• Skynet Students Turn their Drawings into Realities

    Skynet Students Turn their Drawings into Realities

    With a pencil in one hand and a sheet of paper on top of a classroom desk, Hollace Avent and Aislyn Clark were able to turn their drawings into a reality that has been an important part of our team promotional materials.

    Avent spent long hours working on this project and completed it almost entirely independently. He sat down in our robotics classroom to sketch out some ideas and a few practices later, was able to learn some graphic design from our mentors to develop a professional banner.

    Clark was also developed a team avatar to match our team mascot, the Terminator. She frequently works on her tablet and pixel by pixel, created an 8-bit Terminator avatar.

    How about a game of “Where’s Waldo?” to see if you can find our mascot.

    -Skynet Team 2550

    jonstanis

  • How About Self-Driving Robots

    With a dedicated programming team lead by Nathan Walker and assisted by Brayton Kerekffy, the result was just as good as self-driving cars which was our self-driving robot!

    After dedicated work, hours of practice, and a whole lot of encoders, the result was priceless and flexible autonomous programs.

    -Skynet Team 2550

    jonstanis

  • Teams PowerUp

    Teams PowerUp
    How do you PowerUp?

    Skynet working on the project.

    At our Lake Oswego competition, Skynet’s business team members created and shared their PowerUp as a way to welcome teams to the event. Lacy Bott, Alaina Clar, Aislyn Clark, Hailey Brown, and Nick McKinney along with Skynet’s alumni Jared Bott made over 35 “Pacman” medallions to go along with this year’s theme, FIRST PowerUp which features arcade-like components.

    Check out our team PowerUp!

    -Skynet Team 2550

    jonstanis

  • 2018 Competition Season Recap

    2018 Competition Season Recap

    Although we did not get to proceed forth to the PNW
    Championships, it does feel as if we did win our own championship after the
    growth and learning that bloomed this season.
    For mechanical, we have had a lot of graduating members prior to our season as
    well as incoming members. This allowed for a chance to grow and develop new skills as a team. One thing that flourished out of this was the willing and eagerness to learn new things, an abundance of perspectives and aspirations for robot designs, and the perseverance to continue improving our robot design especially from our students leading projects including Chris Ashby,     Reece Elledge, and, Jeremy Sneed.

    Although they may be hidden away in a quiet room to themselves, the programming team made significant strides in developing and using sensors. Nathan Walker, Skynet’s programming lead, dedicated time to researching encoders, gyroscopes, ultrasonic, and was successfully able to program each of them. 

    If you have been to a robotics competition before, you will understand that there is one important practice that almost everyone in the stands participates – scouting. This was the first year our team was able to develop a strong scouting system that we can reliably receive and analyze data. Lead by <!–td {border: 1px solid #ccc;}br {mso-data-placement:same-cell;}

    Brayton Kerekffy, the team was able to purchase new tablets, have a strong system, and thoroughly analyze data. 

    A “Pacman” gift to teams. 
    Thanks to our business team, we were not only able to welcome and thank teams attending our home event at Clackamas Academy of Industrial Sciences, but we were also able to demonstrate Gracious Professionalism, a FIRST robotics principle. Our business team created fun and memorable gifts to hand out to teams ranging from Candy Robots to Pacman medallions to implementing the “arcade” theme of this year’s challenge. 
    Banner designed by Hollace Avent
    Lastly, our Safety team received the Safety Pit Award this competition season! So be sure to always wear your safety glasses when working in the pits and our shop so they can keep up their streak. 
    -Skynet Team 2550

    jonstanis

  • Lake Oswego Competition

    Lake Oswego Competition
    See you soon!

    Join us this Friday, March 30th and Saturday, March 31st to watch our robot compete at our second competition of the season! 
    Where: Lake Oswego High School (2501 Country Club Rd, Lake Oswego, OR 97034)
    When: 10AM Opening Ceremonies (qualifications matches begin immediately after)
    You can find more event details here. Can’t make it? You can livestream the event here!

    jonstanis

  • Extended Build Season Update

    Extended Build Season Update
    The theme of this past week for Skynet students was…encoders! Mechanical and programming teamed up to finalize our encoder research and installation process as after our first competition, we recognized how vital a reliable and safe installation of encoder sensors are. 
    In addition to the finalization of encoders, mechanical is continuing to improve our manipulator designs and programming, is prepared to fine tune those adjustments in our code. 

    Scouting spent this last week analyzing how our new scouting system was perceived at the competition. So far, this has been the strongest scouting system we have had as a team! They also added some new improvements on the user side to make it more detailed. 

    Safety has been preparing the procedures for what will come in the post-competition and 2019 seasons. Our marketing team is eager to demonstrate our team’s Gracious Professionalism (a key principle in robotics) by providing support to teams at our Lake Oswego competition. 

    jonstanis

  • Watch our Robot Compete!

    Watch our Robot Compete!

    If only we could go back in time…

    Although our robotics team has yet to invent a way to reverse time, you can still watch our matches from our CAIS competition. Click here to access a playlist of the CAIS competition.

    jonstanis

  • CAIS Competition Recap

    CAIS Competition Recap
    The leadership team of Skynet took a seat at a large conference table Saturday morning across from our robotics lab. With two weeks left of build season, we needed to finalize a manipulator design and make some serious decisions. So there we were, sitting across from one another to only wonder how far we could make it in the competition without a fully developed manipulator…..
    This was our team two weeks ago and fast forward past a week of cancelled practices due to weather, to our first competition, and we become part of the top 8 alliances of week 1 competition!
    Competing in the quarter finals could not have been possible without our mentors and the aspirations of every Skynet team member coming together.
    Something new this year was our pit crew. Skynet members jumped into action and were ready to solve any problem that our robot encountered, allowing our drive team to focus, collaborate and compete hard (with gracious professionalism of course!)
    Programming developed complex autonomous programs that were mastered at a high success rate.
    Scouting has the strongest system our team has ever had and it could be a potential solution to other teams and their scouting as well.
    Every team department has made some monumental steps this season and we still have five weeks to go!


    Mr.Busse (Woodie Flowers Nominee)
    CAIS Competition Awards
    Pit Safety Award

    Woodie Flowers Nomination – Mr. Busse

    -Skynet Team 2550

    jonstanis

  • See you tomorrow at our CAIS Competition

    See you tomorrow at our CAIS Competition
    See you tomorrow!
    Join us this Friday, March 2nd and Saturday, March 3rd to watch our robot compete at our first competition of the season! 
    Where: Clackamas Academy of Industrial Sciences (1306 12th St, Oregon City, OR 97045)
    When: 10AM Opening Ceremonies (qualifications matches begin immediately after)
    You can find more event details here. Can’t make it? You can livestream the event here!

    jonstanis

  • Autonomous Programming with 2550

    Sensors, sensors, and more sensors!
    Team 2550 has experienced monumental marks with their programming after successfully implementing various sensors including ultrasonic, gyroscopes, and encoders.

    jonstanis