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Today was the last day of the build season, and many of the team members continued their sleepless journey from the night before by staying overnight and even skipping class in order to help complete the robot. All the mentors were present - Mr. Ing, Mr. Leong, Mr. Tom, Mr. Kusunoki, Ms. Owens, Ms. Kim, and alumni Alan, Daniel, and Amber (honorary alumni!). Even Dr. Ing stayed awhile to help with anything he could. Before then, there was the very supportive faculty from school, Vice Principal Suehiro and Ms. Uyesugi, who supplied us with scrumptious food energy in order to help us through the endless night. Throughout the night, the mentors worked tirelessly to implement any final touches or readjustments they could think of to the robot. Time seemed to tick by a lot faster. Before we knew it, dawn broke in with a sparkling pinkness across the sky. Its arrival brought in the KITV 4 news crew, who tried to update the status of our robot for the last time, before we had to crate it for shipping later in the morning.

As the sky brightened with twilight, we started prepping the batteries for crating and laying out the tools so that we would know which ones to pack later. Then, six o'clock came with a warm breakfast provided again by the generous faculty, Vice Principal Suehiro and Ms. Uyesugi. Despite of the evident and unbearable sleepiness on everyones' faces, we quickened our pace as there were still much to be done. While the electrical team worked on calibrating their programming codes and mounting any last minute electronics, we were on the other side of the shop busily milling slots on the bumpers for the mounting brackets to screw on. The process was time-consuming and tedious as there were two sets bumpers and each of them had to be custom-fitted because of slight errors when making them.

By the time the FedEx shipping crew came to pick up our unfinished robot, we were worried. Fortunately, we were able decline the morning pickup and drop off our crate between 2pm-3pm at the FedEx airport facility. While most students went to classes (because ship day was unfortunately a Tuesday), some of us stayed behind to help. Bumpers slotting continued, mounting brackets were nicked by a center punch to indicate where the hole must be drilled for the peg, and two pieces of polycarbonate were milled to size as cover for the wiring.

At around lunch time, everyone came and was scrambling to finish up. We had to drill holes into the robot's chassis and also holes in the mounting brackets. As one o'clock approached, we still didn't finish working on the robot. We had no choice but to pack up and crate the robot, so it was decided that the bumpers will be mounted at the competition.

In response to our controller's request, we kept the beater bar and the kicker behind so that we can improve on them before Portland. We will experiment with different materials for the flappers on the beater bar and weld the kicker's components together to eliminate its twitching problem.

By the end of school, everyone was walking dead. While the mentors went to drop off the robot crate, we cleaned up Hirata Hall and the machine shop. Although we couldn't finish the robot in time, we felt a pang of relief and bittersweetness and couldn't help cheering out loud. Before we left the shop, we thanked our mentors, whose faces shone just the same shade of happiness and gratitude as ours.

Although Crunch Time was officially over, the climax of robotics has just begun. Hopefully, our six weeks of hard work will pay off at the upcoming Portland Regional. As this year is a final senior year for many of us, we will make it fun and memorable by giving it all our best.

Go, Sachiko-bot! Go Team Kika Mana 368!

During the hectic three days, a lot of sleep was lost for some of the electrical team, but there was still work to be done until the last second. As the shipping day drew closer, the electrical team was just as busy as ever. We continued wiring and labeling the robot. Once wiring was completed, we tested out the robot once more and weighed it.

Later, taking turns on the robot with the mechanical team as they also made last minute adjustments, we took up mounting the pneumatics components, temporarily at first, so we could test the kicker and make modifications as needed. We experimented and charted how far the kicker could kick at the different angles as it was pulled back. In the final hours before shipping, we finally found permanent mounts for the pneumatics components.

We mounted the camera and updated the cRIO and found a major problem. With the camera running, the program did not run as well as it caused the whole program to lag. After searching Chief Delphi, we found that we were not the only team experiencing the problem. We attribute the problem to the recent cRIO update and decided to forgo the camera tracking for now until a new software update is provided.

With everything else done, focus for the electrical team turned to programming autonomous. We decided on using a Quadrature Optical Encoder to measure distance during the autonomous mode. After it was wired onto the robot, we finalized the autonomous strategy that had already been planned out. Using the distances we measured out earlier and the chart of kicking distances, we implemented a test autonomous to see how well it would work. At first the program did not execute as planned and much troubleshooting was needed until we found and fixed the problem.

We continued to receive guests as we rushed to finish up before shipping. Relatives of one of our mentors, a few McKinley teachers, our vice-principal, and the KITV4 crew paid us another visit. As hectic as it was what with all the guests, we continued working.

After three long, grueling days, the robot was finally crated up and shipped.

Watch our 2010 award winning animation here.

This week, the Public Relations team was busy documenting the last few moments everyone had to work on the robot. But we also had our own work to do. One of them was working on a new award called FIRST Dean's List, which was due four days after it was introduced to to all teams, giving us very little time to create an entry. Basically, this new award was made to recognize super-members of teams from all over. We had the option of nominating two members from our team, but we had a hard time deciding whom to honor. In the end, we followed the advice of one of our mentors, picking a very worthy nominee. The initial essay turned out to be way over the 4000-character limit, so we had to edit it over and over again. We were able to submit it on time, but we had to give up any hope of nominating another person. There just wasn't enough time if we wanted to write a quality essay like each nominee would have deserved.

On the last morning before shipping, some of our alumni came back to see what they could do to help out. Ryan and Erica worked on the robot flyer which will be printed by our Graphic Arts teacher, Mr. Higa. He kindly volunteered to print them all for us, even on such short notice! The leis, which we will be bringing along with us for the Portland Regional, were also finished after we printed, cut, and attached business cards with our team info onto them. KITV4 News also came to check on our progress at three in the morning! Our team members who were interviewed did a good job representing us. But once KITV4 left, it was back to work.

Between those days of taking pictures and working on the essay, we also had to prepare for our school assembly demonstration and make reservations for the end-of-the-year team dinner. We all tried to memorize our lines as much as possible before speaking in front of the whole school. We had little time to practice, but the demo turned out fairly well, with many interested people asking us about the robotics program after the assembly. As for the end-of-the-year team social, we made reservations at Hale Koa Hotel, and all that's left is to make the guest list and invitations.

Some of our team members are leaving for Oregon in a few days, so we have to finish the binder! Scouting sheets still need to be done, too. We are waiting for input from the driver, controller, and coach so that we have relevant information they might want. Hopefully everything can get printed in time!

The FIRST building season has come to an end. Throughout these six weeks, the Website Team updated almost everything on our site. We added new features to make the site more convenient for others to use. During Crunch Time, we took more pictures and videos of the practice runs and all the final touches to the robot. We also updated our Week Six gallery by linking and resizing all the pictures. We will post more videos and updates to our site in the near future.