The CocoNuts Robotics "News Feed"

Those crazy nuts have done it again. We qualified for the World Championships at both our Utah and Arizona Regional competitions. In our competitions in Utah we earned Engineering Inspiration and our rookie drive team took our robot to the Semifinals where we were then defeated by some awesome teams. At the Arizona Regional we recieved a nutty 6 awards this year,  including the Creativity Award, #1 in Pit Safety, Teacher of the Year for our mentor/teacher Christine Sapio(Spaz), the Dean’s List Award for  our outstanding student, Destiny, the Chairman’s Award for the third time, and the Finalist Alliance Award. Our drive team did a great job with our alliance, the CoCoCobra Cats, taking us to the finals with a tiebreaker match, the farthest the CocoNuts have ever gone in the eliminations. What an amazing year! Worlds here we come.

Today we finished competition here in Utah! At the end we ended up making it into the Semifinals with our robot and also achieving the Engineering Inspiration award which is the most prestigious award that we could have qualified for! It was so much fun and we hope to go again next year!

The competition has gone on for two days now and currently we are ranked 11th! This is a good place for us right now! We’ll report back tomorrow!

We find ourselves smack in the middle of week 6, wondering to ourselves: “Where did the time go?”. Luckly, we still have until next Tuesday to figure that out. Our Chairman’s Submission is, well, submitted and the robot is coming along. With our tower built, drive train finished, and our vaccum and shooter just around the corner, we are looking in surprisingly good shape! On top of that we have two outreach events coming up, and an FLL Invitational to host in March. Let’s just say we’ve got a lot on our plate, but it’s nothing the CocoNuts can’t handle!

Happy Bagging!
Go Nuts!

AZ FTC State Chamionship= at school Fiday until 10pm, wake up next day at 5:30am, leave school at uhhh- what time is it again? But, to be honest, it is worth every minute. For those who don’t know, the CocoNuts are the FTC Affiliate Partners for Arizona, which means we host the FTC kick-off, work shops, scrimmage, and state tounament. This year we had some amazing turn out, with 22 teams in attendance from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and California. We even had a team registered to attend from Mexico, but unfortunetly they couldn’t make the actual tournament. Next year, the event is going to grow so large we will have to run two divisions, which mean double the fields, materials, and voulenteers, but we couldn’t be more delighted.
We had a really great time today with some very competitive teams robot-wise, as well as in the running for awards like the Inspire Award, which is for just that, a team that inspires others. So, thank you to all the teams we saw today, you all truely did great, and congrats to the two teams that will be progressing on to the World Championships in April. The two teams were team 2844 (Valley-X), winning the Inspire Award, and team 4314 (Aero Squadron) was the winning alliance captian.
So, thank you again to everyone who was there, if you couldn’t make it, some videos will be up on our YouTube channel soon. It was great to see what a positive impact we have on people, and it was for sure worth giving up two build days.

Go Nuts!!
31 Days Until Ship!!

P.s. I’m pretty sure that I have lost count of how many days until ship, so don’t count on that number! :D

For most students there wasn’t school today, but why would anyone on the CocoNuts take that into consideration? For us it just means and extra, much needed work day! Greeted this morning by a few inches of snow we reported promptly at the school at 10 am. We got started quickly on prototyping a launcher for the basket ball (video will be up on our youtube channel soon). The programming team got to work on field oriented drive and completed that task successfully, so awsome!! We are really excited for this season! The game is going to be great and we are looking forward to score some coopertition points! Happy Building!

Go Nuts!
33 Days Unitl Ship!

The build season certainly is hurrying along, but we have been getting quite a bit done. Of course, that doesn’t stop us from feeling like we are still behind. On the robot front: We have been doing some prototyping for both our shooter and ball picker upper (for lack of a better term) mechanism. We’ve decided to go with a simple 4 wheel mecanum drive train, and we have been busy milling the wheel mounts for them. On the Awards front: Chairman’s Essay is in a finalized rough draft stage, the video is being story-boarded, and the judge’s handout is about a quarter of the way done too! Programming team was able to get their camera to track the reflective square and also able to partially drive the robot locked on the target, we are also working with a gyro to get a robot to be field oriented! We are really off to a great start! Next weekend, January 21st, we will be hosting the Arizona FTC Championships! The event is free at Coconino High School from 10:30am-5:30pm. Hope to see everyone there!

Go Nuts!
35 days until ship!

P.S. In case you didn’t see the FRC game this year, here’s the link to the game animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNkjpd7mYBs

Well it appears that the 2012 FRC season is upon us! After getting up early this morning to watch the Kick-Off Live Stream which is viewed simultaneously by FIRST Teams all over the world, we have began our work on our robot. This years game, “Rebound Rumble” should be reallllllly interesting. Personally, I am really excited about the Xbox kinect that was included in the kit. I just wish we had mini-bots again this year. Oh well, it should be a blast! Go Luck!

Go Nuts!

42 Days Until Ship!

After the controlled chaos of FIRST in Atlanta, the CocoNuts have settled into calmer, but just as important, pursuits: namely teaching the Northern Arizona University Summer Enrichment Program (NAU SEP) “Spirit and Opportunity” section for the second year in a row. The CocoNuts teach their “made-from-scratch” Mars rover based curriculum using LEGO Mindstorms Robot Kits (a.k.a. – FLL bots).

So, if you want to see the CocoNuts putting STEM into action, stop by the NAU College of Education, Rm 174, between 6-8 PM, June 2-8 or June 12-18.

GO NUTS!

Once again, through the overwhelming generosity of the community of Flagstaff and Northern Arizona, the CocoNuts will be attending the FIRST World Championships in Atlanta, Georgia!!!

This year we made it every team member’s individual responsibility to raise funds for their portion of the travel cost (plane, hotel, etc.) to Atlanta. So we decided to have a spaghetti dinner and raffle, and every member went going around town selling raffle and spaghetti dinner tickets. We received raffle item donations from over 50 local businesses, and we even had all our spaghetti/food related items donated as well! In total our spaghetti dinner and raffle netted $3700!! Members also solicited their friends and family for Arizona Public School Tax Credits to our team. We also had school hat days, car-washes and other miscellaneous fundraisers. As of today every member had funded their own trip ($480), with some going above and beyond (one by the thousands!).

We will be leaving Coconino High School at 4AM tomorrow for our 7:59AM flight from Sky Harbor in Phoenix to Atlanta. It won’t be until Sunday that we return, so no guarantees on new blog posts in Atlanta.

The CocoNuts are proud to represent Coconino High School—the city of Flagstaff—Coconino County—all of Northern Arizona—and the entire Southwest region at the FIRST World Championships. It is inspiring to see our outreach in our community be reciprocated by the kindness and support that our community shows for our team, and we hope to do you proud in Atlanta.

GO NUTS!