Check out our blog for the latest news!

2022 Day 7 &

Intake TestingWe started on a more complete intake test rig with bumpers and more adjustability.VideoWe are using silicone bands in

2022 Day 3

 The first day of the season with a normal after-school meeting is mostly just a recap of the weekend and

2022 Day 1: Rapid

 2022 FIRST Robotics Competition Game - Rapid ReactGame Manual (Rules): https://firstfrc.blob.core.windows.net/frc2022/Manual/2022FRCGameManual.pdfFirst ImpressionsThis looks to be a very well-made game that will

Weeks of 9/27 and

 Week of 9/27- 9/28 - Mechanical Training  - Discord - 8 pm - Exploration of the FRC Kit Drivetrain - Video - Slides- 9/29

Weeks of 9/27 and

 Week of 9/27- 9/28 - Mechanical Training  - Discord - 8 pm - Exploration of the FRC Kit Drivetrain - Video - Slides- 9/29

Spectrum Fall Training

Our weekly scheduleDiscord Virtual SessionsTue 8pm Design/Mechanical TrainingThur 8pm Controls/Strategy TrainingBi-Weekly Wed 8pm - Awards MeetingMonthly 3rd-Wed 8pm - Team

Spectrum Fall Training

Our weekly scheduleDiscord Virtual SessionsTue 8pm Design/Mechanical TrainingThur 8pm Controls/Strategy TrainingBi-Weekly Wed 8pm - Awards MeetingMonthly 3rd-Wed 8pm - Team

Virtual Pit

VirtualPit.Spectrum3847.orgWhat is a Virtual Pit?A virtual pit is an online meeting session for members of the robotics community to come

2020: Day 45 (plus

Comp Robot is beginning to come together. IntakeNow with more polycarbonateShooter HoodPrinted and laser cut hood.Camera Mounts are progressingBuddy Climb MechanismThe

2020 Day 48: CAD

The CAD model has been updated on GrabCAD - https://grabcad.com/library/spectrum-3847-2020-ultraviolet-frc-robot-1Some of the electrical and pneumatics details are getting doneClimber Gearbox test

2020 Day 35 &

IntakeWe are getting some 2.5" OD polycarbonate tube to test soon. But for now.ShooterThe shooter is still under development. We

2020 Day 34

Really quick update today. We are moving along on revisions to CAD for the protobot so we can them fixed

2020 Day 30 &

Chairman's Award and Woodie Flowers Award Submissions Due this Week.The Chairman's Award essay and questions and the Woodie Flower's Award

2020 Day 29

We have most of the protobot mechanically done. We found several issues with the design and things we will be

2020 Day 28: Tower

Tower RailsWe have our tower rails mounted in place on the protobot. Tomorrow it will get shafts, belts, shooter wheels,

2020 Day 26: Intake

Intake ProgressProgress on the Protobot intake and funnel have come to their 2nd iteration.This version fixes some geometry issues with

2020 Day 24: CAD

CAD UpdatedThe STEP file on GrabCAD has been updated for this week. You can download it here - https://grabcad.com/library/spectrum-3847-2020-ultraviolet-frc-robot-1Vision ProgressWe have

2020 Day 20: CAD

Largely we have been getting more of our subsystem designs CADed.Shooter DesignWe are experimenting with adding a rear kicker wheel

2020 Day 15: Some

Shooter HoodTomorrow we will be testing some new shooter hood additions. We have yoga mat foam and PTFE sheet mounted

2020 Day 14: Controls

Controls UpdateOur controls Subteam has been working on several projects already this year.Their todo list is pretty longPath Following using

2020 Day 12: New

Block Robot UpdateThe new intake plan, allows for balls to rapidly be brought into the robot with a wide intake,

2020 Day 9 &

Everybot and Week 6 RobotsThis past Sunday, Spectrum was able to attend an event hosted by the Robonauts were Everybot

2020 Day 8: Quick

Power Cell Shooter TestingQuick shooter testing video from today, we are now starting to believe we can make a more

Day 7: Making a

Shooter TestingWe modified the shooter from our 2017 robot to be able to launch power cells. It's mounted to our

2020 Day 4 –

Design Review #1On Tuesday's during the season we have our design reviews. We use a common google slide document to

2020 – Day 3

Today's TestsBump crossing tests - CG is important and braking hard is badhttps://photos.spectrum3847.org/2020-FRC/2020-Build-Season/i-VQ2CwLV/ALow CG and CG at the front of

FRC CAD Collection

We started putting together an FRC CAD collection - cadcollection.spectrum3847.org - It has over 375 links to FRC robot CAD files

Ready for El Paso

We compete this Saturday and Sunday at the El Paso District.You can watch the live stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/firstintexasevents2We have been driving

