JHHS BattleBots IQ : Blog

I have gone through and officially tagged all of my matches that were recorded on high-quality 8mm tape. (The remaining untagged were either recorded on Andy’s disposable CVS cameras or fragmented videos that are soon to be removed.) They should have the competitors’ names and ….little else. Sorry.

We haven’t yet gone around and organize the videos chronologically, but we will eventually.
Sorry about the lackluster blog this year. Yeah, I hate it, too. I guess we counted too much on BotsIQ providing internet access. Hope they will next year.

The videos from this past year are now up! (I believe. I know I checked the 100th one anyway, but they all should work.)

They are on the videos page. Because so many people were bugging me to get them up, they’re not perfect. They’re actually very obviously less-than-perfect. There are no thumbnails, no titles, no lengths, and no descriptions. But they’re there. The rest will come sooner or later (hopefully sooner), but at least you can see the videos. Sharing the links is probably the best way to distribute the videos, because they’re distributed among three mirrors. Have fun!

More soon,

Andy Schmitz

Tubes just stopped in a match against Roflcopter. No idea why yet.

We’re heading to the beach now, storm could come soon, so we want to get out there before it comes. We can tell it’s already getting cooler.

Might get videos up soonish, but we’ve got very spotty internet access, so no idea if that’ll happen or we’ll have to wait ’till we get home.

-Andy (Posting as Tommy, too lazy, etc.)

A Series of Tubes opened to rave reviews. Most of the cheerers-on weren’t even from Hersey. Our first match was on Friday against “The Brick”, 120 lbs of thick steel on a chassis about the size of two large laptops stacked upon each other. For armament, it had only had large thick steel curving spikes on its front and its own speed and durability, hoping to carry or push opponents to the hammers. A Series of Tubes came up to the little runt, shoved his arm under, and flipped the little guy on his back. He could still drive upside down, but, naturally, he was harder to steer. This little cat-and-mouse game continued for a couple of minutes with Tubes flipping Brick again and again. About halfway through, Brick managed to stab one of its spikes into Tubes’ tires. Tubes tried to back up but with Brick holding the wheel still, Tubes only flipped himself over on his back. After waiting the appropriate moment to instill false hope in the other team and despair in all of Tubes’ followers, Ian hit the switch and engaged the arm, flipping Tubes right-side-up again. The crowd went nuts. Tubes kept flipping The Brick again and again. Eventually the match came down to a judges’ decision. Tubes won. We are entertained.

There are new pictures at the gallery now. They finally got uploaded.

Feel free to check them out, they’re the next best thing to the actual videos.

More later (hopefully),

Andy Schmitz

We have no internet access in the convention center or in the hotel. I only come to you now by very inconvenient means. Our plans were turned upside down when BotsIQ decided to no longer provide wireless internet to contestants. This means a lot of the stuff we brought, the routers/wireless repeaters, the Cat-5e cables, and laptops were rendered either useless or with severely reduced utility. This means I can’t incessantly blog like last year. I’m also a lot busier. I’m recording a lot more matches this year. Blog posts will come eventually but in fewer numbers.

-Tommy

(Signed in as Andy because I don’t have enough time to log out and back in)

I’ll try to update the status of the bots when I can. The matches link on the left is incorrect and may not get updated. You can see some of the status at varying intervals here (link updated). Videos have not been uploaded yet, we don’t even have them on the computer yet. We’ll try to do that soon, but we don’t know how the Internet will work out tomorrow, so there’s no telling if they’ll be up or not. We’ve got some pretty awesome video once we get back though.

-Andy

Okay, so. Quick rundown because I don’t have a bunch of time here.

Takeoff: 10:36 Local (Chicago)
Landing: 2:08 Local (Miami)

Robot status:

• Mr. Plow: Good: Checked in and both tests completed
• Care Bear: Good: Checked in and both test completed
• Fargo 2: Decent: Checked in, safety test completed, in line for functional test.
• A Series of Tubes: Bad: Checked in, neither test completed.

We have about another hour(-ish) to complete the tests. Fargo 2 will be fine, but A Series of Tubes may have a few problems. It should turn out okay though.

That’s it for the moment.

Andy Schmitz

The results are in. Spinaltap places twelfth, but you already know that.

Matador was knocked out soon after Mr. Plow by a judges’ decision. That puts them at either 7th or 8th place. (It’s hard to say, BBIQ doesn’t give an explicit place number. All we can say for sure is that Plow and Matador are in the top 10.)

As for the rumbles, We put Matador and Plow in two different rumbles. Plow won the rumble when all the other bots finished each other off.

Matador won its rumble. The drumbots stopped working. The drum still moved, but the wheels were disabled. We were the only robot left moving, but we had some radio problems.

There is video for both rumbles. Video from the disposable cameras mounted on top of Plow and Matador could not be salvaged. The camera froze (intact, though) and needed a hard restart. Next year, we hope to use a wireless camera so we’ll have immediate video. It wasn’t really explained to me.

~235 mb of still digital photos

2:40 hours of 8mm video.

If you want a poster from the event, see either Andy Schmitz or John Kowols.

Tommy

See you all next year.

Matador has been eliminated. The winner was Copperhead, a spinning-drum-bot.

We still have a chance in the rumble. That’s where all the losers fight all at once in a free-for-all. Plow and Matador will be participating. Plow will be outfitted with a disposable video camera on its top recording at 320×280.

Tommy

Mr. Plow has just been eliminated.

There was so much damage to the frame that some of Plow’s wheels couldn’t touch the ground. The other bot, a wedge of reinforced aluminum, pushed us into a corner and we had to tap out to save ourselves for the rumble.

All hope lies in Matador.

Tommy