Helping BCS Vikings

December 5, 2022January 14, 2023Leave a comment

Discussing possible solutions with BCS Vikings over discord

After we met BCS Vikings earlier this season, we invited them to join our Discord server. Through the server, they asked us for help with their IMU because it wasn’t working properly. We met with them online to talk it through together. After some time we realized that their control hub had a newer chip that required a software update, so we helped them figure out how to update the hub. They also had issues driving without drifting to the side which turned out to be two of their motors not being plugged in. It was exciting to mentor a team from another country and work through problems with them! Since then we’ve been continuing to help them through our Discord server.

Meeting with Mr. Nichols

August 25, 2022November 10, 2022Leave a comment

Henry showing Mr. Nichols our code

After showing Mr. Nichols our robot and game, his main suggestion was to try experimenting with LIDAR and similar sensors to track the robot’s position. He sent us a few sensors we could purchase online and suggested we try them, but we found that the most interesting one, a 2D spinning LIDAR sensor, was unfortunately illegal in FTC. He was very excited about FTC and we suggested he volunteer to become more involved. We will continue to work with him on solving different software systems as well as to get specific sensor recommendations in the future.

Bel Air Y-Care Demo

August 24, 2022October 20, 2022Leave a comment

Jackie showing off our lift system and Henry in the background teaching a kid how to drive

Every year, our team spreads excitement for STEM in kids around our school district by demoing at several local Y-Care events. This year we were only able to demo at one due to scheduling conflicts, so we made sure to go above and beyond to make this event special for the kids. We started this demo by displaying our robots and the different mechanical systems. Afterward, we let them take turns driving both robots and playing around with a couple of LEGO robots. All of them had a blast and we hope they go on to join robotics programs in the future.

Student Ambassador Volunteering

April 23, 2022July 30, 2022Leave a comment

Our team members at the World Championship (left) and the FRC Competition Area (right)

During the season, our teammate Jackie was nominated as a Dean’s List Finalist so we decided to send some members with her to visit Worlds. While we were there, we signed up as student ambassadors or SAs. Our job as SAs was to give tours to representatives from sponsors and other large companies that are interested in FIRST, such as Boeing or LEGO. During these tours we would walk through each level of robotics from FLL to FRC, showing the representatives matches and introducing them to teams. We also directed them to specific teams that they were sponsoring, which let them to see what they were helping create. It was tons of fun exploring and seeing the VIP’s reactions to different areas as they learned about FIRST and some even considered volunteering in the future.

University of Minnesota Biosystems Tour

April 15, 2022June 17, 2022Leave a comment

One of the Algae Growth Labs we visited.

After meeting some representatives of the U of M biosystems lab, we took a tour of their facility and learned about various projects they were working on. A majority of the research we saw was about algae relating to plastics. One scientist showed us algae designed to digest plastic and convert it into other, more useful materials while another scientist showed us algae that produces environmentally friendly plastic. We also saw some research into natural plant-grown gasses and were able to tour each one of these facilities. Some of our members who were more interested in these subjects got tons of very useful information from this visit.

CIA Mentoring #1

August 31, 2021September 24, 2021Leave a comment

During our FLL to FTC Webinar, we invited the teams to come visit our HQ to learn about our workspace and how we work. One of the teams that came to visit was CIA. We gave them a tour of our HQ and helped them create and program a basic push-bot. This was a great experience for us to learn more about their team and practice teaching robotics which we will use in the future.

Brainiac Maniacs Mentoring #1

August 4, 2021September 24, 2021Leave a comment

The Brainiac Maniacs are a team we are helping transition from FLL to FTC. After presenting our FLL to FTC Webinar to them, we offered to let the teams come visit us at our HQ so we could teach them about how we work. Once we had given them a tour of our workspaces, we helped them use the FTC kit we gave them to build their first robot as well as program it using Android Studio. On the hardware side, we helped them create a basic pushbot. For software, we helped them program a basic teleop which moves the robot around using the two joysticks on the controller. It was a lot of fun to teach some of our tricks to a new FTC team and we hope to see them more in the future!

Library Video Demo

August 6, 2020June 11, 2021Leave a comment

Every year our local library does several “storytimes” where they invite many kids to come and read with the librarians. This year they were unable to do this in person, so they instead decided to host their storytimes online through Facebook Live. We were featured on a pre-recorded storytime as robotics team members. For the storytime, we demonstrated our robot and explained a bit about what FIRST is. We then did a bit of singing and dancing with our robot! We also made a short video detailing the process of how we designed the robot which was featured on the stream. We had a great time showing off our robot and hope we will be able to do it in person next year!

Promet Demo

July 27, 2019July 27, 2019Leave a comment

Recently, we have been looking for sponsors whenever we get the chance. One of those sponsors is Promet Optics, who sponsored us when we were in FLL. They create high-end optical sensors, and we demoed to 11 of their engineers. We went to their company to tell them about FTC, and how it’s different from FLL. We showed them our robot and told them about our sub-systems. They asked about what the hardest part of our robot and how certain systems worked. When we were if FLL, it was fun to demo there, and now demo-ing FTC is still fun.

Snail Lake FLL Jr. Expo

May 10, 2019July 10, 2019Leave a comment

We hosted an FLL Jr. Expo where we ran several events. There we showed off our robot and let the kids drive the robots. Once they drove the robot, they got a robot drivers license. We also had a lego pit, a programmable mouse, and a K’Nex building area. We had a lot of fun playing with the little kids and teaching them to drive the robots. We had tons of fun hosting this event and would love to do this again.