The OCCRA season is now finished after the Championship at Brandon-Fletcher Intermediate School this Saturday. It was a competitive and exciting season, full of learning and lots of robotics. The Championship went well, as we placed in the semi-finals and took home the Technical Excellence Award for the first time this season.

The week leading up to the Championship was, as always, a busy one. Most teams met to work for the last time (for the most part) before our December break before FIRST.

At the Thursday competition two weeks ago, our robot had problems with the accuracy of the shooter, so the Build Team took a look and found two major problems. The first was that the balls used at Thursday’s competition were too inflated for our robot’s design. Second, the gear box had to be greased. Along with those improvements, we re-cut the PVC pipes on the sides of our shooter so that the balls were more centered when shot, and fixed a loose chain.

In the Build Workshop this week we finished disassembling one of our old robots, using power tools, and finishing the building of the control panel of the showbot. Also, we learned about the different components that make the robot work. We will not be meeting next week; the control team will be wiring our robot.

The Business Plan Team reviewed the myriad changes we want to make for each part of the Plan, and discussed our future goals.

The Programming Team has resumed its educational workshops and has completed the code for the chassis study robot. New processors have arrived which the programming team is looking into implementing for the FIRST season, as well as with the showbot project.

In this week’s meeting, the Marketing Team talked about what we have accomplished over the last few meetings. We also talked about new t-shirt designs that we may use in the future. We also talked about what we want to accomplish during the FIRST season, as OCCRA is coming to a close.

This week in Digital Media, we discussed the designs for our website. We will be asking other sub-teams for their input on the website. We are also getting recording the mission plans of other sub-teams.

The competition, however, was the main event of the week. We went into it as the 3rd-ranked team in OCCRA, and by the end of qualification rounds we were the 2nd seed after winning all of our games for that day. We even managed to set a record score with a win of 35 to 23!

We ended up captains of the 2nd alliance, and chose team 469, Las Guerillas, to join us in the finals. It was a strong alliance, with both teams able to score in the 3-point goal and moderately strong defensive ability. We performed well in the early elimination rounds, though we had some bad luck in the semi-finals and were eliminated after a closely-contested best 2-out-of-3 series.We were disappointed to not have gone farther, but were happy to have had a successful season.

The competition ended on a positive note, as we were awarded the Technical Excellence Award, which is given to a team that shows precision and accuracy in robot design and more. It was our first win of this award this season.

As the OCCRA season wraps up, we are starting to look ahead to the FIRST season, though we are taking a December break to cool down before the intensity begins.

Written by Cameron Johnson

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