modular Design			X	X		X		Andy Gebhart	202
Project Management			X	X			X	Kim Herzog	203
Mechanical Engineering Crash Course			2 hrs			2 hrs		Brian Gattman	208
Robot Inspections				X		X	X	Darin Gee	252
Using the video camera			X			X	X	Darren Collins + Matt Clayson	300
Fundraising and publicity			X	X				Deb Mumm-Hill	400
Herding Cats - Team dynamics			X	X			X	Donna Lew	255
Event Tour				X		X	X	Eric Stokely	352
Awards			X	X			X	Fred Blake + Team 2046	353
Team Scouting / Alliance Marketing			X	X			X	Kate Lanum	354
C++ Wind River Demo			X	X			X	Jason Walker	355
Mechanical Devices			X			X	X	Jim Wright	356
Control System			X	X			X	Tim Davis + John Gilbert	402
Safety FIRST			X	X		X		Kevin Crader	403
FRC Rookie Jumpstart			X					Kevin Ross	Commons
Being a mentor				X		X		Kevin Ross	Lower Lec
Making a Winning Animation			X			X	X	Nick Ostrom	404
Electrical Design & Wiring				X		X	X	Larry Ryan	405
Mechanical Design - Drive Base			X			X	X	Madison Krass	406
LabView Intermediate			2 hrs			2 hrs		Steve Summers / Marshal Horn	303
Pro/E and Windchill			X	X			X	PTC - Dan Mittelstadt	452
Autocad Inventor			X	X		X		Ken Zaballos	453
Local Sources of parts			X	X			X	Rachel Gebhart	454
How to Win FIRST Matches - strategy			X	X				Robert Steele	455
The Design Process				X		X	X	Scott Lindley	456
Basic kit bot base			X			X	X	Steve Evans	200
LabView Introduction			2 hrs			2 hrs		National Instruments	304
Benchtop Testing the Kit			X	X			X	Tim Moore	254
Pneumatics			X	X		X		Bill Hill - Western Integrated Tech	253
Autocad Inventor	Ken Zaballos, Team 1983. This one hour demo will show you what Autocad Inventor is, and how you can use it to help design your robot. This primer class will introduce you to what the program is.
Awards	Fred Blake of team 2046 will be reviewing the available regional awards, recommended approaches, proven presentation points, and strategies for winning such awards. This will be especially helpful for rookie teams.
Basic kit bot base	Steve Evans team 1294 Eastlake High. The FIRST kit of parts usually includes parts for putting together a simple but effective robot base. There are, however, few instructions on how to do it. Come see what a simple robot base looks like, how the parts fit together, and hear some fun facts and horror stories along the way.
Being a mentor	Eric Stokely, team 360, and Kevin Ross of FIRSTWA  will talk about what it means to be a mentor, things that mentors should consider, managing your time, and making good tradeoffs between student and mentor involvement in the project.
Benchtop Testing the Kit	Tim Moore team 1899. What to do when you get your kit, benching testing the control system and loading first code
C++ Wind River Demo	Jason Walker, team 1318, is going to to show you how to implement your robot control software using C++
Control System	Tim Davis, Team 1983 and John Gilbert, team 488. This presentation will go over the parts of the robot control system and how you will connect these parts together into a functioning robot.
Electrical Design & Wiring	Larry Ryan of team 1258 is going to show us how to safely design the electrical system for the robot. You will see the basics of electrical circuits, and how to implement your design in a safe and FIRST safety inspected way.
Event Tour	Eric Stokely,team 360 and Kevin Ross of FIRSTWA will take you on a guided tour of the regional event. You can see pictures, videos, and the basic layout of the event so you have a feeling for what is coming up. We will show you what the pit areas are like, what the field is like, and discuss how to look like a 'pro' at the event.
FRC Rookie Jumpstart	Kevin Ross, FIRSTWA. We will spend an hour in the morning giving a synopsis level overview of FRC, robots, the timeline, and many other tidbit sized topics. This workshop is intended for rookie team members (students and mentors) who may not have attended the previous workshop in October.
Fundraising and publicity	Deb Mumm-Hill, FIRST Regional Director will outline what makes a good FIRST Presentation, the best ways to attract large sponsors, and how to get the attention of your local community. FIRST is a great program, it's just a matter of communicating effectively what FRC is and why other should support it.
Herding Cats - Team dynamics	Donna Lew, team 488, will share ideas on how to manage a large team of students and mentors in the FIRST environment.
