Category: Vocational Education

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Robotics Club

I completely forgot to post about the Robotics Club, which Mr. Christy and myself are the moderators. To be fair, Mr. Christy spends much more time with the students, often staying until 8 or 9pm with them during the buildup to a recent contest. This year, the team participated in the MATE ROV competition, which is an underwater rover robot event. The event was at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy on the Cape, and we were there early in the morning. The contest was a little disorganized, and the start time was quite delayed. But that gave our team plenty of time to prepare and organize, since this was our first time at the event. We had two stints in the water with the robot, and the team learned a great deal from the day. Fortunately, we won! Out of the 4 scoring categories, we took 3 of them. We were completely surprised, but very happy for our students.

This means the team will now compete in the international event held in Long Beach, California. Mr. Christy has spent a lot of energy working on corporate sponsorship, and at this time we have raised nearly $20,000 to get the team to California, as well as created ongoing sponsorships for years to come. It’s been a great success, and no matter what happens in Long Beach, the team is going to get better and better each year. Unfortunately, neither myself or Mr. Christy will be able to attend the event in California, so a couple of parent chaperones will go with our team. I’ve posted a few photos below of the team and the rover. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get any good video of the rover underwater!

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Cardboard Canoes

It has been 4 years since we last competed in the Cardboard Canoe races, and while we had a very sturdy boat, it was almost too sturdy. It tipped over too easy because if floated so well and was not easy for our students to control. Those freshmen who built the canoe are now seniors and are working on a new boat for this years races. Our shop has 2 entrants a senior team and a junior team. It’s exciting to see their work, and to see how far our shop has come in providing our students with the tools to make these incredible objects. A few photos below of the construction process. The event is June 12th, and I will post more info as we approach the date.

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Radio V2

Not sure why I have been so enamored with making bluetooth radios lately. My original Pi Radio still is not complete, but it’s a bit out of my hands at the moment. I purchased an old Rogers radio from England and converted it into a bluetooth radio, and it works very well. In addition to that I wanted to make my own radio using our lasercutter here in the shop and create everything in a CAD model. Today I was finalizing an updated version for my father, which includes a newly designed circuit board that is modeled in the CAD file. The new board adds a couple of diodes to help with interference from the battery pack, which was affecting the sound. I will post a more detailed writeup on the construction of the radio, but for now here are a few photos from today.

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Hiatus

Not sure how these stops and starts happen, but I’m planning to be back on track for daily writing. I guess this time it was my brother’s wedding, which required travel across the country and interrupted my schedule. Or I’m lazy.

Our students are in their last month or so of school, and are working on a variety of interesting projects. Juniors and Seniors have cardboard boats under construction, while the Sophomores are just finishing their Sumobots. They had their first contest with them yesterday, and will have some time to learn from the contest and rework the bots. Additionally, we have some metal signs being finished from our waterjet machine, as well as a lasercut wood barrel top for a local distillery. Lastly, we finally hung up our Tetris game in the front lobby of the school. It looks great, and is getting a lot of attention. Some images below.

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Cold

It was snowing this morning. Hard to believe we are almost in April and there was an inch of snow on the ground soon after I arrived at work this morning. Luckily, it quickly melted in the clear, sunny day that followed the morning.

It’s my week with the Freshmen, and we are focusing on learning CAD. Starting with this new group has allowed me to go over each of my past videos and redo them to make sure the important aspects of the tutorial are being clearly stated. Each time I make a video I think they are getting better. Below is a recent redo of the Soda Bottle.