2019 Day 41: Hatches

We have been making progress. The practice bot is operational but all the mechanisms are still getting tweaked. The competition

2019 Day 19, 20,

The theme of our two Cargo manipulation groups for the past two weeks has been "EVERYTHING IS CHANGING!"This has been

2019 Day 16 &

We spent the long weekend getting the drive train, elevator, and climber ready to be sent off to our sponsor

2019 Day 13: Cargo

We have been successfully using Protopipe this season to test our cargo designs. It has let us make rapid iterations.Today

2019 Day 10

Cargo MechanismThis will hold the cargo on the elevator. The mechanism will intake it from the over the bumper ball

2019 Day 8: Allenless

Progress ReportThe team spent the majority of their time in the lab today tuning their subsystem designs.Sheet Metal DeadlineThe subsystems

2019 Day 5: 1st

Ball Sizing RingsWe laser cut 3 ball sizing rings, 12.5", 13", and 13.5" in diameter. This lets us inflate balls

2019 Build Day 2:

Practice Field BuildingMost of our manpower was spent on field building today. We started day making a lumber run for

2019 DDS: Day 1

Kickoff for our 9th season was today with the release of FRC Destination Deep Space.See the reveal video below and

Spectrum – This Fri

View this email in your browserIndiana Robotics Invitational July 13-14Watch the action live: www.twitch.tv/FIRSTinspiresEvent Results and Matches: The Blue AllianceSpectrum is

Day 40, 41, &

We have been putting together the competition bot and powder coating parts. We also got the practice arm assembled and

Day 38 & 39:

Power Switch and connector mountingWe worked on our power switch and battery connector mount the past two days, going through

Day 33: Demos and

We had a demo at Neff Elementary Science Night tonight. It's always fun inspire younger students to get excited about

Day 29, 30, 31:

Intake UpdatesThis is intake version 8 for us. We modified the arm angles to improve the geometry and moved to

Day 22 & 23:

IntakeThe new intake prototype was the main focus for testing this weekend. We only CAD enough of it so that

Day 19 & 20:

Vlogs and Video Updates from other teamsA ton of teams have been making build Vlogs this year on YouTube but

Day 18: 4 Bar

Today was probably the end of the our 4 bar intake prototype. We had some goals for the intake design

Day 16: Virtual 4

Intake prototypes are finally running, took a little longer than we wanted with the ice days last week. It's working

Day 15: More CAD

Hook geometry to starting to take shape. We love this video by Adam Heard and 973 for designing pneumatic linkages. Drive

Day 14

Drive TrainDrive train CAD is starting to progress. We'll get the gearboxes and belly pan on over the weekend, and

Day 8: MCCC and

Lifting PrototypesWe purchased a lever chain hoist this morning so that we could test different lifting concepts without having a

Day 7: Power Up

We are a week into the season and a bunch of resources, examples, and documents have been published about the

Day 5: The Q&A

Today brought the first clarifications of multiple rules from the GDC in the Q&A.https://frc-qa.firstinspires.org/Climber/Bumper QuestionsTwo critical Q&As are Q4 and

SPECTaculaR Summer Camp

Spectrum members with their students after a successful 2 weeks.From July 31-August 11, Spectrum team members taught engineering principles and

Day 18: Week 3

Check_in Watch our full segment on check_in here and be sure to watch the live show every Tuesday at 6 CT

Day 13: Robot Update

Spectrum Week 2 Video UpdatesRecap Video Full Time Lapse  check_inBe sure to watch our segment of check_in from this Tuesday's showNew live

Day 8: Start of

Long Saturday in the lab we are working though getting the prototypes assembled and finding the sticking points that we

Day 7: Climbing

We continued working on prototypes, including retro fitting one of our off-season robots to be a climbing test bed. We

Day 4: Recap

We're now 4 days through the season. This is when teams are finalizing their initial designs and beginning to build

Day 2: Full STEAM

Robot Design is BeginningWe started brainstorming designs and working through solutions to our strategy goals. A bunch of sketches were done

Updated CAD Library

We've updated our CAD Library that we published last year with new models from VEXpro, AndyMark, REV Robotics and more.Also

Day 21: Intake

We finished the wooden intake today. It has a few geometry errors that we need to fix before going into

Day 12: From Deep

We upgraded the shooter prototype even more today by making our Tri-wheeled shooter use multiple wheels so they act like

Day 10: Last Day

We completed the third of three very long build sessions today. Shooter The main progress of today was a couple

Day 4: More field

We made some more progress our outerworks today. Our current drawbridge and cheval de frise need a little adjustment to

Day 3: 4 Defenses

Today we continued to test our prototypes and build defenses. We're focusing on defense building right now so that we

Spectrum LEDs

We are very happy to announce a new batch of resources that we are publishing, Spectrum LEDs (Luminous Educational Documents).