How to Win FIRST Matches - strategy	Robert Steele team 1983. FIRST Robotics is much more than just putting a robot on the field. Robert will discuss basic strategies your team should be thinking about to make your team part of a winning alliance.
LabView Intermediate	Steve Summers of National Instruments and Marshal Horn of team 2557 will use this 2 HOUR SESSION to build on the LabView introduction class to show us more intermediate and advanced topics in LabView. You should already be familiar with LabView to participate in this session.
LabView Introduction	National Instruments. This 2 HOUR session will introduce the LabVIEW environment and the new LabVIEW functions designed specifically for FIRST. If you are new to LabVIEW, this session will give you the tools you need to easily program the new cRIO controllers. If you have a Windows XP or Vista laptop, you can bring it with you and try out the software in this hands on class.  Otherwise, we have computers available in the class.
Local Sources of parts	Rachel Gebhart team 492. If you needed a #25 40 tooth sprocket, 3 feet of 1.25OD .625 wall round tube, and a flange mount bearing, where would you go? This informative session will give you a clue on where to find things locally and via mail order. Someone from your team REALLY needs to attend this workshop!
Making a Winning Animation	Nick Ostrom, Team 948.A non-technical view of the Autodesk Visualization Competition. What do you should consider to produce a winning animation in the Visualization Competition. The art of "storyboarding," keeping your team organized, and focusing your time where it will mean the most.
Mechanical Design - Drive Base	Madison Krass, XBot team 488. Madison will cover various robot base designs. She has a lot of experience with what works and what doesn't.
Mechanical Devices	Jim Wright, team 949, will give an overview of mechanical devices often built on FIRST robots.
Mechanical Engineering Crash Course	Brian Gattman, Team 2910, will give a 2 HOUR crash course in mechanical engineering as applied toward an FRC mechanism/motor pairing.  The fast paced course will introduce Free Body Diagrams, Mechanics of Materials, Motors, and selecting Gear Ratios.
Media Team + Website Design	Alex Herreid, team 492, and Brian Thomas, Adobe Systems, will present a joint session about your website. If your team doesn't have a website yet, this 2 hour session will enable you to get one setup and functioning right here at the workshop. FIRSTWA is providing a web hosting service for you. Alex Herreid will tell you about our team media effort.
Modular Design	Andy Gebhart, team 492, has some great ideas on how to modularize your designs to make your robot easier to build, modify, and most importantly repair during the competition.
Pneumatics	Bill Hill, Western Integrated Technologies. This class will cover the basics of how to work with pneumatics, sizing cylinders, designing with air, and selection of solenoids to make your robot perform at its best.
Pro/E and Windchill	PTC is offering free Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire(CAD), Windchill (Collaboration) and Mathcad (Engineering Calculations) software to ALL FIRST teams. Come learn about how our software can help you design your robot more efficiently and collaborate with your team more effectively! This one hour session will introduce you to PTC and our products, explain the value and show you how to get started. With our new FRC-focused training curriculum, we are sure you will be off to a great start!
Project Management	Kim Herzog of team 2412 will be discussing project management strategies you can use to make your season predictible and efficient.
Robot Inspections	Darin Gee, team 1983, is our lead robot inspector this year. Darin will walk you through the inspection process, and will provide you many thoughts on avoiding issues with your robot at the event.
Safety FIRST	Kevin Crader, Team 1778 MTHS. Every team is required to have a Safety Captain. Safety is something we all need to consider when building, operating, and competing on the field. Kevin is going to discuss how to work with the safety inspectors. MTHS is a team who has previously won the safety award. Underwriter Laboratories (aka UL ) provides the safety inspectors at the contest. They know their stuff.
Team Scouting / Alliance Marketing	Kate Lanum of  team 2906, explains how to leave a positive impresson on other teams for alliances as well as how to scout teams for alliances.
The Design Process	Scott Lindley, Team 1778 MTHS. Scott will give you ideas about how to work through the design process with a team, how to brainstorm, deliberate, reach consensus, and work together to accomplish a difficult task.
Using the video camera	Darren Collins and Matt Clayson of team 2046 will discuss how to implement a video camera on your robot based on last years control system.

Registrations for this event are available now.

Please use the following form to tell us how many people from your team are attending. Please try to be as accurate as possible since we are planning on purchasing food and drinks for everyone. If you have changes in headcount, please do us a favor and re-register. We will use the most current numbers for ordering food.