​As we all know, 2020 was unexpectedly under unusual circumstances. To this day, the world is handling the Covid-19 pandemic, which has brought drastic changes to society. Although many countries have announced the purchase of vaccine doses, we would advise continuing the practice of regular hand-washing, sanitization and wearing a mask in public areas. We also hope you find inspiration and learn from our experiences with the pandemic in this blog!

Initially, at the beginning of 2020, we were enlisted to attend a regional competition in Hawaii. We also qualified for the Houston, Texas World Championships. Unfortunately, due to travel limitations, we cancelled our plans. Our province had transitioned to online learning, meaning we did not have access to a working facility. With a functioning robot yet no purpose, our team encountered an unmotivated break. 

This setback continued until October 2020, when we adjusted to a new learning style and schedule. In the team's best interest, we decided to have a more active online presence on our social media platforms in this new virtual normality, which allowed us to host an online coding workshop using Vex VR in partnership with our local library. We were glad to continue making connections with our community!

It is now 2021, and our goals are to expand our side projects on the online platform. Join us in our journey to maintain learning and sustainability in our team, as we will be updating our progress! 

          This last week was a bit different from other weeks, hence why this post is being written on Friday. On Monday and Tuesday, the school district closed all schools for snow, meaning we were only able to come in and work for 3 days of the week. However, the build team has been working hard and putting in extra late nights to finish the robot in time. Currently, it is almost finished with a weekend and Monday left to finish and tidy up before bag and tag day. Meanwhile, our field elements team has finished building the rocket for practice driving. You can find a picture of it above with our robot from last year, Atlas. 

          The administration team has been working hard to arrange more outreach events along while also working on awards presentations. We suggest every team have a group of people working on a Chairman's award video and presentation, as the prestigious award is a sign of success and kindness, and it should be in any team's long term goals to eventually win one. While you may not win in your first year, it is a good way to get your foot in the door so improvement can be made for other years. That's the recap of our 6th week of build season, and we hope to see you again! Our next event should be concerning bag and tag day and the finished robot. Thanks for reading!

          Welcome back to another week of tip for rookie teams! Over the last 3 days we've made a lot of progress in many parts of our team. Award submissions were closed today at 3pm EST or 12PM PST, and we made sure to finish up with plenty of time left for both the Chairman's award and Woodie Flower's award. The programming team has been working on our practice robot in order to test experimental code so they will be able to quickly program the actual robot. Field elements have been finished by field elements team. The drivers have been practicing for many hours so they can perform well at the competition. Out in the metalshop, our fabrication team have been working overtime to finish up the robot before the 19th, also known as bag and tag day. You must be done and have bagged up your robot by that day, so hopefully that can be accomplished with time for programming and driving practice. Good luck with your goals for the week, and in general. See you again next week!

Welcome back! We hope you've been having a successful first 3 weeks of buld season, and are back here to explain what we plan to do along with what would ideally be finished by this time. Currently, we are working on the robot itself, but there is a moving chassis which is great because it allows our drivers to practice driving the robot and the programmers to test the robot. We also plan on getting bumpers together soon, a required part of every FRC robot. We use reversible bumpers so we change the colour without taking the bumper. 

Something else which is quickly approaching are award submissions. While many awards are based on performance and presentations at the events, often they also have a second portion which is submitted to FIRST electronically before the deadline. We suggest that everyone get this done whenever they can. Awards are a great thing to add to any team's trophy case.

 Unfortunately we were too busy to get a Week 2 Tips for Rookie Teams out last week, but we will do a recap along with a Week 3 Tips post. However, all of our teams were busy with many different tasks. Field elements are well on their way and on schedule to be finished before the robot, thanks to our lovely field elements team. All the planning has been done in AutoCAD, and out administration team has been securing sponsorships from the community and working on award submissions. 

We also have a good plan for Week 3 now that the planning is all done in CAD and building will begin today. The goal is for the robot to be driving by next week so our programmers can have sometime more accurate to the actual robot to work on. Hopefully by this point you have a plan for your robot as finishing early as this will give more time for the programmers to test the robot, which is our main goal. The administration team also hopes to secure another sponsor while working away at the award submissions. Thank you for reading, and good luck!

This recent weekend was the weekend of the FRC kickoff, where the game for the new season is announced. This year, the kickoff was at 7:30 AM PST so everyone was here extra early so we can watch the livestream together and brainstorm together. Overall, we had a great time watching, reading the manual, and had lots of great ideas during our brainstorming which will accelerate the process of designing our robot. We hope to have a good 2018-2019 season and hope to see you again!

Welcome to Team Hephaestus 6390's second season of Tip for Rookie Teams!

Kickoff just happened this previous weekend and we're super excited for this season FRC. This week, we plan to get into our teams, and begin to brainstorm and discuss the design of our robot along with planning our season, with the goal of having a CAD model, which should be a top priority for any team. Field elements are also useful, and it is recommended that some be made so the drivers can test the robot before the competition. The programmers should be learning about how the robots work, and how to program the robot so they have something to test on the robot.

Good luck in your endeavours for week 1, and don't forget to have fun!

​The North Surrey Robotics team recently hosted an FLL Tournament along with an FLL Jr. Expo which was adjoined to the main event. There will be a separate blog for the FLL Jr. Expo. The FLL tournament occurred on December 2nd, 2018 and was attended by teams from across the Greater Vancouver area. North Surrey Secondary also entered two teams into the tournament. There were also many volunteers at the event, including students, parents, FIRST staff and other members of the community.
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One of the greatest parts of FLL and robotics has been and will always be the learning process. The journey to get to the tournament was every bit as important as how the teams performed. Everyone learned about the challenges of space exploration and had a great time while doing so. The event was very successful thanks to the hard work of the team members and time put in by the volunteers. The North Surrey Robotics team would like to thank everyone who attended as a competitor, volunteer, or guest, and we hope to see you back here again!