Championship

Spectrum won Judges' Award on our division at champs. This is a huge honor and our first award at the

Rev 2: Day 5

Day 4 was spent traveling to Texarkana in preparation for our first regional in Little Rock. We got to Texarkana

Day 34: A good

The last few days had been uneventful. We had some failed tests and we have been working through some potential

Day 25: Open CAD

Spectrum is using GrabCAD Workbench this year to do version control and content management for our Solidworks CAD files of

Day 19 & 20:

For the most part we have been focusing on getting our CAD models complete over the past couple days. We're

This Week in FRC

Regional Dates and FRC Registration Most of the regional dates are now official and FRC Registration opens on Thursday (Sep

This Week in FRC

Simbot Seminar Series The Simbots are an amazing team. So amazing in fact that they are going to teach everyone

Jason Ball – This

Mr. Ball graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in physics, and he later graduated from Rice University with

This Week in FRC

We're starting a new series today -- "This Week in FRC" --  which will feature the recent happenings inside the

Summer Plans

Spectrum is going to be busy this summer. We finally uploaded the archive of our build blog to Chiefdelphi. Our

Bag Day: Infrared

Infrared Reveal VideoReveal PhotosTo discuss the robot head over to our CD thread. It's in the bag.  The handles even

Day 45: Filming

We started the day trying to get through a few problems that have crept up on the competition robot. Nothing

Day 33: Fixing our

Sorry for no post yesterday, we had a really short meeting since there were parent-teacher conferences. Mostly worked on chairman's

Day 26: It looks

Lots of robot pictures today. We got the back panel mostly constructed and the collector mounted. The robot in this

Day 7: It’s been

We continued improving our prototypes today after our design meeting yesterday. We modified our collector prototype to a version inspired

Day 3 of Aerial

We continued our prototyping today. The improved roller claw is working very nicely. We're not convinced that we will even

IRI Recap

Spectrum had an amazing time this past weekend at the Indiana Robotics Invitational. We were thrilled to be chosen as

Summer Programs

Spectrum is keeping busy during the summer months. This week we worked with the St. Agnes Academy "Be the Change

BAG DAY

We finished up the official build season today by fixing our bottom hard stop for our shooter tilt and getting

Day 44: Two Days,

18 Hour days and we still have a lot to got on our competition robot.  The competition robot will be wired tomorrow

Day 40: Only 6

We hadn't done much testing of the tilt mechanism until today. It still needs work but it's at least closer

Day 30: Bumper Build

Bumper Build Our 1st annual Super Bowl Bumper Build was very successful. We had 5 teams in attendance (4155, 4280, 4346, 4639,

Day 21

That is the current CAD that we are finished with so far. All the electronic mounts have been sent to

Day 19

We're still working on getting all our systems designed in CAD. We hadn't thought through several of them till today.

Day 13: Drive Train

We're close to two weeks in and we finally have a moving drive train (with test electronics).  We're using the VEXpro Drive in

Solarcraft Tour

On Wednesday (11/14/12), Spectrum had the opportunity to tour the Solarcraft Inc. facility. Solarcraft (www.solarcraft.net) is a local company that makes power

Community Day 2012

This Saturday (11/3) Spectrum spent the day interacting with our Houston community. We started the day by volunteering at the

Mentor for a Day

Spectrum had the great privilege of having Katie Strausser, a St. Agnes Engineering Team alumnus, visit the team on Monday

Preparing for Camp

Lego Camp Preparations The last couple weeks have been devoted to preparing for the Lego Camp that is starting next week.

Build Day 23: And

Electrical is now the main priority for the robot. We have most of the mechanical systems mounted but we need to get

Build 21

We were able to power the collector today with motors, the tests were promising but also pointed out a couple

Build Day 19: 4

We made a huge amount of progress today because the final shipment of mechanical parts arrived.  We were able to

Build Day 13: Busy

Our build session started off with a presentation by the founders of BlueStampEngineering.com. They are bringing a summer engineering program

Build Day 6

We're getting closer to a final design. We have prototypes of most of the subsystems underway. The collector prototype was

About our team

We are a High School Engineering and FIRST Robotics Competition Team from St. Agnes Academy and Strake Jesuit College Preparatory located in Houston, Texas. Since 2011, Spectrum has focused on introducing students to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) while enriching our members, schools, community, and the world. Thank you to our sponsors for your support.

Thank you to our sponsors!

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Contact us!

spectrum3847@gmail.com

 

9000 Bellaire Blvd.

Houston, TX 77036

Our lab is located here.